FlintHamilton and ’I’ll not have you making up such wild stories.'
Peach verse setting. Potentially out of character because James is extra friendly and chatty¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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They had been at the apothecary’s store in Savannah when Thomas first caught wind of it.
The apothecary was a friendly man named Tillson. He and James had always been chatty with one another; Tillson used to be in the navy. So Thomas would overhear a short story or two whenever they made their monthly trips into the store for supplies. This time, however, Thomas heard James retelling a story about how he had become a naval captain and had led his fleet in an ambush against three Spanish man o’wars during the The War of the Spanish Succession.
Thomas had turned his head away from the bottles of medicine he was browsing to openly gawk at his lover but James paid him no mind, becoming quite enamored with his own story. At the end of it Thomas had shrugged it off, poking fun at him later.
“They’re strangers,” James had said nonchalantly. “What does it matter?”
Thomas eventually had agreed, thinking it some strange fluke of character in James. But.
It got progressively worse.
When they went to the open market to buy fresh vegetables James told the seller, a youngish woman named Mary, that he had personally known English royalty related to King George, and that his cousin was one such man named Solomon Little.
Mary had been wide-eyed but was too naive to realized how ridiculous the name was. Thomas, on the other hand, was baffled.
“Solomon Little?” he exclaimed. “What on earth has gotten into you?”
And this time James had chuckled, pleased with himself.
The next time it was even more horrid. They were getting ready to head back to their cabin when none other than the town magistrate ran into James. He was with his mistress. The woman was especially interested in James in a quite inappropriate way, which was amusing to Thomas. James launched into a tale of how he had seen a kracken at sea once and Thomas nearly lost it, rolling his eyes and sighing, gesturing helplessly behind him. The mistress, however, found it a fascinating subject.
Thomas had to physically pull at James’s arm so they could leave.
“I’ll not have you making up such wild stories, not anymore,” Thomas chastised him as soon as they were in the wagon and had started down the road.
James laughed out right. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a pouch and handed it to Thomas. The pouch weighed heavy in his palm. Perplexed, Thomas opened it. There was more coin in it than they had come here with. Yet when he looked to James for an explanation James was just grinning ear from ear (or what passed for such a grin for James), eyes straight ahead on the road.
“James McGraw Flint, what the bloody hell is this?” Thomas demanded.
James’s shoulders rolled with silent laughter as he pulled on the reins and halted them.
“I made a wager last week with Magistrate Philips,” he said once he had regained some semblance of composure. “We had started conversing about the different tall tales we had heard about this and that. I had told him about your talent for oration and speeches. Somewhere along the way we ended up wondering what would happen if I started inventing stories to the townsfolk; if you would hold your tongue or not, knowing they were make believe. He said you would not. I said you would. Obviously I won. He slid that to me when you weren’t looking.”
And he nodded pointedly at the pouch in Thomas’s palm.
Thomas was staring at him, mouth slightly ajar.
“You fiend,” he finally said, and James burst out laughing.
***
