#i found on spotify a playlist entitled The Naughty 1920s

[vowel-in-thug]

Black Sails Noir

for my dearest, darling, delightful @jadedbirch on her beautiful birthday!! el you are such a treasure to me and have been since i’ve known you, and i deeply appreciate you, even though that one time you showed me pictures of cute bunnies after i ate rabbit schnitzel, because you’re also cruel and unusual

and PHEW am i glad you liked the noir AU I wrote a couple days ago (which should be read before this because otherwise it makes no sense) because otherwise this would be awkward! i was gonna write you something else, but that was for the prompt you requested ages (and AGES) ago and that felt like a cop-out. but literally nothing happens here, so view this as PART 1 and PART 2, the answer to prompt (which couldn’t fit here and contains something of a Story) will be coming later

i hope you enjoy and i love you and i hope you had a great day!!! :-**

Silverflint, rated E because cmon it’s for El

Three days after they first met, Silver rolls out from under him and asks, “Hey, didn’t you want me to make you any liquor at some point?”

Flint stops sucking on his neck. “Anyone ever tell you, you got a good work ethic?”

“Really?”

Flint hums, begins moving lower down Silver’s body. “A good work ethic turns me on.”

A few hours later, he leaves Silver out smoking on the fire escape while he makes a phone call. He normally sleeps in the office above The Walrus, but it’s good to have a place to himself, too. His apartment isn’t lavish like the other men in his profession, but he’s never been a lavish man. Being a crook hasn’t changed that. It’s dim and quiet, too-often dusty. But he’s got a view of the city, and his favorite Chinese restaurant is downstairs. It’s the perfect place to lie low in case the heat is on, or in case he wants a little privacy. In all his time in Atlantic City, it’s always been the former. This makes for a nice change.

Plus, he can always count on the fact that, no matter the time of day, Billy the Bones will be held up in his office.

“I wondered where you’d run off to,” Billy says, crunching on some ice loudly into the receiver. “I thought you’d finally flung yourself off the pier.”

“Did you send out a search party?”

“Nah,” says Billy. “I’ve never known you do something you didn’t mean. Final wishes, and all.”

“I found a bootlegger.”

“Drowning would have been less of a surprise,” says Billy. “I thought this day would never come.”

From the desk in his parlor, he can see Silver out the window. His hair is a wild mass, too curly to properly style, and he likes the way it sits at the nape of his neck. He’d forgone a shirt entirely, sweat getting trapped between his skin and suspenders, and every so often he’ll shift to idly scratch the itch. He looks like the worst fever Flint ever had. Looking at him gives Flint the shakes.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Flint to Billy. “It needed to happen. Can’t afford to keep losing cargo to the waters. Anyone ever hear from Rackham?”

“Hell, you really have been under a rock these last few days. Feds picked up the Ranger two miles from the Florida coast.”

Flint sighs. He can’t let himself feel more than a trace of sympathy for them, but he feels it. They more than knew the risk involved, after all. At least he can be sure they didn’t drop a dime on him, or else he’d have heard from Billy days ago.

“All the more reason to go in on our own,” Flint says, rubbing his forehead. “Our own joint, our own supply. It’ll be simpler this way.”

“Yeah, as simple as a bullet to the brain.” They call him Billy the Bones because he breaks them, but also because he’ll speak to you plain. Which sometimes means stating the obvious. “We’ll still have the A.C. Feds on us, especially without Miss Guthrie paying ‘em off.”

Flint needs a smoke, but his case is empty. He’d given his last to Silver, but that’s fine. He’s been thinking about using Silver’s stomach to roll his cigarettes ever since he first took his shirt off. “I’ll smooth things over with her,” Flint assures. “She likes me.”

“She likes your money more.” There’s a pause over the line as Billy helps himself to more of Flint’s private stash of booze. “You sure about the guy? You really mean to do this?”

Silver finishes his cigarette and crawls back in through the window. He tries to be casual about it, not let his embarrassment show at how awkward his wooden leg makes his movements. Flint enjoys the show, however. He likes the way the muscles in Silver’s arms move.

Once Silver gets inside, he ignores Flint on the phone. He picks up Flint’s hat, much nicer than his own, and tries it on in front of the mirror. He’d probably look more dapper with a shirt on, but Flint’s not about to give him any ideas about putting on more clothes.

“I never do anything I don’t mean,” Flint says, eyes on Silver. “How long?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, a faint scratch of pencil. “I can probably get us off the ground by the end of the week.”

“Probably?”

“I can get us off the ground by the end of the week,” says Billy, still scratching. “When do I get to meet this guy?”

Flint doesn’t want to admit that he has no idea what day it is. He thinks it might be a Sunday. Or maybe it just feels like how a summer Sunday afternoon is supposed to feel. The sound of mandolins from the restaurant downstairs twinkle into the apartment, somehow audible over the bells and hollers of the busy city street. The sun creeps in through the windows like a burglar, hotter than the devil, and Silver strolling by with Flint’s hat still on, heading to the kitchen to run some water over his face again. He pauses to run a hand through Flint’s hair as he goes by. It definitely feels like a Sunday afternoon.

Flint says, “Soon enough. You know I like to get to know a guy before jumping into bed with him.”

“Who were you just lying to?” Silver asks once Flint’s off the phone. He’s running a wet rag over his bare neck.

“The man arranging your distillery.” He unsticks himself from his chair. He probably should have put some pants on before calling Billy. He’d moved into the apartment in January. There’d been no telling then how fucking brutal the summers are

“Good thinking, not putting any clothes back on.” Silver drops the rag, comes over to grab his ass and chew on his ear. “It’s good to know I’m going into a business with a man who has that kind of forethought.”

Flint hustles him over to the couch, and they neck for awhile. He clings to Silver’s suspenders like a half-remembered dream, rubbing his cock against Silver’s pleated trousers which, on closer inspection, might actually be Flint’s. They stay that until the sun starts to lower, night rising slowly in the sky like a new bruise. He can’t remember the last time he’d gone this long without holding a gun. He never before knew how exhilarating it is to feel calm.

Eventually, Silver shimmies up the couch, forcing Flint up. Somehow, he’s managed to keep Flint’s hat on, although it’s cocked over his eyes. He pushes his suspenders off his shoulders, the top button the trousers already loose.

“I wasn’t lying before,” Flint says, eyeing the rest of the buttons like they’d done something personally to offend him. “I do like to get to know someone before getting into bed with them. Only it’s a figurative bed, in this case. I take my business more seriously than – whatever this is.”

It’s the kind of thing that might offend a dame, but Silver shrugs. “Of course.” He also stops unbuttoning his pants. “Although, I’m not ashamed to say, I’ve never stuck around so long after a fuck. I’ve never been in anyone’s arms without keeping one eye on the closest exit. So that….might be something.”

“Me too.” Flint says, though he is a little ashamed to say it. “About the sticking around thing. Did have someone once, a long time ago. That was before the war.”

Silver doesn’t ask him for any specifics, which Flint appreciates. “Never done anything like this, this fast either,” Silver admits, with the smallest of smirks. “It’s not so easy with a fella. It’s either a quick blow in a back alley somewhere, or dancing around him for months to see if he’s even kind of interested in pulling. Either way, it can be a pain.”

Flint curls his fingers over the edge of Silver’s waistband, and finally tugs them down. They must be Flint’s, the way they slide down easily over his hips. He finds he’s fallen madly in love with Silver’s legs, but he can’t figure out how to tell Silver that without pissing him off. Sure, he’s only got one and a half now, but Christ, they’re working overtime to make up for it. He loves the muscle, the pale skin visible beneath the dark black hairs, how good they feel clenched tight around his waist. For some reason, the foot has always struck Flint as the most masculine feature, more so than even the cock or the chest. Silver’s foot is long and slender, finely haired and veined, perfectly arched and one-of-a-kind, like the fucking Arc de Triomphe.

“If either of us were a dame,” Flint says, tugging the trousers delicately over the edge of Silver’s wooden leg. It doesn’t bother him, but Silver removes it anyway, “no one would bat an eye at us tumbling to bed right away. Hell, by now, people would be expecting wedding bells already.”

Silver pauses in unbuckling his boot. “You asking me to marry you?”

“No, I’m asking you to go into business with me,” Flint says. “Almost the same thing. Great risk of financial ruin, codependency, emotional strife, but at least this way there won’t be any fucking kids in the mix.”

“It’s not that easy,” Silver says. “It can’t be.”

“You came into my life just as I was contemplating a change,” Flint says. “And you got more change than a piggy bank, doll.” He sits back on the other end of the couch, content to just look at him for awhile. “I don’t need to tell you, but there are two things you learn, being stuck in a trench.”

“How not to panic and blow your brains out when you realize the man you’ve been speaking to for twenty minutes hasn’t had his lower half attached to his upper half the entire time?”

“Okay, three things.”

“That there is no God and there never was, but that sure as Hell doesn’t mean there isn’t a devil.”

“Okay, four things. Will you let me finish?”

Silver presses his toes into Flint’s stomach, trailing down. He smiles in a way that implies he’s seen the way Flint looks at his foot. “Sorry.”

“Thank you.” Flint twitches in an effort to keep still, as Silver’s foot moves over him. “You learn that your country has no goddamn respect for you, your life, your potential, your future, and that it hasn’t actually done anything to earn the same.”

“Wow. You mean to tell me you were an upstanding young citizen before the war?”

“You bet your sweet ass I was.” He pours himself over Silver like a thunderstorm, grabbing said sweet ass. Silver’s foot is still braced against him, drawn up on his thigh. “You weren’t?”

“”Fraid I’ve always been a cad,” says Silver, arching into him, sliding his leg over Flint’s back. “What’s the second thing? Or fourth thing?”

“That life is too short and too fucking ridiculous to pussyfoot around with what you want,” Flint says. “That the only thing you can plan for is the sunrise and the sunset, and any other attempt in between is just bathwater.”

Silver cups his neck, bringing him forward to kiss. “Well, that’s jake,” he says against Flint’s lips. “But I’m sorry to say I already made plans for us this evening.”

“Is that right?”

Silver hums. “First, I was gonna blow you while wearing this swell hat of yours,” he says. “And then I was gonna have you go downstairs and fetch me some of that chop suey I like.”

“And who’s saying I’m not getting to know you?” asks Flint, already falling backwards again onto the couch. He’s been half-hard since they first started kissing on the couch, after his phone call, but he’d felt no rush to deal with it. He could acknowledge it without caring too much, like the financial section of the papers. A cursory glance, but he’d had other headlines to read.

Silver crawls panther-like over him, settling in between his thighs with his stupid fedora still on his head. He grips Flint’s cock and runs his wet lips from tip to base, before leaning under to nuzzle his balls. Flint moans, curling forward. He wants to grip his hair but the damn hat is in the way, so he squeezes Silver’s neck instead.

Silver’s hum of pleasure at being held hits Flint like a good song – the fine hairs on his arms all stand on end and he finds himself wanting to hear it over and over, knowing instantly he’ll never tire of the sound. Then Silver kisses up Flint’s length with obscene smacks before sealing his lips over the head and sucking down.

“Fuck!” Flint cries out, legs closing tightly around Silver’s head instinctively. He feels Silver moan against him, and then Silver suddenly stops sucking. He grabs the inside of Flint’s thighs and wrenches them apart, keeping him there with a strong hold.

“Don’t crumple your hat,” Silver pulls off to say sternly. “It costs more than my entire apartment.”

Before Flint could respond, Silver swallows him down completely. Flint curses again, back arching, but with Silver’s hold on his legs he can barely thrust forward into Silver’s generous mouth. The joints in his thighs ache at being held open, and he feels aggressively exposed like this, unable to do much else beside pant and curse and scratch at Silver, digging his heels into his shoulderblades.

Silver keeps pushing down on Flint’s thighs, fingers spread and pressing into the freckles there like a pianist who fell asleep at the keys. All Flint hears is a loud, echoing, vibrating din in his heart. He’s hoping their endeavor together is successful, but one way or another he thinks Silver might ruin him.

He comes looking down at Silver’s eyes beneath the hat, blue and nimble as a melody that’ll stick in his head for the rest of the night. When he finally lets go of Flint’s thighs, they’re slow to come back together. The stretch always feels good, in the end.

He’s breathing like a man late to his own confession, watching Silver wipe at the corner of his lips with his thumb. Silver taps the brim of the fedora with a finger so it’s tilted back over his head. It’s not the first time he’s sucked Flint’s cock since their isolation began, but every time afterwards he looks to Flint like he’s waiting for a shiny blue ribbon.

Flint reaches for him. “Let me…”

Silver pushes his hand away. “Later. Gives us something to do after dinner. Chop suey, if you please.”

When Flint slides this trousers on, the same pair Silver had on earlier, Silver pulls him down by the waist to kiss him. He hasn’t put his leg back on yet, and is lounging naked on the couch like Cleopatra. He plops the hat back on Flint’s head, even though he’s just going downstairs, wearing an undershirt and no shoes.

“I want you to know I’m taking this seriously,” Silver says. “Our partnership. I know you’re putting a lot on faith, with me.” He tucks an errant red curl behind Flint’s ear. “It’s a risk. You’re gonna catch a lot of trouble with troublesome people, I wager.”

Neither of them have found time to shave these last couple days. Flint likes the soft hiss of their stubble brushing together when he bites the corner of Silver’s mouth, far more than he likes the words coming out of it. “No worries, doll. We’re in the clear with this.”

Silver smiles against him, barely enough space between them for a tune to pass through. “Hell,” he says. “That bad, huh?”

When Flint’s walking back up the tiny, dark staircase to his apartment a little while later, delicious food warm in his hands, he has to pause at his door. The only light in the hall comes from the small windows above each entryway, and his is glowing hot and yellow. He rests his forehead against the chipped wood, feeling the noise. Since he stepped out, Silver has found his Columbia Grafonola and got it working. He can hear the muffled lilt of Lee Morse seeping through the cracks in his old home, and even though he’s listening to it from the other side, it sounds clearer than any bell he’s ever heard. His place seems alive for the first time in a very long time, just from the knowledge that there’s someone else on the inside of it.

It’s not that bad at all. There’s no way it could be.