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“Mr Flins?”
They were walking back to the cemetery after a patrol on which they had been assigned together. This seemed to be happening more and more frequently of late; Illuga had briefly wondered what the old man was playing at, putting both vision holders on one patrol – then accepted that it wasn’t his place to wonder and took it as the gift that it was. Perhaps his father wanted him to learn something from a senior; they were both polearm wielders after all. And truly it was a delight to see the older man in action; the performance of an electro vision was so different to his own geo. Flins could even utilise lunar damage on a cloudless sunny evening such as this, with not a raincloud in sight. Illuga wondered often if that was a skill that would come with time, or whether electro was just… different, somehow. Whether he would never reach Flins’ level, even if the Wild Hunt were to grant him a longer life than many of his comrades.
“I have a question, if it is not too bold of me.”
“Young master,” his companion replied, head tilting towards Illuga in a way which the younger man could fool himself was fond, “There is no question of yours which may be considered too bold. Difficult, perhaps, yes, but,” he paused, looked over at Illuga, a playful smirk dancing fairylike around his features, “I would not presume to dampen the fires of your curiosity.”
Illuga mentally rolled his eyes; trust Flins to come out with something like that. Briefly taken in by the man’s veneer of sincerity, a warm feeling suffused him at the thought that Flins might never consider a question of his presumptuous. His eyes narrowed as he dragged himself back to earth from the dangerous heights to which he had flown on Flins’ hot air: Flins would surely not say that if he had any inkling of the kinds of questions Illuga wanted to ask, but didn’t. Can I kiss you? Can I brush your hair? (How do you keep it so perfect?) (Is the rest of you as perfect as your hair?) (Why are you so perfect?) And others, which he couldn’t verbalise even in the privacy of his own skull, lest they be plucked out and read like an especially impertinent book. He forged onwards.
“Well, it's about your vision.”
“Oh?”
Illuga’s highly trained senses registered a certain… atmosphere which had not existed previously. Not oppressive or uncomfortable, not necessarily a bad feeling, but almost… static. Different. The awareness of something having changed. The kind of feeling he got when he heard a weasel in a nearby bush while on patrol (you never could predict where the damned things would run), or found a cup left in the wrong place with no memory of having left it there. Maybe the weather was turning.
“I've noticed, when we fight together, that-” He ducked his head a little, grinned wryly to himself, “It’s silly, I’m just curious. It appears that your vision gives you wings?”
The static feeling vanished as Flins visibly relaxed beside him. Illuga, a little embarrassed, realised he had simply been sensing Flins’ anticipation of the question, and then interpreted that sensation as an external feeling.1 Another, quieter part of him was secretly pleased that he could pick up such small fluctuations in the other man’s mood. Of course it was a useful skill in a squad leader and a fellow ratnik, but being able to read the notoriously closed book known as Flins was akin to having mastered the art.
“That is not bold at all, young master, merely an astute observation. I would expect no less from one as clever and observant as yourself.”
Don’t try to flatter me to avoid the issue! Illuga exclaimed internally. And what could you possibly be avoiding, anyway? Baffling man.
“That wasn't the bold bit, Mr Flins.” He smiled up at him, the sunshine smile that made all the aunties and uncles melt. Hopefully it worked on reclusive colleagues as well; he had so far seen no evidence to the contrary. “Could you show me them? Would you mind? Can you even, outside of combat situations? You've probably noticed my vision is pretty dull in comparison – Aedon does most of the heavy lifting – and they're so pretty. Like ghost fire.”
Ah. In his nervousness he may have said a little too much. But Flins was at least used to his curiosity, to his desire to learn; hopefully he would put it down to that.
There was a long pause; Illuga began to wonder whether Flins would respond at all. He was just about to say that it didn’t matter, that it wasn’t important, to draw attention to a nearby moonglow firefly flown far from its comrades, when the other finally spoke, voice so quiet it was almost a whisper amongst the gravestones.
“I would not mind. I…” he appeared to shake himself, turned to look over at Illuga with a gleam in his eye as that habitual half-smirk slithered onto his face. “Whatever the young master desires.”
You, Illuga’s thankfully-internal voice responded matter-of-factly. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. In fact-
Illuga grinned back at him, striding the last few feet to the lighthouse door and turning, silhouetted in the light. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Mr Flins. You don’t know how fickle a young master I could turn out to be.”
Flins hummed, trailing in behind him like a very handsome mist. “Indeed, one cannot know such a thing as it pertains to another; however I have always prided myself on my remarkable ability to, shall we say, read a room. As to keeping my promises… I assure you that I always do.”
He began the laborious process of removing his coat, Illuga thanking all the stars that Flins’ ability to read a room wasn’t quite as good as he claimed, even if the result remained the same. Illuga wouldn’t ask anything of him that was unreasonable in the first place.
Wait, Illuga’s brain caught up to events. Flins never usually removed his coat at home; it was as though the thing was pasted onto him. Even when soaked, he preferred to sit by the fire and steam rather than take off a single layer. Illuga could understand very well the discomfort of being disassembled in front of another, the safety inherent in how certain articles of well-worn clothing moulded to the body; had chalked it up to the minor eccentricities which being a Ratnik usually engendered, if they didn’t exist previously.2 But here Flins was, removing his coat.
“Mr Flins, are you… well? I never usually see you shedding layers. You’re not ill, are you?” As the thought took hold, Illuga made an aborted motion to see if the other had a temperature – wait, wait, listen first, then help, as the old man had told him countless times.
Flins paused in the middle of wrangling a buckle into submission – it looks like he never takes the thing off at all, Illuga thought, perplexed, and it can’t be comfortable to sleep in – to blink innocently down at his concerned colleague.
“Well now, if you want to see these wings up close, young master, how else are you to do so?”
It was then, eyes widening, that Illuga realised he may have gravely miscalculated.
***
About a quarter of an hour later, Flins was beginning to think he may have gravely miscalculated.
What would the scene look like if someone were to walk in now: the notoriously reserved ratnik Flins, perched half naked3 on the edge of the bed, blue fire sprouting from his back, with the brave and fierce captain Illuga knelt up behind him. Slightly beside. Perfectly innocent: perhaps Flins had received an injury and the considerate young lightkeeper was helping him to treat it. Perfectly innocent; only a degenerate would think otherwise. He shook the image from his head, but the sensation it had fostered remained.
In the smothering silence of the little room, every rustle, every breath was amplified. He was sure, if he concentrated hard enough, that he could feel Illuga’s exhales ghosting along his skin – a fabrication of his besotted mind, surely: the skin could feel very little unless he willed it. He was a butterfly pinned to the corkboard of Illuga’s regard; a moth enshrouded in the quiet dark of the cocoon afforded them by the dwindling light, the small room, the island itself. He felt, suddenly, very exposed.
Flins swallowed.
“Oh, they're beautiful.” Illuga had reached out one hand towards the nearest blue wing, his innate curiosity driving him onwards. Flins braced himself mentally for the impact of a human touch on flame which had never known such sensation: would it feel cold, or warm, would it tickle (heavens forbid), would it hurt (he would pretend otherwise unless it was utterly unbearable), would it feel quite literally as though someone had sunk a hand into the deepest parts of himself? He found himself dreaming wistfully of the latter: what a way to be known, to be perceived, to be possessed.
The anticipated touch never came; he looked round questioningly to see his precious young master had withdrawn, looking unsure. When he noticed Flins’ gaze on him he rallied however, asked: “Can I touch? I don’t want to… overstep.”
“Yes,” Flins rasped, voice feeling as though it hadn’t been used in centuries. “Yes,” he tried again in a normal tone of voice. “Of course.”
He tried very hard not to shudder as Illuga ran a gentle and curious hand through his true self's wings; failed if Illuga’s concerned, “I'm not hurting, am I?” was any indication.
“No, young master. Merely…” Illuga’s hands paused, alive to any indication of discomfort. So sweet, so kind, this lovely nightingale, singing in the dark to a touch-starved crow. “Nobody has ever… shown an interest before. It is a novel sensation.” A truth, yes, and another truth skirted. The hands remained stationary. “You may continue if you wish,” he affirmed, his fabricated heart almost bursting as his words unlocked the patient mechanism of his young master’s hands. So much restraint, so much control, so much respect for his comrades… even when they hid themselves from him at every turn. Even when their camaraderie was built on lies and deceit.
Flins banished these thoughts from his mind: this was not the time for him to tread the well-worn paths of melancholy. “I presume you have questions, young master? I will do my best to answer what I may.”
Predictably, Illuga pounced on the suggestion: a cat presented with an infinite ball of string. There were the expected questions, of course:
Will I learn in time to wield lunar damage as you do? Without the need for rain. An explanation of the qualities of visions and moon wheels; the rarity of the latter and the limited understanding of their provenance. Illuga, though a little disappointed, understood.
And have you always been able to summon wings? A gentle affirmative. A resigned nod.
“A shame, as I can think of a certain nightingale who would suit a pair of his own most wonderfully.” He paused. “I must admit that I deeply resent having been deprived of this visual pleasure.” He was, he could admit, flying a little too close to the sun – but the quiet, the dark, the four close walls, the lovely hands still engaged in their observation at his back, gave the illusion of a safety, a permission granted, which felt so much more tenuous under the open sky.
And oh, how he adored his young master’s suppressed huff of amused forbearance. Almost as much as he adored his lively bark of delight. The former had in its favour its rarity: its limitation to circumstances concerning Flins; the latter however was to that sombre stygian figure the natural state of the one known as Illuga: radiant, boisterous, alive.
And then there were the unexpected questions:
Does it tire you, having your vision activated for so long? Flins didn’t know; he never had. A simple negative would however suffice, a diversion into the thoughtfulness of his young master, how well suited he was to his role as captain, how privileged his subordinates were to report to him.
How… how does it feel? When I… Flins, in the interest of scientific enquiry alone, and certainly for no other reason, considered that he might indulge himself a little. “Hm… I am becoming accustomed to the sensation; it fades… perhaps the young master could try examining both at once?” He could almost hear the rolled eyes; he thrilled in it.
Outwith his expectations, however, was Illuga doing exactly as requested, dragging firm hands through cold ephemeral flame, from the shoulder to the tip, unyielding, resolute. Flins in his hubris saw all seven hundred years of his life (never mind that a good four hundred of those had been spent underground) flash before his eyes, doubling over against the impulse to shed his human form entirely, a shuddering gasp escaping his lips. He regained full consciousness to the delightful feeling of Illuga rubbing tentative circles in his back, clearly at a loss as to what to do. He straightened, managed to choke out: “Indescribable, young master.”
Illuga sighed; shook his head in the periphery of Flins’ vision. “What am I going to do with you? And your total lack of self-preservation? Actually,” he veered rapidly off-topic, clearly aware of just how narrow a precipice of hypocrisy he was walking, “Since I’m asking questions, how do the wings work? Do they work? In your experience how have you seen visions – or moon wheels, I suppose – manifest as part of a person?” Flins kicked his brain into a higher gear; he could not, would not lie to his young master.
And so the questions continued; and so did Illuga’s idle scrutiny of his absolutely not-vision-or-indeed-moon-wheel-related wings.
***
Eventually, even Illuga’s boundless curiosity ran dry – for the time being. Lulled almost into a trance, Flins found himself lost in the soothing sensation of another's hands (of Illuga’s hands) running methodically through his flame. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so safe, so peaceful, so devoid of tumultuous thoughts and the perpetual horror of being alive.
He therefore startled badly when he heard a gasp behind him, a scrambling which indicated Illuga was vacating the bed at speed. Had he lost control over his flame? Had he burned his young master? Had something else slipped out to frighten him so? Mind reeling, it took long frantic seconds before he realised that the precursor to this incident had been Illuga kissing the invisible juncture at which his wing joined to his human form. He couldn’t begin to internally lament his misfortune at being so thoroughly ignorant of this most-desired event, however, as Illuga had begun to pour a deluge of apologies onto the dumbstruck fae.
“Mr Flins- Lord Flins, I cannot apologise enough – I don't know what came over me, that was so incredibly impolite – so presumptuous – please forgive my appalling lapse – I must be more tired than I thought, to-”
“It is no presumption,” Flins managed through his desperate attempts to conjure up the memory and preserve it, grasping miserably at insouciant mist as it darted merrily out of his reach. He could cry, he really could. To leave an archive incomplete was – a travesty, unheard-of, a disgrace. Moreso when the archive pertained to his young master.
He noted distantly that Illuga had stopped midsentence as though he had hit a wall. It would have been comical had Flins had the capacity to register such things.
“You need not apologise. There is nothing which you ought to apologise for.” He smiled, despite his abject failure to retrieve the memory from the fog into which it had sunk. “Young master.” The body of this unworthy servant is after all the young master's to do with as he pleases, he longed to say, to watch his light scoff and squirm – but perhaps not today. Not yet.
He reached out a hand and gathered up Illuga’s lax one, kissed permanently-grazed knuckles carefully. Calloused fingers twitched in his grasp; he looked up at his lovely treasure, wondering idly if the adoration he felt showed plainly on his face. Turned the hand over and kissed its pale wrist, flying closer to the sun than Icarus had ever dared. He had already fallen, after all; there was no need to be too circumspect. His sun, however: he ought not to watch another fall before him as Icarus’ did. Therefore, a little more prudence was required.
He gazed up at the wide-eyed vision before him, an exquisite picture not yet painted. He would squirrel it away in the vast archive of his mind, hang it in the gallery of paintings featuring the subject, over and over again. “What is a kiss between colleagues, after all? I have heard of much more happening on a lonely assignment.” Illuga blushed scarlet and looked away, giving Flins a gorgeous view of his perfect scarred neck and delightful pink ears.
He tore himself from the sight, choosing to have mercy. “I don't believe you were finished, young master.” He fed a little more flame into his wings to draw attention to them, they not being the kind that flaps. Perhaps they could be, if Illuga desired it. Many things could be possible, in the face of Illuga's desire.
He patted the bed beside him to emphasise this statement, before throwing caution to the wind and flopping over onto the bed to lie on his stomach, eyeing the young captain from beneath his tousled fringe.
“You're playing a dangerous game, Mr Flins,” said Illuga, voice gratifyingly unsteady as he clambered up behind him to straddle his back, hands lightly resting next to invisible scapulars.
“Is there any other kind?” Flins smirked over his shoulder.
He had the fleeting impression that Illuga was going to bite him, his fabricated stomach swooping in delight at the image – at the sensation-that-wasn’t – before the moment broke as his light once again busied himself with his careful examination of Flins' wings.
Flins allowed himself to go boneless under him, eyes sliding shut. There was nowhere that he would rather be.
***
And if perhaps Illuga bent again to kiss the exposed skin of Flins’ back,
and if perhaps as he worked his way up Flins’ spine, reverently gathering long hair up and out of the way, Flins turned and stopped warm lips with his own,
and if perhaps one idle kiss turned into one more and one more and that turned into long minutes of languid exploration of teeth and lips and tongues, well. That is between them and the lighthouse walls.
What is a kiss between colleagues after all? There is so little difference between one kiss and twenty.
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- He had, of course, interpreted this correctly; fae discomfort can manifest as a warping of the surrounding atmosphere. Of course, where Flins was concerned, no human had cause to fear, and least of all Illuga, but in the old days a displeased fae lord could very well spell madness or worse for unfortunate human serfs. [ ▲ ]
- Illuga’s kind and understanding nature had failed to take into account the information which he did not possess: Flins was both fae, and incredibly lazy about his human form. Mostly it really was just the outer shell of clothes on display. [ ▲ ]
- Shirtless; nothing a ratnik had never seen of a colleague before. But to Flins it was all the same: a confidence which had never been granted to another, in all his seven hundred long years. [ ▲ ]