bakerstreet | Shipping Picture ♡ ｐｒｏｍｐｔｓ

It's James' turn to laugh, or his version of it anyway — a sharp dragonish exhale from both nostrils. "Of course I'm not sure," he says: exasperated, honest. "Do you think I was sure when I stole that warship? Sailed into a storm rather than grovel for a pardon? Resigned a war of my own creation for the sake of a man I thought dead? No. I have never been sure."

He shrugs, returning John's stare frankly and without apology. "But I am resolute. Whatever else has changed about me, this remains: I prefer to chase a prize than hang back and mourn it from a place of safety." And he prefers to choose. There's no choice in certainty: freedom entails a perpetual possibility of failure. He prefers it that way.

"Resolute," John repeats, not disagreeing, but the moment of darkness seems to have abated, a temporary reprieve. The corner of his mouth ticks up, eyebrows drawing towards each other in something that more closely resembles his own version of exasperated amusement rather than an actual frown.

"That's... one way to describe you, yes."

Turning his body at the edge of the bed, he twists as best as he can to face the man more squarely. So, no peace for James. He wonders with a little more amusement of old how quickly the man will come to regret it. Not for the dark memories that live for as long as both of them draw breath, but for the memory he plucks out from barely an hour ago. 'My God you were an annoying little shit'. Yes, he was. Might still be with anything less than a war, or the hunt for Spanish gold, to pour his attention into.

As John shifts, so does James to mirror him. Automatic as dancing or fighting, or whatever rhythm they'd somehow found crushed up against the bookshelf.

"Do you want to propose another?" he asks, voice dry, glimmering with a mix of amusement and challenge. Feeling out some new space between them. Or old space, maybe. Silver had always had a particular knack for seeing him, and never shied from describing what he saw, even when it wasn't complimentary. Especially when it wasn't.

There are no shortage of words John can call to mind when asked. From shrewd and discerning to wild and dangerous. Passionate. Committed. Hardheaded and stubborn. Curious. Confident. Uncertain. Ashamed. All things that might go some way to describe the man he's looking at. But none of them quite add up to the living, breathing person. After all, they are just words.

"No," he replies, mentioning none of them, and allows his gaze to drop from James' eyes to his mouth, down to his chest and then back up again. His smile widens, corners of his eyes crinkling in ways they hadn't when he was a younger man.

"The way I see it, this is only the second time you have confirmed you're not going to throw me out. Why would I want to share all the words I just thought of before I do this?" he asks, reaching out to press a warm palm to a bare shoulder. With fingers sliding up into the back of James' hair, he pulls him forward, meeting him halfway with a light kiss. He leaves it up to James to decide if it stays that way.

James decides otherwise. He hums low and gruff into John's mouth and pulls him in for a deeper, more certain kiss. Resolute, he'd said: now to prove it.

His hands come up to push through through tangles of thick, half-wild dark hair. He's surprised by how warm it is: John's long curls absorb heat and hold it like fleece. The texture is so distracting that he's almost embarrassed by his own urge to wind his fingers ever-tighter in it.

Hoarse and breathless, he mutters against John's lips, "You've rarely avoided letting your mouth get you into trouble before."

"Can't think of a time I had the opportunity to let my mouth get me into trouble with you this way before," he counters, but the fingers in his hair are as distracting to him as they are to James. Huffing out an amused breath against the other man's lips, his own part to fasten around James' bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth briefly. He can think of a few other ways his mouth could get him into trouble that don't rely on words at all, come to think of it.

With James already in a state of semi-undress, it seems only fair to level the playing field. That and he's already feeling too hot again, his skin heated and aching for more contact now that it remembers his arousal. Leaning back, and with nothing less than a cheeky smirk at his lips, he grabs the back of his loose shirt and pulls it over his head in one move.

There are scars that are old enough to recognise, some that James won't have seen before. He belatedly thinks of how few he'd had before his path crossed with the other man's. He doesn't wait for an inspection, too concerned with pulling James' mouth back to his own, curious to continue exploring.

He's pliable as John worries gently at his lower lip, tipping into him to let him linger there, chasing when he pulls back — just a little, quickly under control when he sees that John's only leaning away to divest himself of his shirt.

James would like time to look him over, but John doesn't give him that just yet. Instead, he explores with both his hands, one palm gliding down John's bared sternum and one sliding around his waist, to his spine, fingernails dragging with a slight bite along his back.

Acutely aware of the two hands exploring his torso, John's own reach up to cup James' face. They settle first at the sides of his neck, fingers brushing over a pulse point before reaching their destination. The kiss is deep, as though he forgets that he needs to breathe and that instead he could survive purely off their mouths together, open, hot, inviting. But eventually the need to breathe is what breaks it, him gasping for air as he pulls his head back.

James' face has always been interesting, he's consistently thought that. There are the expressions which no man could mistake for anything but what they are. There are others, though, so buried sometimes that it's hard to find the one tiny part of them that betray the feelings behind. When he leans in again, this time it's not James' mouth he's after. He wants to hear the other man's breath as out of control as his is, hot at his ear. A hand slides out of the way and down to James' shoulder to expose his neck, a space for John to fasten his lips to, alternating between kisses and tasting that skin with his tongue.

James' head falls back as John kisses down his throat, his beard tickling and his mouth hot. One of James' hands tangles in his hair again, petting and winding through the curls. His breath hitches as John's tongue swipes over his jumping pulse, a hot rush of air fluttering past John's cheek and ear.

Vulnerable. He'd never usually let someone so close. Thomas, yes, but no one else. He's seen the damage a person can do. He's seen what Silver can do. He's experienced much of his worst. There's a thrill in letting him so close and believing that he'll come out whole from it.

His hand on Silver's back slides down, fingertips dipping below the waist of his trousers.

With a flash of frustration, John exhales against the tender skin of James' throat, distantly aware that he'd like to up the ante. There's a different kind of physicality at play, one that he hasn't experienced before. In place of the delicacy of a woman's body is James', broad and strong and more than able to manhandle him any way he wishes to. John can't decide if he likes the idea or not, isn't sure he'll know either way until he supposes it eventually happens.

But his frustration is bent around the leg that doesn't. Walking is possible with it strapped in place around his thigh, but it doesn't lend itself to this. With James' fingers already navigating past the boundary of his trousers, he realises perhaps he's closer to both them and the leg coming off than he thought.

"Are you going to take them off?" he murmurs into James' ear, not so much a question, more of a suggestion. In fact, he'd very much appreciate it, discomfort bunching in the fabric around his crotch.

Flint never spoke without thinking. James occasionally does. "Are you asking me to?" His voice is low, vibrating in his throat like a big cat's purr. He takes a long moment to lean back enough that he can look at John properly, then releases him from his grip.

"We're both wearing a little much. Sort your leg, then I'll fix the rest." James is as blunt as ever. He can't imagine that the years have changed John so much that he would care for pity, kid gloves or embarrassed euphemism. "Good enough for you?"

"One of those things tends to be a whole lot easier following the other," John replies after a moment, enjoying the sound of James' voice and delaying moving. As frustrated as he is, pulling away feels like a step backwards. He's invested and wouldn't deny it. Eventually his hands drop from James' shoulders, backside shifting so that he can demonstrate what he means as he repositions himself at the edge of the bed.

Unbuttoning the thick band at the waist of his trousers, he's had years of practice navigating a task that used to be so mundane that it required no thought at all. Not something he particularly takes for granted, anymore. With the trousers off quickly and unceremoniously dumped on the floor, he pulls up the bottom of his drawers, the straps for his leg wrapping high up his thigh.

"Hard to take it off with these trousers on. I didn't really expect to be taking them off here," he comments with a small smirk, shrugging an easy shoulder as his fingers work at the buckles.

Shipping Picture ♡ ｐｒｏｍｐｔｓ

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