Longshore Drift
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Sailors and their superstitions. Five times Flynn and Tandred slept together for luck, and one time they didn't.I. On the Beach
Flynn decides he's going to make a move on Tandred Proudmoore right around the time he starts getting the rounds in. While that alone is enough to put anyone in Flynn's good books, the crucial point here is that Proudmoore has technically bought him a drink, and once you'd bought Flynn Fairwind a drink... well. You were mostly in there, weren't you?
The Curious Octopus is always a good bet for a rowdy night out. Food's good, liquor's better, and then there's the matter of the basement rooms, which allegedly hold the answer to what, precisely, the octopus is so curious about. Flynn, being the eminently curious sort himself, just has to figure out the secret knock and the password.
He'll crack it eventually, but not tonight. Tonight is for jealously guarding his tiny wobbling corner table and watching Captain Proudmoore from across the bar.
He's a figure of some renown, what with the heft of that family name, even if nobody seems specifically awed that he captains the entire Kul Tiran fleet (though Flynn might be, just a little). He is, by all accounts, a personable fellow who is spoken of well, but for some reason nobody had bothered to mention to Flynn that he looks like that.
Presently, he's luminous with good cheer, cutting a handsome figure in his sea-blue Admiralty uniform even with his hat askew. He's leading a drinking song in a belting baritone, chest rising with each deep breath, his hair and beard glowing in the tavern's roaring fire.
Honestly.
Tides know why he's graced this particular establishment this particular night, but by the time the barkeep's finished lining them up, Flynn is past caring. The regulars are busy patting Proudmoore on the shoulder—in gratitude for his generosity, or avidly hoping he'll be generous again—so he waits til the next time he goes to the bar, sacrifices his table to the tavern gods, and squeezes in beside him to try his luck.
He's even more handsome up close. Has his mother's nose.
"Come here often?" Flynn says.
"You're going to have to do better than that," says Proudmoore, though by the glint to his eye it isn't a discouragement. He doesn't sound like any noble Flynn's ever met. His accent's coastal common, his manner everyday.
"Oh, high maintenance," Flynn says airily. "Forget I asked."
"It's too soon to play hard to get." Proudmoore tips his drink to Flynn's with a soft clink of ice, then regards him over the rim as he downs it. He makes a small thoughtful sound into the emptied glass. "Fairwind, isn't it?"
"Whatever you've heard, it's not true."
"Ah." Proudmoore thumps his glass to the bar and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then bounces the tumbler between his palms, spreading a patch of condensation along the bar top. He looks up at Flynn with a sliver of a grin. "Pity."
He swings himself off the stool and, with a companionable pat on the shoulder, leaves Flynn to chew on that.
The musicians, which is a generous descriptor even so many drinks in, strike up a favourite old standard. In the jostling beer-soaked chaos that is half the tavern lurching to its feet and into a jig, Proudmoore slips outside, his farewell a glance over his shoulder in Flynn's direction.
Now, Flynn's had his fair share of opportunistic post-drink liaisons, so he knows an invitation when he sees one. This might be one for the books, though.
Maybe Proudmoore will let him wear his fancy captain's hat.
He vacates the premises and stumbles off to find out. The chill night air hits with a backhand that leaves him reeling, though that might be the last rum kicking in. Quiet out front, noisy inside, liable to find folk pissing up the tavern wall around the corner, so he wanders on further until the off-key strains of Tirassian Lights fades. On a hunch, he takes the narrow lane that winds between the backsides of the city's buildings and slopes towards the beach.
The sand's heaped with pebbles that shift under his boots. Flynn wanders along, dragging a hand against the bulwark of the promenade, fingers bumping over the limpets and fronds of seaweed that mark the high tide line. The sea has pulled all the way down the beach, far enough that Flynn can't see it in the dark, only hear the sedate sweep of its waves.
His hunch pays off. Proudmoore's down here too, hands in his longcoat pockets and leaning with one bootsole flat against the wall. He's the picture of a man waiting for someone. He looks up as Flynn approaches.
"Come here often?" he says.
"Lucky for you I'm easy." Flynn leans next to him and feels around in his pockets for his flask.
"Tradition," he says. "I sail tomorrow. Always have myself a few the night before."
"From what I hear, you have yourself a few most nights."
"Guilty." Flynn laughs and holds his flask up in something like a toast. "But I'm not the only one whose reputation precedes him. Not used to seeing the likes of you around. What's your excuse?"
Proudmoore shrugs. "We all have our rituals."
A struggling street lantern on the promenade above backlights Proudmoore's profile, making a halo of his fair hair. He's amiable enough, but there's a certain guardedness to his posture, as though he's unsure of himself but doesn't want to let on.
"Made port this eve," he says. "Decompressing."
Some air quotes there. Flynn assumes he doesn't do this very often. He's not heard any rumours to the effect, at least. Catching the eye of the Lord Admiral's son is the kind of thing that gets around.
"Ah, then we're ships in the night," he says, "but maybe our charters will align favourably soon. I'll buy you a drink when they do."
"Aye, me and the whole tavern?"
"Well, let's not get carried away," Flynn quickly says. Proudmoore tips back his head and laughs. It makes Flynn want to laugh along with him. "So."
"So." Proudmoore pushes himself from the wall. "Any other traditions you keep to?"
The lanternlight wanes and then gutters out entirely; the beach takes on the rich depth of the night. The White Lady is a sliver, her attending stars bright and sharp and distant. Proudmoore cuts a silhouette against them, infinitely closer and warmer, though more of a mystery when it comes to navigating.
"There is one in particular. Age-old thing, you know how superstitions are."
"Might know it."
"Probably do." Flynn pats Proudmoore's chest, companionable as you like. He wears his shirt loose and open, as if he'd rather not be wearing it at all. His chest hair is soft against Flynn's palm.
"Come out here, make a salty tribute to the Tidemother. For luck, of course."
He's pulled that one out of his arse. Proudmoore certainly knows it but he's amused and eager to play along. His hand seeks Flynn's belt and uses it to tug him close.
"Aye, of course. Us sailors, we know what a demanding mistress she can be." The playful tilt of his head is accentuated by his hat. "Do you need a hand?"
A fine thing to ask a man halfway through unbuckling his belt. "Might need two, in fact," Flynn says.
Proudmoore feels him out as though intending to challenge him on that, but catches a noise in the back of his throat. "Not all mouth, are you?"
"Can be, if that takes your fancy," Flynn says into Proudmoore's ear, propping his chin on the man's shoulder while he opens the front of his trousers for him. Oh, he smells fantastic, like the air after a storm. Flynn's half-tempted to lick his neck, see if he tastes as good, but—manners.
"Has its appeal. Although," Proudmoore murmurs, curling his fingers around Flynn's dick and giving him a gorgeously long stroke, "that's not the tradition now, is it, old salt?"
There's something about the way Proudmoore speaks to him. Not as a noble to a common fellow or a captain to a seaman, but as sailor to sailor, matelots both; a recognition that has Flynn's admiration mixed hopelessly with lust. Not on his admittedly broad list of usual turn-ons, but the whys and wherefores are beside the point right now.
Nice hands, though. That's always on it. Proudmore picks things up, just enough to make Flynn lift onto his toes and rock into it.
And such a nice mouth, but for this kind of dalliance—well, that tends to be off the table.
He catches Proudmoore about the waist and presses his palm over the front of his trousers, and is rewarded with a satisfying bulge and a low groan. Good to know he's enjoying himself too. When Flynn thumbs at the waistband he gets no objection, so he slips a reciprocal hand inside.
A soft inhale. "Double the luck? Aye, seems sensible."
Proudmoore's free hand tucks beneath Flynn's ponytail and spans the back of his neck. It's unexpected. A deep, pleasant shiver takes Flynn unawares, and another when the hand on his dick begins to stroke in time with his rabbiting heart.
"Come on, then," Proudmoore whispers in his ear. "Wouldn't do to keep the lady waiting."
Flynn groans and thrusts into the tight circle of his fingers. He's got here quickly and recklessly enough he can pay Proudmoore only minor consideration, though he doesn't seem to mind it. His attention is all on Flynn. Now there's a thought to jar the night into focus.
"Ah, mate," Flynn says on an exhale. He curls urgent fingers over Proudmoore's, and in the next moment he's coming. Proudmoore lets go, shifting his grip to Flynn's hand and making a cup of it.
Flynn feels a laugh rise up along with that delirious spike of bliss.
Wouldn't do to spill his offering, of course.
Flynn tries to pull himself together enough to return the favour, lifting his chin from Proudmoore's shoulder to gauge his reaction to a bit of petting. There is little light to see him by, but Flynn can feel the warmth of his breath on his cheek, quick and shallow.
"Let's see to you," he says, just as a loud clamour of voices reached them from the promenade above. Ambient shadows shift across the sand as a knot of drunken seamen stagger by.
Gently, Proudmoore catches his wrist and takes a step away from him.
"How about you owe me," he says, adjusting first his hat and then the fall of his trousers, and dissatisfied with the results, pulls his longcoat closed. He looks aside, cocking his head toward the retreating voices. All clear again, but Flynn suspects their moment has passed. Proudmoore's selfassurance has melted into a vague apprehension.
He clears his throat. "Fairwind—"
"Don't worry," Flynn says, as though anyone has ever been reassured to hear him say that. "Believe it or not, I can be discreet."
"I suppose I'll have to take your word for it." He doesn't say it unkindly. More with a faint marvel to his tone, as if he'd got caught up in the excitement and hadn't entirely thought this through.
Flynn decides it's something of a compliment.
"All right," he says, before the pleasant tension between them has the chance to turn awkward. Might as well see this conceit through to the end. "If you don't mind, I gotta go, er. Pay my respects."
"Oh—of course. Hope the tides appreciate it," Proudmoore says, and laughs at Flynn's loud snort.
He touches his hat in farewell, and Flynn, as ever, heads towards the ocean.
The rumble of the waves sweep in off the night, deep and regular like the breath of a sleeping giant. He crouches to wash his hands in the surf, running his fingers through the cold moonlight that dashes over the water. There, he meditates a while on nothing in particular. Like all sailors, he's a man of superstition rather than faith, but that doesn't mean he can't value a little reverence when he finds it.
Turning back to trudge up the beach, he's surprised to see Proudmoore only just leaving, as if he must have stood there a while, perhaps caught in some reverence of his own.
II. In the Provisioner's Storehouse
Fewer barrels of pickled herring this voyage, since his new cook is green and doesn't know how to make them palatable. He licks his pencil and marks a tally, then taps the point against the paper while he gets his thoughts in a line. This is a straightforward undertaking but he finds himself distracted, and not by the noise outside. He'll never get things done at this rate, and so he yields to the inevitable.
"Replenishing your stores?" he says to the man who has been loitering in his periphery for some time and, frankly, eyeing him up. "I thought you'd only just made port."
Fairwind, leaning with arms folded against a barrel of salted meat and cultivating an air of insouciance, gives Tandred another blatant once-over. "Nah," he says. "I'm just here to check out the goods."
"And how do you find them?"
"Up to snuff."
Fairwind has a gift for making anything sound untoward, though with enough charm that he gets away with it, for the most part. Tandred likes that about him. He has a sense of adventure and something of a reputation, so he assumes their encounter on the beach hadn't been out of the ordinary for him. A pleasant end to the evening without the hassle of having to take someone home.
Tandred may have dwelt upon it during the more private moments of his last voyage, but that doesn't mean Fairwind won't get a lift of an eyebrow when it's deserved.
"Not sure if that's a compliment, mate. I've heard tell of your standards."
"My tastes are top drawer, I'll have you know."
Tandred returns his attention to his paperwork, suppressing a grin. "Are they, now."
"Evidence suggests."
Tandred supposes it does. He'd imagined the beach would be the start and end of it—but here Fairwind is again, having made such excellent time on his shipping run that he's returned several days early, full of spit and vinegar. That it so neatly coincides with Tandred's forthcoming departure could be happenstance, but since he's flirting outrageously while not having bothered to make up a reason for being here, perhaps it's that he's more inclined to pay his debts than people say.
Or this kind of debt, at least.
On one hand, it's good to know he's a mite more reliable than the average foremast jack. On the other, it does mean Tandred might very well find himself being brought off against a barrel of pickled herring at any moment.
He chews his lower lip and tries, once again, to focus on his requisition order. There are worse places. Probably. He's fairly certain he could brazen his way through it.
"Ah, there's nothing like a barrel of meat to keep you company on a long, lonely voyage." Fairwind leans over his shoulder as though to read his order. "Keeps a sailor's spirits up, a good mouthful of salty pork."
That hardly deserves the smile tugging at the corner of Tandred's mouth, but there's not a lot he can do about it. "Not very subtle, are you."
"Might waste my time on niceties now and again, but subtlety is always overrated," Fairwind says into his ear. He's leaning in close enough to skew Tandred's hat. "I hear you're setting off again soon."
That confirms Tandred's suspicions about the nonsense he's purveying here. Anticipation kindles in his belly. "That I am, if you can see your way clear to letting me get on with things. I need this all stowed by tomorrow noon."
In deliberate contrast to his words, he folds his order and tucks it inside his coat, turning to face Fairwind and his hopeful raised brows. It's difficult not to feel some irritation at himself for it, but it's both half-hearted and short-lived.
Fairwind crowds in on him, eyes positively gleaming. "Just grease the vittler's palm. He'll hop to, nice as you like."
"Oh, now, Captain. I'm not above a little disreputable behaviour, but petty bribery is a different kettle of fish."
"Then you're missing out on some fun. Imagine the heights of criminality you could achieve with your clout." Fairwind gasps as though struck with a fantastic idea. "Hey, tell you what, I'll ease you in gently. Let me do it for you."
You can take the man out of Freehold. "You will not," Tandred says, laughing. "You might owe me one, but that's not how I—"
He catches his tongue, but it's too late. Fairwind grins like the cat that got the canary and now has his eye firmly on the cream.
"How I want to collect," Tandred finishes with as much dignity as he can, and in the meantime finds he's been successfully backed up against a barrel.
"Is that so!" Fairwind says. "Then how'd you prefer, Proudmoore?"
If Fairwind would have him believe his ritual has hastened him back to see him, then he'll play along. Tandred shrugs and catches the lapel of Fairwind's coat, digs his thumb into its matted fur lining and tugs invitingly.
"Well," he says, as Fairwind comes reeling in. "Last time seemed to work out well enough for you."
"Oh, I see. Some luck for your voyage, eh?" Fairwind braces a hand against the barrel and, and because he hasn't a shy bone in his body, walks the other up Tandred's inseam.
Tandred cracks a grin. "A fair wind would be… appreciated."
"That's what I like to hear." Fairwind sounds as pleased as he looks. He taps his fingers against the inside of Tandred's thigh. "Maybe not next to the pickled herring, though. I do have some class."
The storehouse has been expanded over the years, haphazardly and in whichever direction the yard could accommodate. Its original footprint included a small office for the Agent Victualler, long abandoned for one with a more pleasant outlook and fewer interesting odours, and is now instead host to any number of crates full of ship's biscuit that is either inedibly soft or inedibly hard.
Tandred finds himself hoisted onto one of said crates with vigor. Fairwind wastes no time and yet makes heavy weather of unfastening his trousers for him, and Tandred shivers through each brush of his fingers as he slips the buttons free one after the other. He does it with a slow regard, tip of his tongue between his teeth as though he's thinking something over as he goes about it.
Here is where Tandred expects a perfunctory but respectable hand job, some tall tale about this all being a sea dog tradition he somehow hasn't heard of, and then—and then they'll both go about their respective lives, their balance settled.
But, once the last button's unfastened with the same disproportionate solicitude as the rest, Fairwind seems to reach a decision. He pulls Tandred's cock free of his underwear, guides his legs apart, and then drops to his knees between them.
The crack about a mouthful of pork should probably have clued him in. Still, it seems polite to lodge at least minor protest, even if Tandred had little chance of disguising the response he's having to all this.
"Wh—" he begins, but is stymied by Fairwind nuzzling at the base of his cock.
The bastard glances up at him with his nose pressed in there, and winks. "Can't have you stumbling down to the water to supplicate," he says. "Not the state I'm about to leave you in. People will talk."
This promise, and the hot exhale of Fairwind's breath as he speaks, make it hard to find a reason to demur. He's standing proud as a mainmast, no hiding it.
"Well, I don't see how, ah," Tandred says as Fairwind flattens his tongue into the crease of his groin. His stubble prickles the tender skin of Tandred's inner thigh. "How is this a ritual again?"
"How's it not?" comes the muffled reply. "We've all got the ocean in us, right?"
No need to field a response to that convenient bit of folklore, because Fairwind sets about dragging his mouth slowly up Tandred's cock. It's about then Tandred realises that Fairwind has no intention of being either perfunctory or respectable about any of this. That hand job must have been better than he'd realised. He coughs out a laugh at the thought, and Fairwind looks up at him with his tongue flat against the underside, a smile creasing the corner of his eyes, as shameless as he is handsome.
Tides—he is truly both these things. Tandred is dizzied by a hot slam of lust. His cock jerks against Fairwind's mouth.
"Steady on there," Fairwind murmurs, "I'm just getting started." Tandred about musters an 'oh'.
Fairwind's hands rest atop his thighs, holding him steady as he slowly licks his way up. His palms are blazing even through the fabric of Tandred's trousers. Tandred lets himself think, just for a moment, about how hot Fairwind's mouth is going to feel around him.
With a nudge of his nose and a theatrical kiss, Fairwind reaches the tip of Tandred's cock. Instead of slipping it between his lips, he rests it against his cheek and makes undaunted eye contact.
It's not a surprise he'd tease and challenge like this, hauling things out beyond the borders of polite reciprocation and turning it into some kind of thing between them. Competition doesn't seem quite right. He's hard pushed to call it a courtship. Some licentious raillery, maybe.
Whatever it is, it involves Fairwind rubbing his rough cheek along his shaft, followed by his soft mouth. Oceans grant him grace if Tandred discovers stubble burn down there in the morning, but it gets his blood rushing, makes his breathing tight and shallow. He is beyond ready when Fairwind finally brings the head of his cock to his lips, but the knave, the cur, being devilish beyond measure, stops there. If he finishes on Fairwind's face without even getting properly blown he will never hear the end of it. He'll have no choice but to renounce his heritage, change his name, and move to the mainland.
He grimaces.
"Sorry, am I being a bother, mate?"
Fairwind is deliberately brushing his lips against him while he talks. Tandred knows it.
"Are you going to—"
"Going to what?"
"... get on with it." Tandred's face is hot, but that's down to being teased like this. Maybe he'll let Fairwind labour under the misapprehension that some mild dirty talk is enough to embarrass him.
It'll just make him lay it on thicker next time.
Next time. Ah, quite the assumption.
"Aye, aye, your lordship," Fairwind says with a dazzling smile.
Tandred bristles habitually, but Fairwind's too insolent, or not insolent enough, for it to truly land. Besides, he cheerfully takes one of Tandred's hands, plonks it on the back of his head and thrusts him most of the way into his mouth without further ado, and that's a surefire way of distracting a bloke.
His hips jerk up without his say-so, but Fairwind rolls with it, angling so that the head of Tandred's cock rubs against the roof of his mouth instead of choking him. Feels just as good. Feels—very good. Bit messy, but he has flair. Tandred's fingers slide over Fairwind's hair and around the leather thong that's doing its damnedest to keep it halfway tamed. He lets it ride there as Fairwind grips the base of his cock and bobs his head, slow and shallow at first, then deeper, tight pressure and the hot play of his tongue, a frown of concentration on his face.
His other hand vanishes between his legs. Somehow, that's what gets him. Tandred's thighs begin to shake. Fairwind makes a pleased rough sound in the back of this throat that fizzes up Tandred's spine, and his hand moves faster, unseen except for the shift of his arm where it bumps vigorously against Tandred's knee.
He might even get off before Tandred does, which makes him wonder which one of them has misunderstood the purpose of this rendezvous. Then he wonders how Fairwind will look and sound coming with his mouth around his cock, and in the same instant manages to ruin his chances of finding out.
Fairwind pulls back just as he starts coming, letting it well on his tongue and spill over onto his chin. Tandred's heart pounds as he watches him lick his lips and try to catch the rest with his fingers.
"Sails and stars," he says on a long breath. He rubs a hand over his face and tries to tear his eyes from Fairwind's wet mouth. "I thought you meant to swallow."
"I got distracted," Fairwind mumbles. His hand's back at work, but not for long. He rests his chin on Tandred's knee, his face screwed up. His breath catches, then he relaxes with a noisy exhale.
His face is sweet and calm when he's tamed by afterglow. Tandred watches him for a drawn-out moment. When he starts to feel as though he might want to stroke Fairwind's cheek, he jostles him with his knee instead.
"All right, all right." Fairwind rocks back onto his heels and sucks his fingers one at a time, with a thoroughness that suggests it's something he savours. It's completely unbearable to watch for reasons Tandred can't articulate, and in his need for it to stop, he catches Flynn's wrist and wipes his palm clean with a swipe of his thumb. Just so he can't—tides, just so he can't lick it.
Fairwind stares at him. Tandred stares back. He does not, will not, put his thumb in his mouth.
He puts his thumb in his mouth.
Fairwind's throat visibly works in a swallow, but he quickly pulls himself together and to his feet. "That'll do it," he proclaims with admirable bombast for someone tucking his dick away. "Extra lucky. Good call, well done."
"Aye," Tandred says. Absurdly, he adds, "Seemed sensible."
"Exceedingly. You'll be back in no time to importune me again." Fairwind tugs his lapels into place and dusts off his knees, then sways over to the door to poke his head out. "All clear."
"Importune you..."
"Well, yeah! Here I was, minding my own business—"
"Oh, were you now?" Tandred sets himself to rights and leans out of the office to give the storehouse a more thorough reconnoitre than he trusts Fairwind managed. It is actually all clear.
"And what was I doing to distract you so?"
Fairwind hustles in close, smiling as he slips a warm hand inside Tandred's coat. He tugs out the requisition order with nary a grope, and gives it a flick with his fingers. "A man in need of this much pork is no innocent," he says.
Tandred pries the papers from his hands and swats him with them. "That's just your dirty mind, mate."
The retort comes easily, and so does Fairwind's laughter, ringing out through the storehouse. "Okay, I'll leave you to it," he says with a clap of his hand on Tandred's shoulder, and whips away down the tall stacked aisles, toward the bleached square of sunlight spilling in through the double doors.
Tandred watches him go. There's a pleasant diversion, and then there's Fairwind. He would like nothing more than to spend the rest of the afternoon reflecting on that, but, unfortunately, he still has work to do.
He retrieves his pencil, shakes out the order—and scowls at the smudged prints Fairwind has left across the page.
III. In the Hedge Maze
Luckily, he also knows where you can find perfectly good ones just lying around.
He may have to slice out the first few dozen pages or so and ignore the embossed ship name on the front, and some may be a tad mouldy or their pages crisp with salt after a good waterlogging, but beggars can't be choosers.
Ha. Water log. Flynn has a chuckle to himself as he tugs a drop cloth off a tall stack of shelves, though it dissolves into coughs and sneezes until the billow of dust subsides. Everything in this particular dingy cellar is filmed with grime. The coat on the floor was as undisturbed as a midnight snow until he swanned his way through it, so he's expecting a decent haul.
He drags a crate over, clambers up and selects a likely-looking log book from the highest shelf.
"Thieving, are we?"
"Me? No." Flynn's unperturbed at being caught in the act, since he recognises that voice. "More... borrowing in perpetuity."
He rifles through the log's pages; a solid two-thirds of them are empty. That'll keep him going a decent while. He looks up. Proudmoore, of course, no doubt come to see what business Flynn has in this cellar, nestled as it is in the midst of his estate's completely unnecessary but admittedly fun hedge maze.
The hatch is a blue square of sky behind him. His hair has all this light in it where it catches the sun.
"Repurposing," he says to the sceptical twist of Proudmoore's mouth. "They're just going to waste down here, really."
"They've been archived." Proudmoore descends the stairs into the gloom of the cellar. The sunshine clings to him until he steps beyond its warm slant.
"A waste," Flynn insists. "How did you find me down here? Playing hide and seek? Shirking your lordly duties?"
There are a half-dozen other storage cellars scattered across the grounds he could've been found scavenging in. Flynn has an inkling, but he'd hear it from Proudmoore himself.
"Bit of both. I have a view over the gardens. Saw you scurrying through the maze like a bilge rat."
There's a cautious humour to that, as though Proudmoore fears Flynn might take offence at the comparison. Flynn's heard worse. He grins, pleased at the joke and pleased to have learned which side of the keep Proudmoore's rooms are on. He files that tidbit away for purposes he's not yet settled upon.
"Don't you think, though..." Proudmoore rakes at his lower lip as though working something out."It's unlucky isn't it? Using a decommissioned ship's log, that is."
Flynn thumps the log closed and tucks it under his arm, hopping down off the crate. The slap of his boot soles kick up fresh eddies of dust. He's not heard anything of the sort, but he's hardly in a position to contest such assertions. It is a pretty good one.
"Even unluckier if it's from a wreck," he says. "Whatever could we do to balance it out?"
"Very subtle, Fairwind."
"We've had that conversation before. Say—how many times do I have to get you off before we're on first name terms?"
Proudmoore laughs, short but genuine, and slides the log from beneath Flynn's arm. He sets it atop a cloth-draped barrel. "More than once, mate."
"Well, by that reasoning, you should be calling me Flynn."
Proudmoore takes off his hat, fine flyaways lifting and settling. He sweeps it before him and dips into a shallow bow.
"Flynn," he says, peering through his tousled hair, the corner of his mouth turned up in a glint of a smile. A greeting, a flirtation, that same sincere camaraderie he'd shown Flynn on the beach. It stirs something in him. Not just in his britches, but certainly there, too.
"Captain Proudmoore," he says, because that, apparently, is the rule.
Feels good to pour some friendly respect into it, and it could be that Proudmoore's thinking there are other things Flynn's mouth can do for him, so he should keep it appealing. After all, Flynn's found himself repeatedly distracted halfway through some task or other these past weeks, staring off at the horizon with a line in his hands while he remembers the throb of him against his tongue, the weight and warmth of his palm curved over the back of his head.
The way he'd licked his damned thumb.
Predictably, that's got him half-mast and fast running up the pole. He's not the only one. Flynn's sailing next so he should get to pick the luckydo, but Proudmoore seems to have other ideas. He's almost nose to nose in the gloom, gently crowding him up against a stack of crates, close enough that Flynn can feel the hard curve of what he's got stashed.
"Well, now," Flynn says. "Looks like someone has a hankering."
Proudmoore's expression falters. He takes a step back. "Did I misunderstand?" he says. "You're setting sail soon, aye?"
"Yep," Flynn says, because it's technically true. Though—there's technically, then there's stretching it. "A week Tuesday, that is."
"A week Tuesday? That's nine days." Proudmoore sounds a tad taken aback. He mulls it over with lower lip caught between his teeth again. Flynn feels a pang of disappointment when he turns on his heel and retreats toward the cellar hatch.
"Hey, wait," Flynn says, narrowly resisting the urge to catch his sleeve. "Hang on, what I meant was—"
Proudmoore hushes him with a sharp tss and a raise of a finger, and if Flynn doesn't fall silent, he does dial his imploring down to a low-pitched mutter. He supposes he can come back closer to the time. If he hasn't spoiled this game of theirs, that is. His stomach does a sad little flop at the thought.
The sun falls over Proudmoore again as he climbs the cellar stairs and pokes his head out, glancing this way and that, buttons on his coat shining. Then, in a marvellous turnabout, he ducks back in, pulling the hatch doors closed with a resonating thud.
"Darker than the bottom of a bucket of pitch in here," Flynn says, thrilled.
He hears Proudmoore move towards his voice, and Flynn senses the nearness of him a moment before his hand reaches for his hip. His breath is rum-sweet, kissing Flynn's mouth with its warmth. He might be an inch away, if that. Flynn licks his lips. If he tilts his head and leans in, could he pass it off as a mishap?
It's something, how completely, achingly hard the thought gets him. Probably because he knows it's a no-go, and his list of turn-ons include being contrary. He's busy running the odds on getting away with it when Proudmoore goes ahead and cups his dick through his trousers.
"I do beg your pardon. My eyes aren't used to the dark," he says, though he doesn't remove his hand. He squeezes lightly, feeling Flynn out as though it's all new to him.
"Can hardly expect you to find your manners in it, then," Flynn says.
He grins stupidly at the Proudmoore's gruff answering laugh. Just utterly idiotic. Doesn't matter, neither of them can see a thing. Hands-on is order of the day here, so he takes the opportunity to slip his into the open front of Proudmoore's shirt and cop a feel. Fair's fair, and he's been wanting to do that for a while. Who wouldn't? That maddening expanse of chest, framed by the lapels of that fancy longcoat of his—it's enough to drive a fellow to distraction.
"Not sure you'll find any in there, either." Proudmoore inhales sharply when Flynn gives his nipple a cheeky pinch. "Well, now!"
His hands slip beneath Flynn's coat and to the curve of his backside, and with a rough yank, he pulls their hips together. His cock is rigid against Flynn's, hot even through however many layers of fabric. It does feel a bit kinky, and that's not something Flynn's ever said about doing it with the lights off. He doesn't bother tamping down his delighted chortling.
"You know, sometimes it's this dark out on the quarterdeck, late middle watch." Proudmoore's voice is a playful whisper near Flynn's ear. His hair brushes Flynn's cheek, snagging in his stubble. "Night with no moons, lanterns shuttered. There's no telling the sky from the sea."
Flynn makes a noise of agreement. "Can't see your hand in front of your face when it's like that."
He lifts a hand and wiggles his fingers. He doubts Proudmoore can see it any more than he can, so it's fine that he might've brushed his face. Just the graze of his fingertips against the soft scruff of his beard. An accident.
"Plays tricks."
"And then some. They say if you stare long enough into the dark you can catch a glimpse of your future."
"Is that right?" Proudmoore says, for all the world like he believes it.
He's swaying subtly, rubbing up against Flynn with light bursts of friction. Every time Flynn presses into him to grind with intent, he arches away. It's hardly lack of boldness, his hands being where they are. It's that he's a damn tease. Turnabout for Flynn's blowjob technique, no doubt; fair might be fair, but Flynn is more inclined to hold to that when he's on the beneficial end of things. He takes a hold of Proudmoore's shoulders and makes a commotion in the dark until he gets him jockeyed up against a wall. Proudmoore's delight tumbles out of him in rich laughter, and when Flynn shoves his body thoroughly against him, he encourages it with both hands. It's a gift of wonderful solid pressure, and so Flynn decides to call them even.
"Ever see your future, then, Flynn?"
"Once, I think," Flynn says, riding up against him hard. "Tricky to tell, being full of stars as it was."
"Well, mate." Proudmoore's voice has taken on an appealing roughness. "Let's make sure you weren't just staring at the sky."
There's a pause, and Proudmoore relinquishes Flynn's left arsecheek from his possession. Flynn takes the opportunity to fumble at his own trouser's fastenings. He's still working on that when Proudmoore presses a veritable trove of hot bare skin against the back of his hand.
Incitement enough for him to dispense with the button-wrangling and shove the waist of his trousers down instead. His dick bounces blessedly free. He curls his palm, and after a few blind attempts, catches them together into a handful of feverish heat. The contact zings right through him. Judging from the loud groan and the full-body shiver, Proudmoore's a fan, too.
He does make the most lovely sounds. Flynn rocks his hips up, once and twice and then again, eager to hear more of them.
"Shh, shh." Proudmoore covers Flynn's hand with his own and brings things down to a more sedate pace. Good call, actually. Like this, he can feel how powerfully Proudmoore's twitching against his palm. "No need to hurry it," Proudmoore says. "It has to last you, after all."
"Oh, of course," Flynn says. "It's not at all because you're about to—"
"Shh," Proudmoore says again. He breathes out a laugh, leaning so his forehead comes to rest against Flynn's. After a moment, he quietly adds, "What can I say."
For a quickie in a storage cellar with an occasional hookup, it sounds a bit tender. Flynn's heart crowds up against his ribs, and he thinks, right. Time to stop having thoughts like that. He knows what the deal is here, and that's just how it is.
"I still owe you that drink," his traitor mouth says anyway, even though this kind of thing's supposed to be straightforward. More importantly, it's supposed to stay that way. "We should... you know."
"Be friends?"
"What do you say?"
"Aye, seems sensible." Proudmoore's hand works quicker, strong and warm and with some indulgent wrist action that has Flynn all but panting. "Shanty, then. Night after tomorrow. You get the first round in."
Flynn scoffs loudly at that, and in the dark, bumps his nose to Proudmoore's. Genuinely an accident, this time. He grins. "Whatever pleases you, Captain."
Proudmoore's hand falters, then tightens around Flynn's. A warmth pulses between them. It's making a state of Flynn's shirt, but he doesn't have it in him to be indignant, because Proudmoore's arching up with it, wedged between him and the wall, trying to catch his breath in a string of gorgeous little gasps. Flynn decides he'd rather join him.
A few hot slick slides of his hand, and if he could see, he's pretty sure the room would be spinning. Oh, there are stars, as promised. He laughs, soaring and giddy, and then his knees betray him and dump him onto the floor, where he sucks down a whole lot of dust and descends into a helpless fit of wheezing.
Proudmoore tucks a hand under the arm and hauls him up. Flynn feels justified in grabbing at him in the dark, and finds a solid shoulder to hang onto while he coughs it out. He can't mind that Proudmoore's laughing at him while he does. At least he's not getting thumped on the back.
"Soundly done, Fairwind."
"Well, you know me," Flynn says, wiping at his eyes with the side of his wrist. His hands are gritty. "Like to make an impression."
"Aye, and don't you just." Proudmoore gives his face a pat, and shoves something to his chest. Flynn catches it to him with both hands—it's the ledger. Home free with his acquisition mission, then. He's had a pretty good day of it, all in all.
A sliver of bright light slices into the gloom as Proudmoore cracks the hatch an inch. He pushes it open and floods the cellar in sunlight. Dust motes dance, a hundred flakes of gold. Among them, Proudmoore dons his hat. He gives it a tap in salute.
He looks an absolute state. Flynn's not going to say anything. He touches two fingers to his forehead and grins.
"Tandred."
Proudmoore pauses halfway out the hatch, his hair a tangle of gold beneath the familiar curve of his hat. He raises his chin in question, and wets his lips.
"Night after tomorrow," Flynn says. "I'm holding you to it, mate." That glimmer of a smile he has. It feels as though it should be hard-earned.
"I won't be late," Tandred says, and leaves Flynn blinking in the sun.
Tandred's at the Shanty as promised, and so Flynn keeps up his end of the deal. A drink for him and a round for the bar, and Tandred gets them in for the rest of the evening. He's generous the way a man is when he's not trying to buy anyone's favour.
Including Flynn's. They joke and trade stories and Tandred slings an arm over his shoulder, but doesn't handle him anything more than companionably. After one or several, Flynn starts calling him Tand. He doesn't complain.
And Flynn sees how it is. He gets it.
They laugh together and barge each other around, and stumble drunkenly into the street. It's a great night out, best in a while, and Flynn doesn't ruin it by pushing him against a wall and kissing him, or rutting against him in some half-forgotten alley, or even by hoping to take him home.
IV. Aboard the Middenwake
There are barrels floating in the water, a thick run of line snagged over a yardarm, and from the looks, one of the Middenwake's winches has torn clean out of her deck. It's painful to behold, and also not difficult to figure out what's gone on here. Flynn himself is leaning over the rail, red-faced and engaged in a shouting match with a stringy, supercilious man who's stood on the dockside. Tandred recognises him as one of the professional fudgellers from the port authority offices.
"There's nothing says it's not allowed!" Flynn hollers. His shirt is untucked and twisted, his hair mostly escaped from its tail. Of his duster and swordbelts there's no sign.
"All vessels are expected to load their cargo using the harbour cranes, Captain Fairwind," the port officer calls back. He has the manner of someone who's already explained himself half a dozen times, and sees a half dozen more in his immediate future. "Besides, it's simply common sense."
"Common sense isn't a rule! We always did it like this back in Freeh—aah!" Flynn slaps his hands on the rail. "Look, I can't get a crane until day after tomorrow which is far too late, and that's besides the fact the loan rates are small damn fortune. Extortion is what it is, I'm telling you. I refuse to bow to your petty tyrannies! I'm taking a stand!"
"Port authority by-laws clearly state—"
"Cite me a bloody article number, then. Go on, I dare you, you pettifogging streak of—"
"Captain Fairwind!" Tandred calls out, before Flynn can get himself into more trouble than he already is. He flings him a friendly salute. While he can't come down on his side for this one, things being as shambolic as they are, he can hope to defuse the situation. "Spot of trouble, my lad?"
Flynn straightens up, and if he's suddenly not quite so outraged, he's still looking petulant about things. He returns the salute with a brief flick of fingers to his temple.
"Not me that's got the problem, mate," he says.
The port officer takes a very long, very deep breath.
"Pulling rank on him never works, if that's what you've been doing," Tandred says to him in low tones. "Bit of a free spirit." He means to advise, but somehow he just sounds fond.
The officer looks at him askance.
Tandred clears his throat. "That is to say, leave this to me. I'll talk some sense into him."
The man looks at the sleeve of Tandred's longcoat, at the pips and bars that mark him fleet captain, tangibly unconvinced. Accustomed to both forbearing and dispensing arbitrary naval orders, Tandred shrugs the coat off and hands it to him.
"Sling that in the harbourmaster's office for me, would you?" he says. The 'Wake's gangplank bows beneath his feet. "Good man."
"And then the fellow said, 'well, if you can't get me a whole one, a half will have to do'," Flynn says, still on some tangent of a meandering anecdote that Tandred suspects parted company with the truth some time ago. "And that's about when I decided to cut bait on prize pig rustling in general and that deal in particular."
"Thank the tides. I don't rightly want to hear how that one would've ended. And a one, two— heave!"
Tandred shoves the cask of ale upright and helps lash it in place. It's been a morning of hot work, both weatherwise and moving the cargo, and having to deal with Flynn's sweaty proximity. His shirt clings to his biceps much like Tandred's tongue does to the roof of his mouth whenever he looks at him.
Things may have got slightly out of hand where that's concerned.
From what he can tell of the few nights out they've shared, Flynn's suffering no such tribulations. He was on the level about wanting to be friends, and so friends is what they are. He doesn't question a genial arm over his shoulder, but he doesn't lean into it, either. The man flirts with anything that moves and sleeps with whomever he fancies, and if he keeps contriving to dally with Tandred—well. It isn't worth reading into any further than that.
No doubt there's a novelty to it, to have bedded a Proudmoore, and repeatedly. Prestige, even. A feather in his cap. A notch on his bedpost. And if that's as far as things'll go, then Tandred can't mind it if he wants to whittle one or two more.
Up on deck, Flynn's carpenter is almost done repairing the splintered hole in the boards. Jarrow's a tough vine of a night elf who takes no nonsense from any kind of timber. There's a verdant glow cupped beneath her palms as she coaxes the last board into place, smoothing her hand over fresh woodwork that's pale like scar tissue in the weathered deck.
"There she is. All set for a caulking, Cap'n."
"You're magnificent," Flynn says, "a marvel." He goes to fling an arm around her shoulders, but she ducks away, giving his soaked-dark shirt a pointed tug as she does. It slaps back against his skin and he laughs. "All right, all right, get the lads up here with the oakum, then."
Tandred leans back against the rail, hand angled against the sun. He's missing his hat and the shade of its brim; he'd put it down someplace when it'd got too stifling to wear it. His hair sticks to the back of his neck and hangs around his face in damp ribbons, but he pays it no more mind than the intent cling of his shirt. He's too distracted for these discomforts to bother him overmuch.
His gaze is caught on Flynn as he pulls his shirt off, his skin gleaming in the day's brightness, and he watches with guilty avidness as he sluices the perspiration off himself with the flat of his hand.
"So, hey, thanks for your help." Flynn gives Tandred a roving look, from the wet fabric sticking to his stomach to the sweat that insistently gathers in the hollow of his throat. "What say we cool off?"
It's some time before eleven. Tandred pushes a hand through his damp hair and squints. "Ah, a bit early for what you've in mind, I expect. For me, leastways."
"Hmm." Flynn smiles with suspicious artlessness. "I suppose the day is young."
If there's anything Tandred has learned in their acquaintance so far, it's that Flynn has a habit of making an innocuous remark such as this and then immediately perpetrating some mischief or other. Unfortunately, this foresight does nothing to prepare him for Flynn grappling him against the rail, wedging a hand to the inside of his thigh for leverage, and then heaving him bodily into the sea.
He goes over with a shout. The icy plunge shocks the breath out of him and makes it difficult to get it back even after he gets his head above the waves again. He treads water and gasps and tries not to drown himself by laughing too hard.
Well, he's not hot and bothered any more, he'll give it that.
Above him, Flynn is balanced on the rail, arms outflung with that healthy disrespect for the laws of gravity that sailors of his stripe tend to foster, crowing insufferably at his triumph. Tandred raises his arm and directs a rude gesture at him. This is hilarious to Flynn; his laugh rings out across the harbour as he leaps. He hits the water with a monumental splash and surfaces next to Tandred with his hair slick to his head and a smug grin on his face.
"You're a lousy sod, Fairwind," Tandred tells him. The water bites at his extremities. His teeth are on the verge of chattering.
"Oh, you love it." Flynn's arms skim beneath the surface of the lapping waves. "It is a bit nippy in here, though, isn't it? Whew!"
"Not as if the harbour's ever been warm, mate."
"Still, better than sweating like a toff in a grimestone's cookpot."
Tandred flicks water at him. Flynn squints one-eyed and retaliates in kind, then escalates by shoving a great wave of saltwater into his face.
"Ah, leave it out," Tandred says before he finds himself dunked again. Any reprimand to it is undermined by the grin he can't keep down. "I can't feel my nose."
"Yeah, my balls have shrivelled right up. Only one thing for it." Flynn strikes off toward dock, turns to tread water a moment. He waves an arm. "Come on, then. Let's get us out of these wet clothes!"
In his cabin, Flynn strips out of his trousers and smallclothes with his usual lack of self consciousness. Tandred watches out of the corner of his eye while he peels off his own sodden clothes, in two minds about keeping a hold of his underwear. It's not that he's overly modest, but a cold dip doesn't tend to be flattering.
"Nothing I haven't seen already, you know." Flynn, bent over a sea-chest of linen, looks over his shoulder with a suggestive dance of his eyebrows, and follows with a pair of trousers and a shirt. They flurry through the air and into a heap at Tandred's feet. "Reckon those should fit. Er, I'll want them back, mind."
The shirt smells of laundry soap and rope tar and the oaky cologne Flynn favours. That does a good job of warming things through. Tandred hastily pulls on the trousers and belts himself up.
"You can come collect them when you're ashore again," he says.
"I do you a favour and you have me running errands for it?"
Tandred looks up from his buckling. "Beg your pardon! Who did who the favour?"
Flynn laughs. He's found some dry clothes for himself as well, though they remain wedged under his arm, and he persists in standing there naked while they kid about. There's a red V on his chest where the sun's caught him. It keeps drawing Tandred's eye down his body to where he's not entirely soft, his nethers having apparently recovered from their icy ordeal.
"Can't tempt you with a hot rum at all?" he says, the same instant Tandred says, "Hear the South Seas clipper route is due some storms."
There's a moment of pause, the kind of which Tandred might have avoided if he'd adopted a dash more nonchalance. Alas.
Flynn casts his eyes to the floor, mouth skewed as he presses his tongue to his back teeth. His eyes flick back up to meet Tandred's. "Yeah," he says, all motion again. He drops his bundle of clothes onto his desk. "If we want a smooth voyage, it's going to take some luck."
"Ah. Luck," Tandred says in reasonable tones, because he's a reasonable man about to make a reasonable offer. What was it Flynn had said in the storehouse? Subtlety is overrated. "One more for the sail-road, then?"
"I'm thinking over the desk," Flynn is quick to reply, equally reasonable man that he is. "Rest's up to you."
A number of feverish ideas present themselves to Tandred one after the other, piling up like gifts under a Winter Veil tree until he can scarce separate any single desire. He doesn't even try to compose some nonsensical sea story for it. Are they still supposed to be doing that? He founders a moment, only to make a terribly ambivalent sound, which isn't what he means to do at all.
"Just thought I'd run it up the flagpole," Flynn says. "If it's not—I mean, whatever floats your proverbial."
"Give me half a moment, mate."
"Didn't look to me like you needed one, but—"
Tandred touches his shoulder, heading off his backpedalling before they end up at the Snug Harbor after all. "All right. On your front, then, there's a fellow."
That perks Flynn up in more ways than one. "Sensible choice," he says, and leans over with his forearms on the desk as though he's about to be frisked down.
It is tempting to get handsy. Flynn's shoulders are broad, tattooed, littered with pale hatch-marks of scarring. A tally of things Tandred doesn't know about him. He's a man with all sorts of tales to tell, and maybe someday he'll get the versions that aren't a nautical mile tall. He runs his fingertips over a whip-thin scar and down the valley of Flynn's spine, coming to rest in the small of his back, and goes to one knee. His hands curve around Flynn's rear, and there he decides what he's to do.
The first touch of his lips to Flynn's leg makes him jolt. He tastes warm, salty. Fresh sweat or seawater dried sticky on his skin, or both. Tandred wants to lick him, so he does, along the crease where his thigh meets his backside.
There's a tiny sound from abovedeck; Flynn's shiver becomes a shudder as Tandred works his mouth further in, pressing his tongue to the smooth bare stretch of skin behind his balls. Tandred loses himself in his warmth, the taste of his skin, the scent of his arousal and the way he rocks back against his mouth and hands, the way he's—he's. Well, now. Those shudders aren't quite the throes of passion. He can hear Flynn choking back laughter.
Flynn can't see that this has him slightly miffed, but maybe his common sense is more present than usual because he says, "Sorry. Sorry. It's just that your beard tickles."
"I'm not going to shave it."
"Oh, no, no, don't do that. That'd be awful."
It sounds like there's something of a disconnect between what he's saying and what might be going on in his head, which Tandred supposes makes the laughter a little less rude. Still, there's only so much nonsense a man can be expected to brook with his face where it is. Perhaps a different tack. He gets back onto his feet and takes stock of the naked matter sprawled before him.
Flynn cranes his neck to look back at him, eyebrows raised but his mouth hidden by the incline of his shoulder. "I'd be devastated," he says. "It suits you."
He turns his face back to the table, which saves Tandred from having to compose himself while off on another frantic reappraisal of where they stand with one another. Complimenting your mate is all very well and good, but—context. Eager, pliant context. His own stiff cock nestled up against Flynn's hip kind of context.
"Thank you," he says with all the grace instilled in him by any number of interminable Sunday morning etiquette lessons, sucks two fingers into his mouth and, without stopping to give it further thought, slides them between Flynn's cheeks.
"Oh, blimey." Flynn arches against his fingertips. "Living boldly. I like that. Come on, then. Get them in me. Or should compliment your whiskers some more?"
"Never goes amiss." Tandred presses gently; a fingertip slips inside and Flynn swears under his breath, pushing himself back onto it. Enveloping warmth, the quick pound of his heartbeat.
"You're a gorgeous bastard," Flynn says, somewhat on the strained side and muffled against his own forearm where he's pressed his face into it. He tilts his hips and groans. A drop of precome hits the boards. "More gorgeous than bastard to be sure, but you have your moments."
Flattery will get him further than he thinks. It's certainly getting Tandred somewhere, even if the melancholy clench of his heart is along for the journey. He wonders how long they can keep this up.
Not forever, so he'll enjoy it while he can.
He slides his finger out and steadily pushes back in again, savouring Flynn's soft cursing as much as the seize of his body, the shift of his back muscles as he reaches between his legs to palm at himself.
"You're my favourite," Flynn says, impassioned by a flurry of lust. "With your... magnificent décolletage and. Hat. You look good in that hat, you know? Of course you know. How could you, how could you not know. Just—ah, Tand. You really are a gentleman."
There's not much to say to that, being two knuckles deep into him. Tandred thinks about those etiquette lessons and laughs.
"A gentleman. What I mean is. Being polite can only get a fellow so far. If you catch my drift."
Drift caught. Tandred bites his lip and slides fully inside him, curling his fingers and thrusting, slow at first but building to something rough and fast-paced at Flynn's very loud and not at all gentlemanly approval.
"Tell me if I'm still being too proper for you, mate," Tandred says. He can barely hear himself over the blood rushing in his ears.
"You're my favourite," Flynn says again, heartfelt, and pushes back onto Tandred so enthusiastically his wrist aches. A new torrent of encouragement escapes him, ranging from poetic to incomprehensible to blue even for a sailor. His whole body convulses around Tandred's fingers. Tandred grasps his cock and feels it jerk, the wet rush as he spends against the palm of his hand.
He smears most of it over his borrowed clothes, both in his haste to pull himself out of his trousers and because Flynn's leaning against him in post-orgasmic bonelessness. This makes it impossible to come with any kind of discretion, and so he resigns himself to finishing messily pressed against the outside of the man's thigh.
"Cheers." Flynn, still face-down on the desk, lists against him.
"Most welcome," Tandred says out of habit. They pant together companionably for a minute. Tandred resists the urge to sweep Flynn's hair over his shoulder or kiss the back of his neck or other such fancies, though he can't stop himself asking, "Favourite what?"
Flynn lets out a great satisfied gust of breath and straightens up, bringing his bare and sticky self nose-to-nose. He pats Tandred's cheek, and that's all the answer he's going to get, it seems. "Look at the state of us," he says. "We're going to need another dip in the briny."
"You'd have to throw me in again," Tandred says absently, inspecting the sorry state of his borrowed trousers. "Hm. I'll see that these get laundered."
"That's—that's okay. Don't don't put yourself out." Flynn is finally getting around to dressing himself, if somewhat laboriously. He keeps missing the right buttonholes.
"Not an imposition."
"It's fine, it's fine, just sling 'em back as they are, I'll... take care of it." After a brief, awkward pause, he adds, "Never had anyone do my laundry for me, not inclined to start now."
"Well," Tandred says, "all right then."
He steps into his boots, which squelch. He expects Flynn to have some tease about that, but he doesn't. He's looking at Tandred with some kind of expression on his face. Tandred glances down at himself. Flynn's clothes are baggy on him, particularly at the shoulders and thighs. He supposes he looks fairly silly.
"Let's see if I can make it home without anyone passing comment," he says.
"Um," Flynn says, "yeah."
His laugh is a little too loud as always, but his excesses are about being himself the very most he can be. But for all that he is, Tandred still can't pin down that look on his face.
"Do that." Flynn's having as much luck with fastening his trousers as he had his shirt. "See you when I get shoreside again, mate."
"Goes without saying." Tandred hadn't hung his hat on the back of the door during the day's travails, but that's where it's migrated to anyway. He tips it in Flynn's direction on his way out.
"Fair winds to you, Fairwind."
"That sound so stupid," Flynn says, syrupy warm and ridiculous, and blows him a kiss.
V. In Proudmoore Keep
Flynn doesn't stop to wonder if any of them might be Tandred's. No way of knowing for sure, and besides, he's not here to toss pebbles up at his window and beseech him for his eternal affections. The guards will be making another round in half a minute or so, and he'll be damned if he gets nabbed because he stopped to reenact a scene from Romulo and Julianne.
No, Flynn Fairwind hadn't misspent his youth sneaking into properties that might have somebody in them. It's the dark window on the third floor that's got his attention, the slant of an open pane reflecting the moonlight. Clambering up the keep wall is a sturdy-looking wisteria. A decorative stonework ledge runs beneath the window in question.
Practically a gilt-edged invitation, if you ask him.
Flynn lurks behind a likely bit of topiary whilst a pair of guards clank past. They'll be back around again in about four minutes, which is ample time for him to hoik himself up that wall, inch along the ledge and slink in though the window. Then it's just a case of peeping through a few keyholes until he finds who he's looking for. As irresistibly roguish as tumbling in through a window uninvited would be, he intends to make a respectable entrance for once.
That's right. He's going to knock, and possibly even bow. After that, he expects things will get considerably less respectable. Tandred's heading out tomorrow, and Flynn's been all over Boralus looking for him.
The guards each turn their corners. One-one hundred, two-one hundred.
The wisteria shivers under his weight, but holds up well enough, give or take a few snapped branches and leafy tendrils snagged in his hair. A quick shimmy along the ledge and he's home free with a clear minute to spare. He nudges the window the rest of the way open and slips softfooted into the room.
"Still got it," he says, and dusts off his palms.
The room glows in sudden soft lamplight. Flynn realises a few things in succession: firstly, the room is not unoccupied. Secondly, it's occupied by Tandred, thank the tides. Thirdly, he is in bed, and thus quite possibly naked.
Thank the tides indeed.
"Flynn," Tandred says, warm like sunrise. There's not a hint of surprise to it.
"Did you know," Flynn says, refusing to be fazed by this. He thumps the window closed behind him. "There's a direct route from the keep grounds straight to your room?"
"Oh, aye?"
"Dangerous, that. Security risk."
"I'd say so."
"Man of your station wants to be careful."
"Is that right?"
"Any old scoundrel could climb up."
"Well." Tandred leans back on his elbows. His hair brushes his shoulders, burnished by the room's warm light. The sheets skim his hips. "Not any old scoundrel."
"Waiting up, were you?"
If Flynn tries any harder to sound nonchalant he may very well pass out, but at least his efforts get a chuckle out of Tandred. A flick of blankets and Flynn's curiosity is sated, if nothing else. Tragically, he doesn't sleep in the buff. He and his snug underclothes make their way over to give Flynn a friendly poke in the ribs.
"I was about ready to get up and go fish you out of whatever dive you were sloshing about in. What kept you?"
Looking in all the wrong places, is what. In the taverns, along the piers, on the beach. In his berth with a faceful of unlaundered clothes as a just-in-case, though Flynn's not sure the luck from that is anything but residual.
"Excuse me, I frequent only the most respectable drinking establishments," Flynn informs him. "When I'm looking for you, anyway. So, yeah, got here in the end. No need to drag me up to your rooms and risk having to explain me to your mother."
"What's to explain, mate," Tandred says fondly enough.
Apparently things are straightforward enough for him. Plenty to explain from where Flynn's standing, but it's not something he's up for discussing without a few pints in him to take the edge off. He's almost perfectly sober, though. Getting a snootful is all very well when they're on a night out, but spending time with him like this? It feels a waste to be ratarsed for it.
Tandred's hands are on his belt. Flynn lets him unbuckle him and push his coat off his shoulders, and then bounce him diagonally onto the bed. It's the most comfortable mattress Flynn's backside has ever had the privilege of indenting. This promises to be a singular evening. He lets out a sigh and has a bit of a relax.
"Didn't come here to sleep, did you?" Tandred says, tugging Flynn's boots off and letting them drop. "Budge up a bit."
"Do you blame me? It's so soft! It's like lying on a... really soft thing."
Briefly he wonders whether he could actually get away with sleeping here once they're done, but puts that thought in irons before it gets too full in the sails. Instead, he shifts himself further up the bed. Tandred leans across him and clasps his wrist, guiding his hand over his head. His fingers meet the bedpost.
"And your other hand," Tandred says. "Keep them there, aye? Or I'll strap you to the post with your own belt." He winks.
"Well, that's hardly a discouragement," Flynn says.
The mattress is definitely the only thing that's soft around here. Tandred's relaxed instruction has got him raring to go. It's that decency he has to him. It makes Flynn want to twist his hands in his hair and pull his head back, suck a bruise into the fragile skin of his throat. Couldn't be more out of the question, so good thing he's supposed to be keeping his hands to himself. It's probably uncouth to feel up the post to see if there are any notches in it. Probably uncouth to put them there in the first place, and Tand's got class to him, so he probably wouldn't find anything. There's no mistaking that he knows how to touch a man, and Flynn doesn't need to know more than that.
Instead, he succumbs to his usual urge to make a show of things. He arches his back, chest out, shoulders back, get a load of this, lads.
"That's my fellow," Tandred says, and pats his cheek.
"Yeah," Flynn says, a little bit wistful. What's to explain. "So, what's on the docket for you?"
"Setting a course by the 'strom. Seeing if we can't find a more reliable route on a nor'westerly bearing."
That bloody dragon, curse his molten hide, had laid waste to all the old sea lanes and made strangers of the currents and the winds. Years on and they were still refining the fresh routes they'd had to chart. A right hassle, and a perilous one at that; set and drift was always unpredictable around the Maelstrom whatever the weather. More than a few ships've been lost in their expeditioning, gone over the edge like dice skittering off a table.
Flynn sucks his teeth and reaches for more irreverence.
"You're the finest sailor I know," he says, "but you'll still want some powerful luck for that."
Tandred ducks his head at that truthful flattery, hiding a smile behind the spill of his hair. "That's my thinking. So, pardon if I'm being forward."
He tucks his thumbs into his underclothes and, after a moment's hesitation, pushes them off, then climbs onto the bed and slings a long leg over Flynn's thighs. There's not much left to the imagination between them at this point, even if Flynn's been indulging in plenty. Though, he thinks, as Tandred tugs his fly open and cups him against his rope-calloused palm, he'd not quite dared to imagine this.
"Tell me true, now," Tandred says. "It's not, is it? Too forward, that is."
He waits in what appears to be polite agony for Flynn's response. It's difficult to take him completely seriously what with the hand he has around Flynn's dick, but his sincerity has always been endearing.
"Don’t you worry, mate," Flynn says, far more easily than his thumping heart would have it. "I've had, er, bolder propositions."
"Have you now?"
"People seem to think I'm easier than I am."
"All the flirting, I'd say."
"I don't sleep with everyone I flirt with, you know," Flynn says. "Blimey, there's not enough hours in the day."
"You dog. Kiss more than a few of them, I'll bet."
Flynn tips his head back and blinks, admiring the ceiling cornice as Tandred rises up onto his knees and guides him between his legs.
"Not lately," he says.
Tandred pauses with the head of Flynn's dick nestled tight against him, fingertips holding him in place. He's been imagining enough for the both of them, so it seems. He's slicked up pretty thoroughly. Flynn's glad he's lying down because he's feeling lightheaded all of a sudden.
"All right," he says, as he can't seem to find a smart remark for this occasion. He swallows. "Let's go at it."
"Easy enough," Tandred says with that precious damn grin of his, and boldly sinks himself onto Flynn's dick.
Now, Flynn's had a full life. He's slept with men before. Because he wanted to, or because they wanted to, or to scratch an itch or scratch theirs, mutual resentment or mutual fondness or fuel for something else entirely, but none of that's felt quite the way Tandred does as he yields around him.
He's slept with plenty of men. Thing is, none of them were someone he's halfway besotted with.
The mattress springs complain as Tandred shifts his knees, spreading until Flynn is flush inside him. He's a graceful curve of lean practical muscle, slim hips and shoulders clean into next week, a face he'd kiss at any angle, and honestly, who's Flynn trying to kid with this halfway business. At some point he leapt overboard with nary a by-your-leave to his common sense. His heart flutters like it's full of flying fish. He's in deep water, is what he's saying.
A sailor's biggest fear is drowning. Flynn squeezes the bedpost until his hands ache.
Heedless of the romantic crisis Flynn is quite obviously having, Tandred lifts and falls, grinds down, rolls his hips and otherwise has a merry old time riding his dick. A flush has worked its way up his neck and across his preposterously lovely chest. His skin is wet with perspiration. He shines like the sun over the sea, and Flynn decides he may as well have an erotic crisis while he's here.
There's nothing like actually getting what he wants from the world to knock him for six. If he holds onto the bedpost any tighter he'll be the one leaving some notches.
"You ever wonder if salt is sacred?" he asks, a bit desperately, when Tandred rests his palms over his chest and leans his weight forward. Just for the sake of saying something, really; making conversation so he doesn't lose his mind.
"Sometimes," Tandred replies, though he sounds like he's concentrating more on getting the angle to his liking than anything Flynn's got to say.
His hands are hot. He rocks back and then forward again, a long slide of radiant sensation that Flynn can just barely resist thrusting into, but tides—tides, how he wants to. The noises he would wring from this man.
"It's in the ocean, I suppose," Tandred says, so maybe he was paying a bit more attention than Flynn thought. His hips move in another slow roll forward, his arms braced, weight bearing down.
His hair falls into his face. "Sweat and tears, as well."
"And other things of ours."
Tandred laughs breathlessly. "Would you call this sacred?"
"Just saying, keep it up and I reckon I'll see the face of the Tidemother herself."
He expects that to win another laugh from him, but Tandred slows his momentum until he's almost still, looking at Flynn with quiet contemplation, that crease between his brow. Flynn is generally of the mindset that anything goes when you've got all your inches into someone, but that might have been a bit close to the line. Wherever that was.
Then again, he's never been able to shut himself up during sex. Why start now?
"It's good, is what I mean," Flynn tells him, and nudges with his hips. "Come on, get praying."
More of that pensive look, then Tandred drops onto his elbows and throws his whole body into it. The bed slams against the wall, loud rocking thud thud thuds. Somehow Flynn's hand has migrated to the nape of Tandred's neck. Is that allowed? Well, too late to worry about it now. His heels slide against the sheets, seeking purchase. That urge when he's close, to push in, get deep.
"Tand," he says. His voice is so thick he could float a rock on it. "Hey, hey, hey. Tand, hey."
"Hey," Tandred says, muffled against Flynn's shoulder. He arches so far over that Flynn feels cool air along the entire length of his dick, then just as slowly sinks back. Oh, that's blown it.
"Bloody—hey," Flynn tries, since he doesn't seem to be getting his point across. "Ten second warning."
"Bully for you, mate," Tandred says, but Flynn's already grabbing him, lifting him enough to slide free and thrust against the soft inside of his thigh instead. Everything runs hot. Spindrift, windblown froth. Spume cast upon a beach. Some of it drips onto his trousers. Flynn throws his head back into the pillows and laughs, fuzzy with satisfaction.
Tandred runs a hand between his legs and raises his eyebrows. He looks a bit impressed. Flynn likes that, the way it makes his eyes flash.
"You're a messy sod." He wipes his fingers on Flynn's shirt.
"How dare you. I've never been so insulted," Flynn says, then flips Tandred onto his back and hikes his legs over his shoulders before he can get a retort out.
"Now that's forward," says Tandred, but it's by no means a discouragement.
"You know how the tradition goes." Flynn waggles his eyebrows, and guides Tandred by the wrist until he gets the picture and takes a hold of himself. "One hand for yourself and one for the ship."
With a little cooperation, he should be able to finish him off before things get either oversensitive or oversoft. But Tandred doesn't grab the bedpost with his other hand. Instead, he gets a fistful of Flynn's hair and tugs him down. It sends a lightning dazzle over his skin, and his various ongoing crises plumb adventurous new depths. If he hadn't just come he would definitely be going about it right this instant.
As it is, his dick gives such a throb he hasn't any recourse but to bury his face in Tandred's throat, get back inside him in one sublime thrust and let all kinds of blasphemous things fall out of his mouth. He might have too tight a grip on Tandred's hips as he drives him gracelessly into the mattress, but from the way he arches into it and groans and feverishly strokes himself, he doesn't mind.
The tragic thing about Flynn having his nose pressed into Tandred's neck like this is that he can't watch him as he comes in a sustained breathless shudder. On the upside, it also means Tandred can't see any of the thoughts parading across his face while he does.
The room falls quiet except for their panting. Tandred slackens under him. Having got him off, Flynn should get off him, probably.
He's warm, though. Smells good. He always smells good. If there's ever a moment in which Flynn could be forgiven for taking a deeply indiscreet inhale of him, it's this one, so he pleases himself. It's probably less acceptable to let himself go fully soft nestled where he is, so he reluctantly accepts he can't stay inside Tandred all night, and sorts that out.
When he lifts his head, Tandred is regarding him from beneath a tangle of blond hair. Flynn wants to smooth it down, so he smiles effusively and pats him on the cheek instead. He knows if he stays here a moment longer he will absolutely kiss him, and he also knows that just because Tandred wants Flynn to fuck him, it doesn't mean he wants Flynn to do that.
He sits back. "Not to toot my own horn here, but—"
"You being known for your modesty and all."
"Of course. My modesty, and my rakish charm and good looks, and my mastery 'pon the high seas. And my shapely backside. But as I was saying—oh, and my flair with a blade, of course—as I was saying, I reckon that's made enough luck for both of us for a while."
Tandred gives him an odd smile, working the blankets between his hands. He twists them around his fist and pulls them up to his waist with a sharp tug. "You forgot the sundry bruised hearts you leave in your wake."
"I don't know, sounds like an exaggeration to me." Still with that smile, Tandred sighs.
Time to make himself scarce. Flynn cracks the window and peers out. It's looking a bit grim weather-wise, but the guards are always out there, rain, sleet or snow. It'll be tricky climbing down without being apprehended. He can't see a thing past this blasted wisteria, for a start.
"Shut that over, mate." Tandred tucks the blankets up to his chin. "It's bloody perishing out there."
"Ah, you shut it." Flynn shoves his foot into one boot and casts about for the other. "There's only so much a fellow can manage hanging off a ledge, you know."
"Is that you away, then?"
What else would he be doing? Flynn pauses on his hands and knees, having located his other boot making its escape beneath the bed. Not even a speck of dust down here. Go home, the waxed floorboards and plush rugs say. Back to where you belong.
"That is to say," Tandred says, perhaps having taken Flynn's lack of response to be a question. "I'm up and out at first light, but if you'd suffer my snoring meantime... raining such as it is out there, and the bed being as soft as you say, and warm, I thought, mayhap you'd find it agreeable. To stay, I mean."
As agreeable an idea as it is a terrible one. Flynn stands with a boot on one foot and the other clutched to his chest, hurtling into his third crisis of the evening. He's in a bit of a pickle with this.
Several pickles. A jarful. They might start off asleep with backs turned, but a body moves in the night. With all his best intentions, either of them could find the other's head tucked to his shoulder, an arm flung around his waist, trading warmth or breath or other such disastrously intimate things.
In counterargument, the wind sends a flurry of raindrops cracking against the windowpane.
Flynn's good at a few things, he thinks, as he kicks off his boot and pulls the window closed, but resisting temptation has never been one of them. At least he already knows he'll wake up alone. "Well, all right," he says. "Seems sensible."
0.
All of the instincts Tandred has honed in a life at sea tell him to hold off until it blows itself out, but Brother Consett insists it's now or never. They're only going to get worse, he says. Longer, fiercer, one after the next until it never stops. It's not natural, he says, and they need to find out why they're happening, or Kul Tiras will drown.
He can feel it in his water, he says. Something is terribly wrong.
That, Tandred can agree with.
He shouts directions and his crew hurry. An unattended sheet unspools itself from its capstan; its sail begins to flap just as the clouds split open. Rain hits the deck, cold and hard like hail. Some of it might be, although it's June. The noise is tremendous. Tandred is soaked to the skin as he seizes the rogue line before it can whip through its fairlead. He plants his boots; it thrashes like a live thing until he subdues it enough to wind it back onto its capstan again.
The sea slaps against the Admiral's Pride's flanks. Tandred gets things under control and coils up some excess line, loops a bight through it with numb fingers and goes to hang it on its proper dowel, fighting against the rising wind and the vicious sting of the rain.
He turns and Flynn is here, hauling himself on deck from one of the ship's boats that has splashed over from the harbour proper. He's drenched and shivering, his hair sleek in the meagre grey light. It's been some time since they—some time since. Flynn's been scarce and that's something Tandred's been fretting about, worrying into the early hours that it he'd pushed too far, been too obvious, so it's good to see him even if the look on his face is so hopeful it aches.
Tandred can hear his men bellowing heave a pawl! heave! as they set about the raising the anchors. Tides—he hasn't the time for it, no matter how welcome his warmth in this cold.
"Flynn!" Tandred hollers. "We're about underway, mate. Next time, aye?"
Flynn starts nodding before the sentence is all the way out, like it's what he expects to hear, or maybe he can hear only the shapes of the sounds and not the meaning, because he staggers his way over the deck to where Tandred's braced.
He angles in closer, and Tandred tries again. "No time!" he shouts over the gale.
"Okay!" Flynn shouts back. Looks away and takes a quick breath, as though steeling himself.
"Here, then!"
And then Flynn kisses him.
He's rough, all passion and no finesse, his hand gripping Tandred's jaw fit to bruise. Icy rainwater courses over them both and into their mouths. Heart pounding, Tandred drops his coil of line. When Flynn breaks away, Tandred pulls him in again and catches him openmouthed and aslant and just as rough, grasping at his coat, his shoulders, trying to get as close as he can. He doesn't hear it, but he feels the vibration of Flynn's groan.
"No time," Flynn says. His voice is still raised, but their faces are so close together he doesn't need to shout like before. Their foreheads touch. Flynn's fingers brush Tandred's cheek. "So take that with you."
Tandred seeks the right words. They're either too much for here and now, with thunder rolling over them, or they aren't enough.
"I will," he manages in the end. "For luck."
"For luck." Flynn brushes another kiss to his lips, another, then one more, quick and light in succession, like a pebble skipping over calm water. "Come back safe, Proudmoore. Come back to me safe."
The words tumble off Flynn's tongue and land squarely in Tandred's heart. "Flynn," he says, and if these words aren't enough then maybe the way he says them is. "I will. I promise."
He seizes Flynn's face with both hands and seals it with a final kiss. The waves pound against the Pride's weather side. Some break over her rail. She casts under her topsails and the ocean tilts her deck beneath their feet.
Tandred stumbles towards the quarterdeck, and Flynn stumbles away.
There's a wall of grey where the horizon should be.
Water's dwindling. Food rations have been cut by a third, and a third again. Not starvation levels, not yet, but morale is at a new low. Fuel's gone. They're eating the catch raw.
Tandred tallies the days and tallies their supplies and tallies his sleepless nights, and again and again, he returns to the memory of that kiss. It warms him on the bad days. On worse days, it feels like a curse laid upon him, but he still thinks about it anyway.
On the worst days, like a bright-edged fever, he dreams that he's led the fleet home.
Flynn is there to greet him, and they kiss on the docks. It's fervent but tender, just like he remembers. He cradles Flynn's face, pulls his hair free and loose and buries his hands in it, or pulls him in by the scruff of his neck, or the lapels of his coat. Sometimes Flynn dips him and laughs. Sometimes they bring their foreheads together and stare at each other, amazed. Sometimes, Tandred takes his hand and laces their fingers and asks him something so stupid it almost seems sensible.
But always, that kiss. And with hardly anything else to buoy him, nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it, he's figured out what he wants to say.
On the worst days of all, he writes these words down and rolls them up and taps them into an empty bottle. He stands on the aftdeck in the constant hazy half-light, and hurls them as far into the ocean as he can. Tribute, prayer, ritual, regret.
He might never make it home, but this way he can believe that—with a bit of luck—his words will.