Work Text:
“You must be a piss poor spy…” Flynn mused from his position straddling Shaw’s waist in his bed as he trailed his fingers down the man’s naked chest. He must have said it out loud too because Shaw suddenly stiffened under him from what was once a post-sex haze.
“And what exactly do you mean by that, Captain?” Shaw retorted coldly, flashing green eyes that threatened to kill him through sheer force of will alone up at him. He must have definitely pissed him off, he thought, to be called ‘captain’ of all things… Flynn laughed nervously and tried to salvage what he could with some quick clarifications.
“Well- I mean- It’s just that you have so many scars for being a spy-!” For emphasis, Flynn poked at the large knotted and off-color tissue that was coiled into his left shoulder. The older man seemed somewhat placated with his answer because the sudden icy temperature of the room abated.
“I’ve done what I had to in the line of duty.” It was a non-answer and while Flynn might not have been satisfied with it, he was willing to take the lesser prize of ‘not having completely ruined their night together’ instead, but to his surprise Shaw continued- “But most of them are actually older than my job.”
That, however, was too much of a bait for Flynn to pass up!
He shifted his weight on Shaw’s waist to pin him down in preparation for what he was about to do, the old mattress coils groaning and squeaking in the process. Shaw shot him a curious look but didn’t try to stop him, seemingly confused with where Flynn was going with this. Flynn, in turn, left him to wonder. A few surprises in life would do the man good, after all.
“Tell me how you got this one, then,” Flynn said as he poked the same knotted scar on his shoulder, this time with Shaw securely under him incase he tried to squirm out of it. Shaw pursed his lips up at him. To the rest of his alliance men, it may have been intimidating, but to Flynn he just looked like a pouting puppy.
“No.” His voice was firm in its rejection, but the hands sliding up Flynn’s thighs were answer enough that he was simply not sold on the idea yet. And Flynn was willing to negotiate.
“Okay, how about this, then? You tell me about a scar, and you can ask me about one of mine in return?” One of Shaw’s eyebrows arched, and he grinned in satisfaction knowing that he had peaked the man’s interest. And once Shaw wanted to know something, he would be willing to do anything to get at it.
“I get to ask you about these instead-“ the hand on Flynn’s left thigh squeezed down on the faded blue ink of a shark tattoo decorating his skin, “-and you have yourself a deal.”
“Done!” he agreed without a moment of hesitation, leaning down to steal Shaw’s lips in a quick kiss to seal the deal, “Now tell me how you got it, it’s a different color than the rest.” He rested his palm over the offending scar, unlike the others on Shaw’s body which had healed to either a dark reddish brown or a silvery pink, this one was almost a sickly white in color and had quickly drawn his attention the first time he saw the man without a shirt.
“A parting gift from the demons of the Burning Legion,” he answered smoothly. Flynn pouted, about to complain that he had been hoping for more of an explanation than that, but to his surprise Shaw actually continued without prompting, “I let myself grow complacent in Stormwind and her defenses, and was subsequently kidnapped and impersonated for my mistake. This scar is my reminder of that failure.”
Everyone remembered the rain of felfire that burned from island to island not long ago, but until this very moment Flynn hadn’t put much thought into what that time must have been like for the Spymaster of the Alliance. He made a mental note to himself to try and get Shaw to talk more about it another day.
“Tell me about this. This… creature,” Shaw said as he thumbed at the image of a childishly drawn hanging chicken on the inside of one knee.
“That one gets me free drinks in Booty Bay,” he said with a laugh, but judging by Shaw’s raised eyebrow Flynn would need to let him in on the joke. “I see who will bet me that I got my cock hanging down to my knees. Works near every time!” That earned him an eye roll and a bemused sigh which only had him laughing again.
“I don’t remember when I got it,” he answered more directly, “Had a weeklong bender in Ratchet when I was 19. First time we had docked in months and I didn’t handle my time well. When I woke up back on this ship it was there.”
Flynn could see the spinning of Shaw’s gears, his always moving mind trying to put the pieces of Flynn’s youth together from just the small anecdotes he’d let slip over their time together. He wouldn’t be surprised if one day soon Shaw knew more about him than even he did.
“My turn,” he said, trying to refocus Shaw before he got caught in another one of his introspective spirals. “Tell me about this one next,” Flynn swiped his thumb across Shaw’s upper lip, running through his moustache until stopping at a nearly completely hidden patch of scar that cut through from his nose all the way to the base of his lip. It was one that he had grown familiar with only recently after their nights off together escalated to something more physical.
“I’m surprised you noticed it, most don’t,” Shaw murmured in praise, his lips ghosting kisses to Flynn’s palm in the process. Flynn’s heart skipped a beat in a way he wasn’t familiar with. “It was a fishing accident when I was 10. I managed to hook myself instead of the fish.” He could almost imagine it, a young Shaw down by the rivers on the mainland trying to act more grownup than he was and burning himself in the process.
“I bet you didn’t make that mistake twice!“ he teased and Shaw snorted a laugh in response.
“I switched to nets. You can’t cut yourself if there’s nothing sharp, after all.” He didn’t allow Flynn to respond before he was already walking his fingers along the markings on Flynn’s flesh. Shaw didn’t bother with the obvious ones, an anchor on his hip right hip, a north star on his left shoulder, the birds in flight on his chest, or the ship being pulled down by a kraken wrapping from his ribs to his back, only finally stopping in their wandering on top of a bundle of roses and thorns on his inner right arm with a woman’s name in spiraled letters in the center of it all. He didn’t need to ask the words out loud before Flynn was already answering.
“My mother.” It must not have been what Shaw was expecting because something akin to guilt ghosted his expression before it just as quickly evaporated. “She was born in a little village deep in Drustvar. Even when she moved away, she brought her roses with her. Said they had magic in them; never quite believed her stories, myself, but after she passed, I knew she wouldn’t have wanted to be buried with anything else.”
“When did she pass?” Shaw’s gaze was firmly placed on the roses and dared not stray to Flynn’s face. Their talk was drifting into territory they had never ventured before, and the discomfort of Shaw attempting to navigating it was obvious to them both. But the fact that he was still willing to continue was enough for Flynn.
“When I was 13,” he said matter-of-factly, although the memory still stung, “Got myself signed up to sail with a merchant ship not a week later.”
A comfortable silence fell over them as they both took their time touching and searching the other’s body for their next round of questioning. Flynn finally settled on the old and almost entirely faded scar on Shaw’s lower right abdomen. It looked like some sort of puncture wound and based on its location, it must have been something terrible when it was fresh.
“This one,” he mused.
Shaw didn’t answer for a long moment as though mulling over how to speak the words. But Flynn was patient and didn’t rush him.
“I was in a gang when I was 15,” The confession wasn’t something Flynn would have ever guessed. Shaw was the law of Stormwind and the idea of a young Shaw running around in a gang, no better than mainland pirates, was hard to take.
“This was before Stormwind was rebuilt by King Wrynn, you see-“ he continued as Flynn frantically tried to do math in his head to figure out how old that would make Shaw now, ”Back then if you didn’t have the means or power to feed yourself, your options were to either take what you needed to survive or to starve. I opted for the former, naturally.”
Shaw trailed off and the glazed look in his eye told Flynn that he was somewhere far away now, reliving some terrible nightmare of a memory… So he rolled off from Shaw’s hips to move to lie down next to him. The sudden change in position was enough to bring Shaw back to him and to continue his story.
“Even when the King returned and more honest jobs were made available, I had a hard time finding my place in them. It took taking an arrow to the gut from Stormwind’s guards and nearly dying for my efforts before I realized something had to change.” Flynn wrapped his arm around Shaw’s waist and pulled him close, an embrace that was returned wholeheartedly. “Lucky for me, the King had need for people of my talents and I was able to channel that into something good for once.”
Flynn placed a kiss to Shaw’s shoulder, “And lucky for me, you’re very good at that job too.”
Shaw ‘hmm’ed in amusement before teasing with a smirk, “And here I thought you said I was ‘piss poor’ at my job,” which earned him a playful smack.
They stayed tangled together in that quiet embrace for so long that Flynn thought Shaw had slipped into slumber before the older man finally whispered his next question, “You’re almost completely covered in tattoos, yet you don’t have any here-“ he pressed his palm to the unmarked skin above his heart.
Flynn’s heart pumped double time and he could feel the blush creep up his chest and to his face. At least Shaw wouldn’t be able to see it on him in the lowlight.
“You noticed that, huh?” he laughed nervously, trying to play it cool but failing miserably. For one guilty moment, he thought about not answering and simply calling the game done; but what would that make him if he refused to follow down this path Shaw had led them down?
He swallowed around the lump in his throat and vowed to rip the bandage off.
“I was saving it for something special. I’ve seen other sailors with lads or lasses at home and they always have these grand tattoos dedicated to them, and ever since I was young, I wanted one like that too.” It didn’t take a spymaster to be able to read what it was he was saying.
“I just… hadn’t met the right person, you know?” he babbled as Shaw pressed his face into his chest, letting out a soft sigh as he did so. Flynn’s arms were still wrapped tight around the other man’s waist and he gave him a soft squeeze before continuing, “But I’ve been thinking lately that I might have a good idea for it.”
Shaw made a soft ‘hmm’ of acknowledgement before pressing a kiss to that unmarked patch of skin.
“I think you’d like it.”