They had left the smoke of Charleston and set sail for Tortuga. The bodies of the dead interred to the deep, as though the men responsible didn't still walk the deck. Billy prowled the ship taking count and marking the men's moods. Sometime, before the sun slipped under the horizon, the captain had disappeared without a word. The winds were in their favor, and the sea calm. After a long and complicated look, Billy set Vane in control of the night watch—an order accepted with a slow and simple nod.
Billy shifted restlessly as he crossed back over the deck. If the weather was so calm, why did the hairs on his neck feel a storm? Instinct was a boatswain's friend Gates always told him, and he let it carry him to the captain's quarters where lights still flickered within.
The ship creaked as it crested a wave, and a sail high above gave a flap.
Billy pushed in the door, wary of what he might find.
"Captain Flint…" he said, toward the only figure in the room. The captain stood facing stern before the wall of darkened windows. He gave no response at first, and Billy closed the door behind him, moving a few steps further in.
"That's not my name." The words came out rough as Flint hung his head and still did not turn to look at him.
Billy frowned watching him spread his hands on the table under the windows and press his weight into it, shaking his head. Shaking all over. The captain—his captain—did not tremble like a man's first time taking a prize, and the sight, wholly alien, made Billy's guts turn, quiver with the shape of something horrible. He took an uneasy breath and moved in further still, testing these waters.
"What is it then?" he asked quietly.
Flint shook his head and curled inward, hunching his shoulders. He spasmed once, the tightening grip of grief, and Billy swallowed. Truly, he did not know the man who stood in Flint's office, wore Flint's clothes.
"Sir?" Billy tried again, softly softly, as he rounded the desk and could see a profile illuminated in candlelight. Flint turned, carefully trembling, to look at him, eyes reddened and his face flushed the same. Barely composed, his expression shifted like fickle seas. Grief, controlled, cracking again.
Billy's tongue felt thick and clumsy in his mouth, and he could feel his heart beat hard. Trespasser. Intruder. His wits said go, but how? How leave a wound like that untended?
"What's your name?" he asked, holding Flint's gaze.
The response, when it came, was a whisper on strained throat, muttered thick with emotion. "James McGraw." His face twisted, and he turned away, shaking his head, trying to hide a few more grips of too much sorrow. What had happened in that town? Flint sucked a breath to get control and spoke to the wall, low and unsteady. "No one alive knows him anymore."
Billy nodded encouragingly, watching every movement, every expression. He tried a quick smile, unsure of what to do. "Nice to meet you, James McGraw," he said.
Flint turned to stare at him. This simple truth cutting through so many lies and partial deceptions that he seemed unable, unwilling?, to sustain them any longer. He nodded and tried to smile, but it miscarried part through. Billy felt his heart fraying as he watched this man, the feared, reviled devil of the sea, collapse into himself, sobbing into the silence.
He couldn't watch.
But he couldn't look away either. So unmanly a grief.
He touched Flint's shoulder on impulse, wanting him to stop, and then took his upper arm. "Hey… come. Sit down. Come on." Billy tugged at him, maneuvered him into the captain's chair. Hot embarrassment flashed across his skin, but Billy sat and watched as their great hope fell to pieces.
The cabin, dark and tomb-quiet grew smaller around them, until all Billy could feel was the throb of his pulse, the rocking of the ship, and sound of catching breath. He stared and swallowed, his dry throat clicking, as the captain folded his face into his hands.
"What happened?" Billy asked. To the plan. To their hope. To his.
Flint's fingers slowly slid down his face, tears smearing some of the blood and dirt clean. It left track marks like Vane's war paint as he lifted his head and stared at Billy, blinking. Fresh tears streaked down his cheeks as his gaze drifted to one of the lanterns and the flickering flame.
Captain Flint grew very, very still.
Billy barely breathed. "Sir?" He frowned at the statue before him, watching the corners of Flint's eyes twitch and his jaw tense. "James," he tried, most gently.
Flint's eyes flicked in his direction, but… not Flint's eyes. A strange magic unfolded as Billy stared at his captain, a transfiguration of smoothing lines and rounded expression. He faced a stranger and blinked in awe.
At length, James McGraw ordered his words. With effort, found the voice to put behind them.
"I accepted Lord Ashe's deal," he said, with a quiver and crack. "He would help Nassau. And in exchange, I would go to Whitehall and tell them everything."
Billy frowned a little. "Everything about what?"
A small, powerless shrug. "Who I was. What I did."
Billy leaned his elbows on his knees and peered at Flint, as though this history lay written in the marks of his skin.
Perhaps it did.
"Who were you?" he asked him.
Flint's gaze drifted back to the candle flickering in a lantern. "A lieutenant in the Royal Navy assigned to assist Lord Thomas Hamilton."
Billy nodded a little. "And… what did you do?"
Captain Flint had done a great many things. A great many awful, unforgivable things. He could not fathom what Lieutenant McGraw might have done.
Silence passed a moment as Flint's chest rose and fell. His eyes grew glassy while he stared hard at the flame, and then he looked at Billy with a wry, defeated little smile. "I fell in love."
"With who?"
Flint's wandering gaze came into focus and he locked eyes, jolting Billy's heart with the rawness of it. Fear haunted there, and Billy's hackles.
"Lord Thomas," James McGraw said him, voice rough and whispered.
Billy blinked. And an anchor dropped through his stomach with a cold and heavy splash. His next breath came sharp with wariness, surprise. It didn't make sense. But that—
"But Lady Hamilton…" Flint had gone to see her every time they came ashore. The crew thought him bewitched. Billy frowned at him.
Flint's mouth quirked. "Her too."
For a moment, the world simply stopped. Billy's mind turned it over, sifted its fingers through this new sand. "You…" He had trouble forming a sentence as the shock tingled across his skin. "You fell in love with both of them," he said, still frowning, and watched as Flint's eyes fell shut as he nodded.
"Thomas had plans for Nassau. To make it a colony again. Great… ambitious plans." James paused, allowing a sad, stricken smile. "He believed in goodness of people. That they could be redeemed. The pardons—"
"Were his idea," Billy cut in with a whisper.
Flint nodded and kept going, pressing his eyes shut. "His father disapproved of the plan. We were going to fight him in Whitehall. We…" He trailed off, shaking his head. That transfigured face, innocent and younger somehow, curled with sorrow. "His father knew about us. Used it against us."
Billy's heart thudded faster as he watched, sympathy straining at this throat. "What happened?" He had to ask. Didn't want to know.
Flint's eyes opened, shining and red. "He locked Thomas in Bedlam. Stripped me from the Navy. Miranda and I had to leave London, I couldn't save him. I wanted to save him, to get him out of there. I couldn't leave him in that place…" His words tumbled over one another thick with saliva and regret. He pressed his eyes shut and took a moment to recover himself. "We came to Nassau," he said eventually. "Ruined."
Billy sat back and stared, his insides grown cold. "And met Mr. Gates," he said.
Flint nodded. And in the silence that followed the constellation of lies, half-truths, and history that formed Captain Flint turned on a new axis. Before he could say anything, ask another question, Flint drew a breath and kept going.
"We were standing there, in Lord Ashe's dining room, when I agreed to tell the lords this story. But Miranda, she…" He shook his head, grief painting fresh across his face in red splotches. "She would not allow it. To parade me for their ridicule, their scorn. She realized but the sound of a clock that had been in her home how Thomas's father had pulled it off. Who had agreed to bear witness to the rumors."
Oh… It couldn't possibly…
A pain clenched in Billy's chest. "Lord Ashe."
Flint nodded without looking at him. "A friend once… She… She…" A tear slipped out from under closed lids, and his voice shook too much for his liking.
Billy ducked his head and pressed his eyes closed against the growing ache. "She what," he said.
"She screamed at him. That it was his fault. That he bought Charleston with our suffering and Thomas's blood. That she wanted him to hang from the gallows. And then his man shot her in the head." Flint recited it with a monotone and then fell silent.
"Jesus…" Billy sat back and let his arms fall to his sides. He stared at this… James McGraw. Ruined Navy officer. Feared pirate captain. And the constellation made new sense. Information clicked into place and colored everything new. The pardons were Thomas's plan. The pardons were the Charleston plan.
"This whole time," he found himself saying, "you were trying to finish his work."
Flint looked at him—James looked at him with a pleading.
"Weren't you?"
A quiet nod.
"For…" It was the only thing that made sense. "For love?"
Another nod, and with a furious blushing Flint turned his head away. Billy could only stare at him, pulse wild as the last few years of his life refracted with new meaning. Everything, everything for love. It was unreasonable. Unthinkable. The ships they had taken. The men they had slain. The trust Flint had sundered. For the memory of a man.
Flint's voice wavered when he unexpectedly spoke. "Does that seem foolish to you?"
It should. He should be angry for what it cost him, for what it cost them all. But all he could manage was blinking in awe until Flint looked at him, searching for an answer.
"I think," Billy said, chest hurting, "that I would kill for someone to love me a fraction that much."
Surprise registered across James's expression and then tumbled down the mountain of his grief. Whatever he had been using to bolster his blockade had broken at Billy's words. And Billy's heart, seeing it, cleaved. How could it not?
On impulse, he surged forward onto one knee, close enough and tall enough that he could pull Flint into something of an embrace. Feel tears along his neck, real as any shattered man's. Surreal to be holding the captain this way, to grasp at the pieces of him falling. To witness his undoing. But Billy Bones had strong shoulders, and he could carry this. All this knowledge. All these secrets.
He held and rubbed and squeezed lightly at the back of Flint's neck until the shaking stopped. Billy's body flared at the contact, the unaccustomed intimacy. When the captain pulled away, he looked empty and more vulnerable than any man should see him. Billy sat back on his haunches, studying. It would not do. Not for what they needed.
"Was it—" Billy started, then frowned at himself and tried again. "Is it…men, or was it just him? Special."
James frowned at him, his eyes moving over Billy's face. "I… I don't know," he said eventually, breathing the words.
Billy licked at his lower lip, not quite meaning to do it. And Flint's eyes flicked to follow the gesture.
Well.
The spark in Billy's chest flared with courage, and he lifted a hand slowly toward Flint's face. The man froze. Ceased breathing. Billy could have sworn he felt the heat of the candles dancing on his sensitive skin. The ship rocked, and his fingers touched along Flint's beard. A shudder of remembered breath. And Billy cupped his jaw to bring him closer.
"You don't have—" Flint breathed, watching him with a lost and ensorcelled look.
"Ain't never done anything I didn't want," came the soft reply.
Billy breathed once, washing waiting lips with a wet, light heat before they touched. He had learned to kiss from the ladies of Nassau. To give as they wanted. Pick up their cues. Shy and gentle, easing in ardor. Lips were lips. And even if the beard tickled—
James made a sound. A whimper. A moan. And then pulled back, pressing a hand against Billy's chest. He frowned in confusion across the small space.
"What are you doing?"
Billy smirked a little at him. "Didn't think I was that bad."
"You know what I—"
"Look…" Billy stood and urged Flint to his feet with a gentle hand. He met his troubled gaze. "You loved them with more soul than most men have. And they're gone. And you're empty." A scowl. "I can see it. But that's what we need. All of us. A tiny part. A speck of what you had for them is enough to live on." Flint frowned and tried to say something, but he couldn't follow. Billy went on. "You said no one alive knows your name. Who you are." That got a nod. "Well I do now. And I thought… maybe what James McGraw needs is someone to care about him for a change."
Small and fleeting expressions danced across his face, and he said nothing, just stared at Billy like he did not recognize him. But perhaps like he wanted to.
Billy sighed. "C'mon," and he urged Flint to turn around so he could slip the leather coat off him. Flint cast him a look over his shoulder but made no move to object. Billy hung the coat on the rack where it should go and stood behind Flint again a second later. He picked at the tie holding his hair in place until he could pull the knot free. The small ponytail let out, letting chin-length hair hang in clumps that needed washing.
"Is this what Lieutenant McGraw looked like?" he asked as the captain turned around.
"No…" Flint responded quietly, not quite looking at him. "His hair was much longer." He paused. "And he didn't have a beard."
Billy offered a half-smile and gestured toward the bed. "You should sleep."
Flint gave him a querulous look but ambled toward the bed on limbs like lead. Grief did that to a person. It did a lot of things. Billy'd always thought of it like being trapped outside in the cold. It made you slow and dumb. Numb to everything. He stood by while Flint undressed, seemingly unperturbed at being watched, and then stripped off the worst of his own layers. The implication was quite clear, and Flint rolled onto his side on the bed to face the wall. Billy settled in behind him, touching his arm until some of the tension left on a sigh.
Then he slid his arm around the man's middle and tucked him close. There was no heat in it. No lust.
"James?" Billy asked after a time. He felt a response in the rhythm of his breathing. Billy stared at the back of his head. "I'm sorry… That they're gone. And… Thank you. For telling me."
The truth at last.