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Tommy sits on Sol’s lap to trim his beard, which does nought for the mess of clipped hair that will get everywhere, but it’s nice. The woods on each side of the cabin are deep and protective against anyone who might come around and object to seeing Tommy on his man’s lap, and they’ve yet to pass up an opportunity to use one chair instead of two. Maybe one day they’ll take for granted that they can touch and fuck and kiss with no one around to hide from. Maybe losing the thrill of it will be its own happiness, the kind that comes from a love lifelong and well-worn. But not just yet.
Sol is grousing. “It always comes in patchy.”
Tommy tuts. “Nuh-uh. Nice and handsome.”
“You think I can’t handle getting the truth from my lad?”
Tommy smirks. “Fine, then. Patchy and handsome.”
Sol guffaws and pinches at his waist. “Not as handsome a beard as you had, I’ll say. If I could grow one like you I’d have it to my waist. Keep me nice and warm when I’m chopping.”
Tommy hmms and starts at the hair around Sol’s mouth. His own face is smooth shaven, as it has been ever since rescue came to their mutineer’s camp and he finally had a razor again. He’d hated his beard, an ugly, dark thing on his face that made even Sol’s kisses feel strange. Now he shaves each morning and sometimes in the evening too, when he feels an unwelcome shadow on his cheeks, and Sol spends coin he shouldn’t on a flower-scented cream from the store so his face doesn’t chap.
“I can do your hair next,” Tommy says. “It could use a trim.”
“Aye, well enough. Shall I do yours too? It’s been an age.”
Tommy’s hand flies to his curls. It has been an age, and they reach nearly to his chin. “Do you not like it?”
“No, but don’t it get in your eyes?”
“It does, but I like it this way.” He wraps a curl around his finger. “I used to wear it even longer than this, when I was real little. I’d throw a fit when Ma would try to cut it. I’d get in all sorts of trouble for it when Da was around but when he was at sea she’d let me grow it out. It were almost long enough to braid.”
Sol snorts. “You must have made a pretty little girl.”
A hot wash of something - panic, pain - rushes through him. The scissors clatter from his hands and he tries to rise up but Sol grabs him by the waist, holding him tight.
“Tommy -- “
“I should get the kettle, Sol.”
“Tommy, you have to tell me. Whatever it is, I’m sorry for it.”
Tommy shakes his head. If he tries to speak he doesn’t know what will come out.
“I’m sorry for calling you a girl. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
Christ, he can’t breathe. Sol is rocking him back and forth, murmuring his name over and over. He makes himself speak.
“I did.”
“Hm?”
“I did want to be a… want to be a girl.”
Sol thinks on this. “Well, that’s not so odd. When I was wee I wanted to be a horse.”
Tommy looks at the floor.
“It’s not just that, then?”
“It didn’t go away. I… I never felt like much of a man. You ever heard of that before?”
He’s never said it out loud before. He hadn’t even known that it could be said out loud. Put into words it feels like a knife, something designed precisely for plunging into his heart, handed over to the man he loves most. Solomon would never want to hurt him, he knows that, but, well, he has done before, even without meaning to, and with no weapon in his hands.
Sol is quiet for a while, considering. “No, I never heard of that before. But there’s a lot I don’t know about.”
Tommy shrugs. “We don’t need to talk about it again. It don’t matter.”
“Like hell, Tommy. You ain’t acting like it don’t matter.”
“Well it never did me any good, thinking those things. Only ever got me into trouble.”
“Is that what this is? You think you’ll get trouble from me? Tommy, love, there’s nought you could do to change that you’re my sweetheart.”
Tommy smiles weakly through the tears gathered hot in the corner of his eyes. “You say that like it’s so easy,” he says accusingly.
“What’s hard about it? You’ve always been my good lad, now you can be my girl.”
It hits him like the slap of cold air on an arctic morning, a happiness so sharp it hurts. He bursts into tears.
“What’s this, what’s this, eh?” Sol murmurs as he keeps rocking Tommy, who’s laughing and crying in great ugly hiccups of air.
“I don’t know,” Tommy gasps, because he doesn’t, except that the world is suddenly a different one than it was twenty minutes ago, and there’s a joy poking into his heart that feels so big and new it terrifies him. He wants to run headfirst into it, and he wants to hide from it and go back to the safety of dull unhappiness.
Sol kisses each inch of his face, unbothered by the tears and snot. He’s saying “Tommy” and “my girl” over and over until they blend into a new litany: Tommygirl, Tommygirl, Tommygirl. He pulls back and looks at Tommy gravely.
“Next time I’m in town I’ll get you something pretty. Something that matches your eyes.” He runs his fingers like a comb through Tommy’s hair. “What do you say, Tommygirl?”
Tommy thinks of the ice around the ships and the scurvy in their bones and the tuunbaq headed straight for them. There were scarier things than this, he figures, that he survived by holding on to Sol’s steady grip. He wipes his eyes. “Alright,” he whispers, and answers Sol’s grin with a shy smile.
__________________________
Thomasina Armitage is born a second time in a cabin nestled deep in the woods, forty miles from the nearest town and thousands of miles from England and the Royal Navy. It happens slowly, in a quiet progression of moments.
-
One day she sits on the stool peeling potatoes and lets herself cross her ankles, a feminine impulse she’s fought for twenty years. It feels right.
-
One day Sol comes back from the store with packages of flour and sugar and saltpork and a ribbon, the same blue as her eyes. She runs it through her fingers hesitantly.
“I’ll look silly.”
“Nah,” Sol says, so certain.
She makes him turn and face the corner while she attempts to tie it. Her hair isn’t long enough for a proper style but she can pull it back and tie a small bow, like a little girl heading to church.
There’s a small piece of metal nailed over the washbasin that’s been burnished into a makeshift mirror. She had thought to look into it before showing Sol, but now she hesitates. Sol is… well, Sol is Sol. He’s never looked at her like she was anything but beautiful, even when they were both crack-lipped and wrecked with scurvy. The mirror isn’t so forgiving. It shows her all sorts of ugliness, and the idea of looking into it now and seeing a pathetic man in a bow is too horrible to bear.
“Alright, you can look,” she tells Sol. He’ll be her mirror.
When Sol turns around his smile makes her blush.
“Tell me how I look,” she says. “I don’t want to look in the mirror.”
“Awful pretty, that’s how you look,” he says. “You should see for yourself.”
She shakes her head. “Tomorrow. I’ll look tomorrow.”
“Alright,” he says, and she’s glad he doesn’t push.
Sol circles his hands around her waist and she sucks in a breath. “Could try to get you a corset,” he says. Tommy shakes her head. “Damned expensive. Uncomfortable, too, I bet. Just do this, please.” And Sol says “All day, Tommygirl.”
-
One day Sol fucks her on the rug in front of the woodstove and when she clenches down he growls “Fucking Christ, your cunt,” and she comes so hard she shouts. When she comes to, Sol is smirking down at her all filthy. “Oh, darling,” he drawls, and when she tries to hide her blush with her hands he pulls them away and covers her face with kisses.
-
One night as they lie curled into each other she pokes at him.
“Do you think I love you like a woman?”
“Hrmph?” He blinks at her drowsily. “I guess. You do fuss a lot.”
“Oh, is that so?” She huffs, a little less offended than she makes herself sound.
“Well I dunno, Miss, but you make a good wife.”
Now that she’s asked she’s not sure what her question even means. She thinks of Ma, sewing careful stitches into Da’s ragged shirts and saving the last of the sugar for his tea. Fussing, too, over his cold feet and sore back. She does the same for Sol. She doesn’t know how else to love.
Sol yawns and places a broad hand flat on her chest. “You’ve got a woman’s heart,” he murmurs, and falls asleep. Tommy stays awake for awhile, feeling her heart beat against his hand.
-
One day her hair is finally long enough to braid, and she brings herself to tears tangling her curls in her fingers, because no one ever taught her how, and Sol knows even less, but together they manage a misshapen rope that she ties with the ribbon and Sol declares finer than a fashion plate.
-
One day Sol comes in from chopping and says “There’s a visiting judge in town.”
“Alright,” Tommy says, frowning at the darn in Sol’s sock that won’t lie flat.
“Bob Masters says he’s near blind.” Tommy is still fiddling with the sock. It takes her a few minutes to look up at Sol’s hopeful face and realize what he means.
“You can’t -” Her voice cracks. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“It won’t work, Sol.”
“I think you could gull an old man.” Sol kneels and takes the sock out of her hand. He kisses along her fingers. “I want a piece of paper with our names on it. Something official.”
“You’re crazy,” she whispers.
Sol grins. “Aye, and I’ve already put money down on a ring. How about it, Tommygirl?”
“You’re crazy,” she says again, and this time she’s laughing.
They ride into town the next day through a gray slurry of snow, Tommy wrapping the skirt of her best dress close to her legs. The judge is set up in the meeting hall and every bit as feeble as promised. She clutches at Sol throughout, sure that someone will stop them before she can get through her promise to love, cherish, and obey, but nothing happens. They sign their names and the judge pats her hand and says “Felicitations, Mrs. Tozer,” and then they’re married.
They hurry outside with the marriage certificate clutched in Sol’s hands, laughing like children who have gotten away with something.
The clouds have faded and the sky is pale blue and all of the land white. Sol kisses her, and a gust of wind sends snowflakes swirling around them, like a shower of petals in the air.
Fin.