Landfall (Black Sails, M)

[groundcontrol]

I am utterly appalled at the lack of Black Sails fic on here!! So, having recently finished it, I wrote this to remedy that fact. If you have not watched Black Sails, watch it. I purposefully avoided spoiling anything major in this fic because it is truly the best show I have ever had the pleasure to watch and I do not want to spoil that for anyone. If you want queer characters, ships, pirates, badass women, ships (did I mention those already?) and show writing that feels like the best of literature, watch this show. That said, if you have seen it, this takes place before the show starts, when Captain Flint is building his image as the fearsome pirate he is when we meet him. 

This was actually incredibly hard to write, both because I felt such an intense pressure to do these wonderful characters justice and because Flint is just an impermeable wall. Like this man could just take a cannonball to the face and not bat an eye. So I tried my best to stay in character and still let him suffer a bit :) Onwards! Hopefully a bit more sneezing in the next part. 

 

    They had made landfall in Nassau in the evening, just as the sun was beginning to set. The storm clouds that had then been rolling into the harbor quickly from the interior of the island were now unleashing a torrential downpour upon Captain Flint as he urged his horse faster inland through the mud. It had taken them long into the night, well after the rain had begun to unload all the cargo they had taken, and as such he was as soaked as though pulled from the ocean. Though being so wet would doubtless not do well for the headcold he was brewing, neither would spending the night at the Guthrie’s tavern do well for his headache. 

    When he arrived at Miranda’s home, he tied up his horse in the stable and limped into the house, his leg aching from the ride or the fight for the ship or the weather or God knows what else. The wind blew the door shut with a loud crash behind him. Flint stood for a moment, water dripping from him like a personal rainstorm, breathing heavily and not altogether successfully keeping himself from coughing. In the hearth, a dying fire cast its dim light on the room. He hung his coat, more wet rag now than anything, beside the door, when he heard a shuffling from the bedroom. 

       Miranda emerged in her nightgown, her hair mussed slightly from its updo in sleep. She smiled at him but Flint, upon seeing her hands empty, did not return it. 

“Where’s the pistol I gave you?” he growled. “To protect yourself.”

Turning her back to him, Miranda went to stoke the fire up higher. “I left it behind, seeing as though I know there is only one man mad enough to ride out and barge in my door at this hour and in this weather. Thank you, by the way. For the puddle.”

Miranda pulled a stool out in front of the hearth and Flint sank into it, the wood creaking as his weight melted into it. “Homecoming gift,” he gritted out.

“There’s blood in it.”

“Eh?”

“In the puddle. Mixed with the water.”

“My leg, probably. Haven’t really had the chance to look at it yet.” He spared a glance at his thigh; the light was low, coming only from the fire, but he thought he could make out a glisten of red somewhere along the sodden black fabric of his trousers, as well as a tear. He coughed to clear his throat. “There’s a book. In my cloak. Probably soaked through, but it’s there. Erasmus.”

“Good that you had the time and the sense to raid a bookshelf.” Flint picked up on the unspoken and not tend to your leg and he did not care for the accusation of it, but he did not rise to the bait, simply too exhausted to do so. His head and limbs ached, and now that the promise of a hearth and true dryness was so near he could scarcely stand the wet scratch of his clothes against his skin. 

    Miranda disappeared to the kitchen, no doubt to boil water and prepare a salve to clean his wound. They had fallen into this rhythm, such that Flint himself could recognize which cloths and jars she pulled down based only on the direction of her footsteps and the squeaking of the cabinets. The farthest to the left of the stove was the highest pitched and it was there she kept her lavender soap which, for reasons unclear, she used only on him. He heard her open it. It would be wasted on him tonight, not that it ever wasn’t, for he was too full of cold to consider smelling it.

    “HRSHH’uhhh! HRSHHH’ooo! HRRSHH!” He gave three shuddering sneezes, the wetness of his hair snaking around his temples chilling him further. Briefly he considered going to his coat to retrieve his handkerchief, soaked as it no doubt was, but when he looked up he saw Miranda re-enter, holding a platter full of bowls and bandages to treat him, and he knew he would get a row for getting up again to bleed more on her floor.

“Dutch merchant ship with a hold full of spices and tobacco,” he told her as she set the tray down with a soft clang on the coffee table beside where he sat. She lit a candle  “Enough to keep the men satisfied for a while.”

    “How long is that?”

    “Two months at least. Enough for us to ride out the worst of the winter storms on la--Careful!” Flint jerked back as Miranda pulled at the tear in his trouser leg, ripping it open to expose the gash on his thigh. 

    “Hush, they’ll have to be sewn up again, anyway.”

    “At this rate, they’ll have to be replaced!”

    Miranda sighed as she took in the extent of the injury, fresh blood gleaming deeply in the candlelight, then gave an airy chuckle. There was a sadness nestled deeply within it, almost imperceptible, that hurt Flint far more than the wound did. “I suppose I should have pegged you as a man who cared more for his clothing than for himself.”

Flint talked around that sadness, as they always did. “Says the woman who is more worried about bloodstains on her floor than what put them there. I think I could come in without a leg and you’d be particular about what I bled on.”

Miranda smiled, almost to herself, as she wet a cloth in the bowl of soapy water and wrung it out, before placing it on Flint’s leg. “If you had a home to clean and take care of, you’d be particular as well.”

They fell silent after that, the only sounds being the crackle of the fire and the melodic repetition of Miranda dunking the cloth in the bowl, the droplets pittering as she wrung it out, the soft squish as she pressed cloth gently to his wound. It was not unlike the cadence of a ship, the rushing waves and heaving creaks, and Flint lost himself in it, the sting of the soap as she scrubbed the only thing keeping him from drifting to sleep. 

His sniffling grew more insistent as the fragrance of the soap loosened his congestion. He sneezed again, twice, jerking away from Miranda as she was wrapping a bandage around his thigh.

“You’ve picked up a cold, too, on your voyage,” she observed, not pausing her pressure on the wound as she continued to wrap it. 

“It’s nothing.”

“Well, yes, compared to the gash on your leg a great number of things are nothing.” Her hands paused in tying the bandage, holding the pressure there as she looked up at him, the question unsaid burning like an ember behind her eyes. In London, she would have asked—she had asked when he had come around with a split lip from a bar fight or a bruise from his training—but since they had come to Nassau there were a great many questions she had stopped asking. 

Flint met her eyes for the briefest of moments. She would not ask how he had come by this latest set of injuries, but she knew enough to fill the gaps, perhaps even enough to construct a story close to the truth. She was a smart, smart woman and Flint did not deserve her. 

Her voice softened as she dropped her gaze, wiping away with a clean cloth the blood that had already seeped around the edges of the bandage. “Please, try to take care of yourself a bit, James.”

Flint made a sound in his throat, an attempt at a grunt or a scoff perhaps, but it caught and turned to a rough cough. Miranda said nothing, but set to gathering the bloody cloths and filthy bowls back on the tray. The sight of the blood, the dirt of his world infiltrating and infecting hers, made his chest burn in a way that had nothing to do with his illness.

Miranda hesitated and cupped his cheek briefly before picking up the tray, bidding him look at her. The firelight flicked across her eyes.  “Allow me to do what I can. I know there are…” She broke their gaze for a moment and swallowed. “Limits to what I can do, what I can understand, but please. Let me be here for you.” 

Flint smoothed a stray piece of her hair back behind her ear and studied her a moment, beholding with a sinking stomach the lines on her face, lines that had been from ceaseless smiles back in London turned lines sour with stress here in Nassau. He owed this to her, owed her the world after what he had put her through.

“I only mean you needn’t trouble yourself over this,” he said. “Over me, over a headcold, over a cut on my leg. It’s nothing that I haven’t experienced before and I’ve borne it--” 

“The men aren’t here to see you,” Miranda said abruptly, and damn her for always knowing his mind even when Flint scarcely knew it himself. She carried on, her voice softening.  “Any weakness you think you might display, they are not here to see it. There’s no need to be Captain Flint in this house.”

With that she turned back for the kitchen, calling over her shoulder that she would bring Flint a towel to dry himself while she made up the spare bed. Flint coughed again, knowing that if he had had the energy to follow his instinct he would have yelled at her for some senseless reason, perhaps for the sin of cutting through to the core of the very armor of ferocity he was trying to build for himself. Shame burned in his belly, and he took a small measure of comfort in the throb of his injury and the fire in his throat, as a twisted form of penance or punishment. He had become an angry man since leaving London. He had always been subject to passion, to being overcome, to loss of control. The accursed Admiral Hennessey had even observed as much. But the raw permanence of his anger, burrowing deep within him and taking up hold like a parasite, was something altogether new and different. In quiet moments such as this, he loathed himself for it.

Miranda returned to him with a towel and a handkerchief before departing to the bedroom. Flint made judicious use of both the items, his sneezing assaulting him with a vengeance as he became dry, as if to punish him for having gotten so wet in the first place. He had been ill all manner of times and in all manner of places: belowdecks in the Navy, at port, on land, even once prior on the Walrus. And this present headcold of his, while decidedly uncomfortable and a nuisance as all headcolds are, certainly ranked among the least of these times. Were he alone or at sea, he would have treated it as he treated all minor ailments: by simply going about his business as usual, perhaps indulging in a bit of rum to take the edge off the soreness in his throat. But, it was undeniably relaxing, freeing even, to know that he would sleep in a bed tonight and not have to wake to maps and ropes and captaincy in the morning. Flint felt his shoulders fall at the realization, felt the muscles in his jaw unclench, until the strain of sailing and fighting to take the Dutch caravel was as much in the background as the soft sputtering of the fire in the hearth.

His eyes slipped shut, and perhaps he had even fallen asleep briefly sitting up, when Miranda shook his shoulder gently. She nodded at him and he nodded back, feeling stupid and disoriented with fatigue. Doubtless sensing this, she led him by the arm to the spare bedroom that may as well become his as much as his own cabin at sea. 

“I’ve left you an old nightshirt, in the drawers.”

“HRSSH’eww! Heh’RSHHH’uhhh!” Flint was overcome by a fit of sneezing and coughed a bit when he had finished, prompting Miranda to pat the pillow and add, “And handkerchiefs, tucked underneath.”

She turned to leave but he caught her by the wrist and brought her fingers to his lips. They were warm, and even through his congestion he could smell the lavender soap upon them. “Thank you,” he rasped. For everything. If ever there were a time for her to read his mind, it was now.

Miranda leaned forward and placed a ghost-light kiss on his cheek. “Try not to get too much blood on my sheets. It is absolutely beastly to get out.”

She left him, then, with a smile, and Flint gave one of his own to the empty room before collapsing on the bed and falling asleep almost instantly, uncaring of damp clothes or soaked bandages or words he should have said but lacked the courage to voice. 

[SleepingPhlox]

I have never heard of Black Sails, but this was awesome!  A wonderful read.

[groundcontrol]

Thank you!! Sadly, too few people have heard of it 😭 I’ll get the word out one sickfic at a time, I suppose

[ellwren]

Never heard of this show, but I love your story!