perfectlyambiguous:

black sails is a show meant to be rewatched. it’s incredible the first time around, but once you know the character backstories and how the story progresses, you start to notice all the little details that you missed or ignored the first time around but now that you have that full knowledge of what happens, you realize those moments had immense value… black sails is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

aphrodihe:

“Was your telegram intended to convey a command or merely a message? I mean, should it be written “Love Virginia!” – an imperative, – or “Love. Virginia.”? Whichever way you read it, it was very nice and unexpected, and if a command it has been obeyed.”

— Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf

vowel-in-thug:

I return once more to the Cliffs of Gay Despair:

The light is failing. Silver is not.

Flint wonders if this is how Silver made it this far in life – starting off doing things tragically terrible, fucking up a few thousand times, before succeeding due to his own irritation at the relentless way life kept happening to him.

The clang of their swords hitting together is as loud as the look in Silver’s eyes, as bright as the shine coming off his hair. It’s all sharp in Flint’s mind, and Silver is undeterred, until he parries out of the way of Flint’s blade and gets momentarily blinded by his own hair, allowing Flint to tap him lightly on the shoulder.

A quick, annoyed snarl curls over Silver’s lips before disappearing. Flint doesn’t tell him he actually lasted his longest bout, because Silver would read no comfort in it. Dead is still dead.

With the annoyance gone, Silver just looks tired. He stares off at the setting sun as he tries to control his breathing, wiping away the strands of hair sticking to the sweat on his temple and his cheekbone. Flint can’t remember when it got so long. He looks undone with his hair loose. It strikes Flint as something too private and quiet for him to be seeing. It belongs in an early morning light, not a fading evening one.

From up on the cliff, they’re too far from the water and from the treeline for the wind to rush through anything by their bodies. Flint says, “You should really tie it back again.” He turns to face the horizon, too. The sun is setting just to the side of them. In their immediate view is only the soft approach of night. “If you’re trying not to die, of course.”

“I just had the one tie,” Silver huffs, breathing a little more regularly now. He’d lost it a few hours ago now. When it had first come loose, Flint had been so surprised by the sudden presence of more Silver. Fortunately, Silver had been equally surprised and had also dropped his sword, resulting in the day’s only draw.

“Do you ever miss it?”

For a moment, Flint has no idea what he’s talking about, so he thinks of everything. Does he miss hunting trader ships, with no other worries but food and gold? Does he miss not feeling every body part ache with age and with life and with death? Does he miss the days when the only thoughts he had of Silver were ones of distrust and anger and nothing – nothing – more? Does he miss someone touching him kindly? Does he miss her? Does he miss him?

Then Silver says, “Your hair?” A gentle finger brushes his scalp, just above the ear. It’s a quick touch, so quick he might have thought he’d imagined it if not for the way he feels it everywhere. “It was such a striking color.”

Flint hadn’t realized he’d been stroking the back of his head while they’d been watching the sun set. He lowers his hand, looking back at Silver. He’s a lot closer than he’d been a moment ago.

“No,” Flint says honestly. “I don’t.” It’s a reminder, one he needs. It’s respect and grief and rage and some semblance of pride at the thing he’d turned himself into. He shaves his head because he hates himself, but he likes the act of shaving, of running the blade slowly, dangerously over vulnerable skin, of hearing the scrape loud and hard in his ears. He likes the way his skin feels against his palm afterwards. He feels clean and new each time.

“Are you sure?” Silver smiles slightly. They still have their swords gripped in their hands. Their wind knocks them together so they whisper by their feet. “I saw you looking at mine early when it came loose. Are you sure it wasn’t jealousy?”

Flint has no doubt Silver saw something on his face before, the way he likely sees whatever is on his face now. He also has little reason to doubt Silver had interpreted whatever he saw correctly, because Silver always gets it right the first time. But why he should even bring it up now, if he intends to pretend otherwise, Flint can’t rightly imagine.

But Flint had decided not too long ago to stop lying to Silver. No good ever came from it.

“I’m not jealous,” he says, because he is jealous of some things in regards to Silver, but not of his hair.

“Are you sure?” Silver says again, teasing. His smile is crooked, showing his teeth. “The green in your eyes suggest otherwise.”

A strand of Silver’s hair is caught in the corner of his eyelashes. The curl is wrapped just so around the lashes, so it flutters every time he blinks. He’s either unaware or unbothered by it, but Flint is neither. He’s unable to look away. He reaches up, focused on it so he doesn’t have to fully see the smile slip from Silver’s lips, and gently brushes it away.

“My eyes are always green,” he says.

Silver’s, now, are wide with surprise, and something else. Whereas Silver only ever needs the slightest glimpse, Flint would need a lifetime to properly understand all that he sees in Silver’s expressions. There’s always so much, in the things he shows, in the things he hides, that Flint never knows where to look first. If only he had the time to see it all.

But he doesn’t, as Silver looks down, his loose hair falling over his face like a thunderstorm seen from a distance. It hasn’t reached Flint yet, but he’s so close he can feel the charge in the air already.

Silver’s head is still ducked, but when he glances back up at Flint, it looks like thunder, sudden, intent, but cautious.

“I know they are,” he says.

Writing prompts!

crucifythenburn:

Does anyone else ever find themselves thinking about the fact that we met John Silver in negotiation for his life and that survival by any means has always been one of his defining traits and then he meets Flint and Madi and actually forms real human connections with them to the point that his most basic intrinsic need to survive begins to extend to them by default and that making sure they SURVIVED too was probably the only real way he knew how to love them because life is filled with ending and unexplainable horror but that still doesn’t mean he can’t do his best to protect the ones he loves and himself?

Because I do…