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Sometimes, when Flins is filling out report after grueling report for his work as a Lightkeeper, he’ll lose focus on the neat lines of his own handwriting. His gaze will turn vacant and hazy. Parts of him will fuzz out of corporeality and into wisps of blue flame until his pen will fall from his fingers with a soft clack that snaps him back to reality. It’s a reflex. He hates paperwork so.
This time, before he has a chance to sink into that disconnect, something else pulls him out of it. Footsteps. A small bit of contact. Three fingers taking a lock of his hair and pulling it to an unsmiling mouth.
Approximately ten hours after the tumultuous start of something resembling a relationship—kept carefully on a timepiece taken from Flins’ collection—Varka stands at his shoulder and kisses the ends of his hair.
“Morning,” he says, and his voice is low and rough with sleep. A glance at the timepiece; it’s already past noon, but Flins doesn’t point this out. The cemetery mixes him up too; that’s why he’s trying the clock, so caught up on each hour, wondering when Varka might wake, might slide out of Flins’ unused bed and leave for real. This thought, this feeling, visceral and twisting and greedy in his stomach, has been his company through another round of patrols and reports.
Mine, his teeth sing. This is consistent no matter what form he takes. This is his nature, wretched as it is. Varka is still looking at him, soft eyed and brushed by a breeze that carries the smell of the frostlamp flowers that grow around the graves. Flins looks at him for perhaps too long. His shoulders without his heavy coat. His stubble. The veins and scars decorating that hand held to his mouth. He drops Flins’ hair, and his lips are cracked and red.
“Good morning,” Flins says back. Some ten hours since he’d dug himself into this hole. If he listens, he can hear Varka’s heart, strong and slow. There will be warmth under his skin. Any moment now, he’ll leave, and Flins will stop having to wait for it.
But Varka just slides onto the bench beside him, sitting with a creak, too close and uncaring of it as their thighs and shoulders brush. Flins closes his legs, but there’s little to be done about Varka’s arm against his unless he scoots, obviously and impolitely. “Reports?” Varka asks. From that tiny point of contact, body heat bleeds. He can almost feel it in the air between them. Human beings are filled with flame. Varka had said something to him last night: I’d keep a fire going, if you ever wanted to be warm. He doesn’t know the half of it.
“Yes,” Flins confirms, turning to the pages spread before him. One synopsis for every patrol, and a second, pages long, for each encounter he’s had with the Wild Hunt, no matter how brief. All must be disgustingly verbose and detailed or his superiors will nag. It’s why he dreads them so much.
Varka reaches for the stack Flins has completed, feeling the heft, and making a low, impressed sound. “Why is it that every time I see you, you’re drowning in another pile of these?”
His hair is a bit of a mess. Blond and curling slightly at the ends, pressed into odd shapes from sleep. It’s the type of thing that would make another look disheveled, but on him it could pass as deliberate. Varka is an exception to so many human rules. He makes it hard for Flins to keep track of them, ancient and confused and inhuman as he is.
“Accurate reports are an important part of a Ratnik’s duty,” Flins says.
“Your eyes are fogging over,” Varka tells him. “I think they’ve brainwashed you.”
“...I will confess to finding this aspect of my work somewhat tedious.”
Now, Varka smiles, laughing a little like this is the funniest thing he’s heard all day. Which… perhaps it is, since he’d just woken up. “You hate it, don’t you?” Varka asks, and Flins can do nothing but stare at the wrinkles around his eyes that form when he smiles. “You positively detest it.”
Flins can’t make sense of him, no matter how he tries. He finds most people like that, but it’s never been a problem before, and Varka is harder to get than most. He’s never wanted to peer inside someone’s head and understand before him. “Are you mocking my manner of speech?”
Another laugh. Varka reaches for his hair again, twisting it around the knuckles of two fingers, touching like it’s easy, like he’s entitled to it. “I wouldn’t,” he says, and he drives Flins mad. “It’s charming.”
Skin between teeth. Flins bites the inside of his cheek, stuck on his hair in Varka’s hand, his faint warmth, his heartbeat. His reports are entirely forgotten. His fingers struggle to keep their shape, frazzled as he is. “Would you care for breakfast?”
“Yeah,” Varka says, gaze down as he strokes the strands between his fingers, flicking back up to meet Flins’ eyes. Horribly, vividly, viciously blue, he blinks. “That would be great.”
△
Varka leaves approximately one hour and twenty-six minutes after that, packed and fed and dressed and off to return to his duties as the Grandmaster of the Knights of Favonius. “I’ll be back,” he says as he shrugs into his heavy coat, and the longer Flins watches him prepare to go, the worse the ache in his teeth and the writhing feeling in his stomach become.
“Yes,” he says, standing stiffly. Human lovers might take a moment to embrace and whisper sweet words alongside their farewells. Flins is not human. The only thing a fae would do is leave a bloody, claiming bite. “I wish you luck with your duties, Grandmaster.”
“Varka,” is the reply. Adjusting the lay of the fur on his collar, Varka takes a step closer, teeth bared with his smile. “We’ve reached the point where you can call me by name, haven’t we?”
Names are powerful things. “Varka,” Flins says.
“There it is.” A fresh grin, easy like everything is to Varka. He never seems to worry about breaking rules or becoming a monster. Another half step. He sets a hand on Flins’ jaw—warm, terribly warm, it takes effort not to… Flins doesn’t know, but he stays carefully still. “Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.”
His pronunciation is close, but slightly off. Flins tenses. “No.”
“Yeah, alright,” Varka chuckles. His smile slips. He lets Flins go. “I’ll see you.”
Flins nods. “Farewell.” And that should be final for this exchange. Now, Varka will turn his back and Flins will watch him go until he reaches the shore, and then he’ll stop pointlessly keeping track of the time. He presses his tongue into the points of his teeth, imagines himself reaching for Varka and kissing him like he had last night, trying to keep him, to leave some kind of mark, only last night he’d lost control of himself. Now, he keeps a tight leash on his instincts. Now, he lets Varka go, sending a glance and a grin over his shoulder before he’s hiking down the slight hill back to Paha Isle.
Flins checks the timepiece. One hour and twenty-six minutes past the ten hours since the tumultuous start this, something, them. He could draw blood with the feeling in his teeth. Madness. His own instinct is a sickness. He leaves the clock with the rest of his collection and returns to his reports.
△
Distance, as it turns out, is easier than proximity. Without their source, Flins’ instincts ease and relax, and he’s able to return to his solitary balance. Patrols, reports, helping the restless spirits of the cemetery find their peace. He spends a time searching for the resting place of a child ghost called Adina. During a break between duties, he looks through some of the pieces in his collection. Sparkling gemstones, crumbling casings. Charms and jewelry and knickknacks.
That timepiece, resolutely ticking away, tarnished silver and polished glass, a delicate chain. Sensation rears its head. Craving. Want. Something that thrashes and growls and sounds like where are you, why did you go, where, where, why, mine.
Flins closes this box, gloved fingers smoothing along the lid. A breath in. Nod-Krai is cold tonight. Today. Whatever time it is; he’d forgotten as soon as he checked.
A dog finds its way onto the island, bearing a bone between its jaws. It slobbers and yips and drops it at Flins’ approach, backing away and pacing as it warily watches him stoop. The bone is small and somewhat delicate—a puffin skull, stark white and stripped entirely of flesh. It glistens with saliva. The dog barks, backing up when he lifts his gaze to it, but there are ribs faintly visible through its coat, and for however terrified it seems, it must be twice as desperate.
So Flins takes the skull and stands, leaving it on his desk for cleaning before he digs in his stores for a few sticks of dried venison.
The dog growls when he approaches. A common reaction; Flins is long used to the effect he has on animals. Instead of advancing and terrorizing it needlessly, he bends and leaves the meat on the ground before he turns and leaves. Ten steps, twenty, he checks over his shoulder to see the dog sniffing hesitantly and beginning to eat.
He returns to his work, returns to his madness, and thinks about the Grandmaster of the Knights of Favonius hardly at all.
△
“Did you miss me?” Varka asks after what he claims was four days of distance. He’s clean shaven, neat as he ever is, grinning as always. Flins can smell the wind on him, can see the sky in the blue of his eyes.
“It’s an unproductive emotion,” Flins notes, pulling the door open for him, stepping aside. The lighthouse is cold. There is no fire going, not for Flins, who doesn’t crave warmth. Varka steps inside, tracking in dirt, always tracking in dirt, and Flins did not miss him. “What brings you, Grandmaster?”
He huffs a laugh or something similar, and when the door is closed he takes the hair that had fallen over Flins’ shoulder between his fingers. “‘What brings me,’” he repeats, “like you didn’t make me swear I’d come back.”
Hot, rippling pleasure in the pit of his stomach. Dangerous, like this strange new habit Varka has found in touching Flins’ hair. Free as a bird but always circling back. “You are not beholden to me.”
“No,” Varka agrees. Rubbing the strands between his fingers, he takes a step forward, reaches for Flins’ hip with his free hand. “But I can be quite generous when it strikes me, remember?” He smiles now, brash and familiar and pleased, like he’s happy to have Flins between his palms. “Besides,” he says. “Maybe I missed you.”
Like Flins is someone worth missing, worth feeling that sticky, unproductive emotion for. Like Varka might keep time and think of Flins, even in passing, when he sees a trinket or a lantern hung for light. Like he can be driven mad too. Hunger. Thick, rolling, gnawing, insistent. Flins can be gentle as humans are. If he can just—
A hand on his face, warm, hot like fire, callused and sweeping a thumb beneath his eye. “Lightkeeper,” Varka says, kind of low.
Distant, a slightly fuzzy sensation. A blur at the edges of his vision. The incorporeal tips of his fingers, his eyes alight with blue flame. Like yanking a leash, Flins reigns himself back in, forcing his human form, stepping delicately away from his greed and Varka’s body heat.
“I apologize,” he says. He’s had a poor grip on himself lately. Prone to fizzling out while writing his reports, prone to retreating into his lantern increasingly frequently in moments of unrest or boredom.
“Don’t,” Varka says, his smile slipping into a frown as he follows Flins that half step. His heart has kicked up, he’s warm as he looks Flins over. “What causes it? An illness, or…?”
His tongue feels thick. Teeth aching. The human words take time to come to him. “Poor self control,” he answers. “There’s no need for you to concern yourself with it. It won’t happen again.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Varka says, fingers snagging in the fabric of Flins’ coat. His heart has calmed like proof. He comes close like it’s easy.
“That is reassuring to hear.”
Their eyes meet. Varka’s are blue, blue, blue. “You don’t need to be ashamed of your nature.”
Shame isn’t right. This is something else. Fear of contrast, of consumption. But Varka wouldn’t understand that. “Yes, I try not to be.”
His mouth is familiar. His touch could be. So much warmth. Flins might be allowed to take. Varka shifts and they brush together, torso to torso, warm, hot, molten. “I still want you regardless.”
The breath stills and stagnates in Flins’ lungs that don’t need breath at all. This— He isn’t blind or stupid or both. Varka is asking to be kissed, trying to egg Flins into it as he had before, testing the limits of his control and self restraint, unconcerned with whether or not it drives him mad. And Flins could draw blood with his teeth, wants to desperately, achingly, but he doesn’t want Varka to fight him off and change his mind.
So he pulls back, slipping carefully out of Varka’s grasp and further inside the lighthouse. “I’ll start a fire,” he says, stiff, polite, every inch of him buzzing, craving, wanting. “Please make yourself at home.”
Varka is silent, lingering in the entryway a little longer before he sighs and follows Flins the rest of the way inside. He sighs. Disappointed or something similar, Flins is versed well enough to know that much, to see it on him and hear it in the beat of his heart. But he knows his own greed, and he knows Varka will not placidly accept being possessed and swallowed and bitten into. He knows that Varka is the stronger one between them, and should he decide he doesn’t like the consumptive nature of Flins’ affection, it would be terribly easy for him to leave.
He listens to the rustle of fabric as Varka shrugs out of his coat, the creak as he comes to sit by the fireplace. Flins kneels, laying down logs so they’ll have enough airflow, distributing handfuls of kindling.
“How go your duties?” Something to fill the space as he strikes flint for a spark. Flins has never minded silence, but from Varka it feels wrong and sticky in the air.
“Fine,” is the response. Strange, strange, strange. The fire catches, the kindling blazing, curling as it turns to ash. He waits to see if the logs will catch too, feeling that heat on his face and his knuckles, the glow casting flickering shadows. He can feel Varka’s gaze on him the whole while, stuck to him with an increasingly common intensity. His tongue is thick in his mouth. His heart is insistent. The reactions of a human body are so peculiar.
“Have I upset you?” Flins asks.
“No,” Varka tells him. The first blaze from the kindling dies down, but the logs have successfully caught. Flins straightens up, brushes the dust from his knees. “I’m just curious why you’re holding yourself back.”
“It’s nothing to worry yourself over.”
Varka raises a brow. “Did I say I was worried?” he asks, light and shadow dancing on his face. His body bows slightly toward the fire, sleeves rolled over his scarred forearms, knees wide.
“I suppose not,” Flins answers. When he’s sure the fire will keep going on its own, he takes a seat in another chair, lowering himself so it hardly creaks. There’s the sound as the fire crackles. Varka’s palms grinding against his knees.
“I’m curious,” he says again. “Why?”
Would it make sense to come up with a partial truth, to mislead, to misdirect? Flins doesn’t know. He’s always erred more on the side of true honesty. Varka seems like the type to appreciate that.
“I am,” Flins starts, carefully feeling out the shape of each word in his mouth, “attempting to uphold the station of someone worth your wanting.”
It’s strange, the way Varka looks at him now. Always strange; he’s so difficult to make sense of, no matter how Flins tries, no matter how he thinks he’s come to understand. His eyebrows are furrowed. Again, it seems Flins has disappointed him in some way, when what he’s doing could be counted as a favor, could it not?
“And why would you have to hold back to fit that?” Varka asks, sucking in a breath, mouth parting like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t for a moment, two. Finally, “Some of the things you say…”
“Fae are not kind lovers by nature,” Flins tells him. It would be a terrible thing, to bare it all. The way he wants with his teeth. The way his instincts are so loud, screaming mine, mine, mine, wanting to keep, hold, have. But Varka is not a trinket, and he would never stand for being had.
“And yet you’ve been nothing but kind to me.”
Flins nods, ducking his chin beneath his high collar. “I would like to keep it that way,” he says. “Until I am sure I can control my instincts—”
“What is it that you’re so worried you’ll do?” Varka interrupts, cocking his head, still frowning. “Do you think I won’t stop you if you go too far?”
He’s more than strong enough. Flins wouldn’t be able to get his teeth within a mile of Varka’s neck if he didn’t want it, but to force his hand, to be forced under his hand, to put them at risk for nothing other than his own greed... “I’m not worried about you being unable to stop me.”
Now, he arches a brow. The fire crackles. His mouth is red and wet and distracting. “What are you worried about, then?” he asks, and Flins cannot lie. He doesn’t know what to say.
“I would…” He hesitates. Considers. “Bite.”
Varka blinks, swallows, laughs a little. “What, hard?”
Slowly, Flins nods. His teeth are sharp, made for cutting, though he’s made them look dull and human. “Terribly.”
He watches Varka’s smile slip into something more serious. Listens to the slight catch in his breath. “And what else?” Varka asks. “What else are you afraid of?”
“I have told you,” Flins adds. Mouth, aching, teeth. “I would attempt to tie you down.”
“You can’t,” Varka says.
Flins shakes his head. “But I will want to. I will want… to keep you. To have you, to consume you, and until I have a firm grasp on myself, I fear my instincts will compel me to try.”
The words come to rest between them. Varka is quiet, considering, perhaps. It’s clear enough by now that he doesn’t find Flins a monster. That he wants Flins, even if it’s in his gentler human way. They’ve shared warmth, touch, shreds of intimacy. He’d coaxed these emotions and instincts out with his own unknowing hands, but it’s likely that he expects a human love, and merely the thought of him is enough for Flins to grow greedy and mad.
A sharp breath. Varka stands, crosses to him close enough for their legs to brush, and sinks to one knee so they’re eye to eye. “Draw lines if you need them, but don’t do it on my behalf,” he says, odd and intense. “I trust you.”
Flins stiffens, trying not to be distracted by his heat, his smell, his proximity. Mine, a voice says, and it seems louder than anything else. “You shouldn’t.”
“I’ll tell you if you’re too much,” Varka says. He puts a hand on Flins’ knee, warm, hot, molten. “I’ll stop you if you go too far. I need you to do the same.”
“Now,” Flins says, and his voice wavers. Has he ever heard his voice waver before? He can’t think through the pressure in his teeth. “Now, you’re too much.”
“Too much for you?” Varka asks. “Or too much for me?”
“You play with fire,” Flins grits.
“I don’t mind the burn.” Varka’s warm hand curls around the back of his neck beneath his hair, forcing eye contact. “You haven’t answered my question,” he says, voice low. “I’ll back off if it’s for your sake, but not if it’s for mine.”
Flins has always wondered if his wires are crossed. For a human to be so uncaring of his own fragility, so brash and reckless and lacking in self preservation. He’d probably let Flins swallow him whole, if only because he’s so unfoundedly certain he’ll come out unscathed.
I trust you, I trust you, I trust you. It rings in his ears, over and over, maddening. He doesn’t get it, he doesn’t understand at all how Flins would consume him. He chooses, blindly, foolishly, recklessly, to put undeserved faith in his hands. And Flins— Flins wants to be worthy of it. Flins wants to earn it, keep it, prove it, hold it safely behind his teeth and on his tongue where he might find the space in his monstrous nature to be gentle with it. He can, he’s certain. He is an old, disciplined creature. He can be kind and gentle with a lover the way humans are, he can—
“You’re doing it again,” Varka murmurs. Blue flame at the edges of his vision. His fingers, cheek, chin incorporeal, blurring, and Varka only seems awed, not afraid, never afraid, and it strikes Flins now that for all he’s said it, insisted that Flins makes him feel anything but terror, Flins has never believed him until now. He reigns himself in, if only so they can touch, if only so he can bring his hands to either side of Varka’s face and kiss him, kiss him, kiss him.
He’s shaved, so there’s no stubble to scratch. He’s hot to the touch and without trace of a chill, no harsh weather to leech his warmth, nothing but Flins’ cold hands and mouth. And he inhales, pushes closer, wants this too. He twists fingers in Flins’ hair, that hand on his knee pressing it open and climbing to his hip, jamming himself between Flins’ thighs as his mouth parts, molten and wet, and Flins closes his teeth over Varka’s bottom lip, cupping his nape, palm sliding over his chest.
His jaw tenses as he fights himself not to bite down too hard. Human flesh is fragile and slow to heal. He can be soft, he can be gentle as humans are, letting Varka’s lip go as they separate, listening to his breath and his thundering heart. A low laugh, more air than sound, right against his mouth. Flins can feel his edges blurring, seeing Varka through the blue tint of his own flame. He’s more monster than man like this, but Varka doesn’t care to pull away.
“I think it’s obvious by now,” he says, a little rough, “that I am anything but scared of this.”
“I can’t begin to understand why,” Flins gets out. Varka’s skin is hot. He hooks two fingers in the belt at Flins’ waist, leans forward to kiss him again, again, again, tucking hair behind his ear, trailing fingertips along his jaw, holding him lightly by the chin to tip him into different angle, to press his mouth open wider, wholly, entirely unafraid. They part, briefly. He exhales a curse, their foreheads pressed, his mouth red and wet, eyes blue, blue, blue when they open.
“Surely you’ve been wanted before.” Varka’s voice is ragged. Flins is losing his grip, grabbing his loose threads and pulling his form back together, head buzzing, teeth aching.
“No,” he breathes.
Varka’s grip on his waist goes tight, fingers flexing, mouth smearing from Flins’ cheek to his temple. Their torsos brush. His thighs still press Flins’ wide as he curses again, breathing into his hair. “That can’t be true at all,” he says. “You wouldn’t know attraction if it broke your lantern.”
There’s so much living heat under his skin. That thundering heart, pounding beneath his fingers around Varka’s throat, his mouth when he scrapes his teeth over his jaw to his pulse. Warm-hearted, hot-blooded. “And you,” Flins says, sweat on his tongue, “wouldn’t know danger with its teeth on your throat.”
Varka’s laugh is rough. He sets a hand on the back of Flins’ head, keeping him there as he bares his throat, swallowing, seeming robbed of breath. “You wouldn’t hurt me,” he pants. Flins’ hands shake. His mouth parts against the beat of that pumping heart, skin between teeth.
He can’t, he shouldn’t, he won’t. His jaw closes, lightly, softly, gently. Like humans do, like lovers do. Varka cards through his hair. Breathes by his ear. Trusts him with unfounded surety. Flins doesn’t break skin. Varka’s exhale caves his whole chest in.
“Is this…” His hands slip, drag, settle on Flins’ hips, thumbs over fabric, bone, heat bleeding into inhuman skin. “...The same for fae too?”
He’s grinning, mouth red, faint imprints in his throat. It’s easy enough to guess his intention. Flins holds his gaze for a moment, two, nodding and ducking his chin beneath the high collar of the coat he’s certain will be the first thing to go.
△
He seems to like Flins’ hair, playing with it as it dries after a bath, standing behind as Flins does up his buttons and layers one by one. He is clingy and overeager and insistent upon touching like he has so much heat that he’ll combust if he doesn’t share it. But Flins’ fae instincts are sated and soothed, content to be clung to and thrumming with pleasure at the sight of the faint imprint of his own teeth against Varka’s neck.
So he lets him stand there after the fact, dressed down and unarmored in blue and gray, fingers getting caught as he tries to run them through resistant wet hair. It’s both solace and an anticlimax, the solution to his madness. Flins is sure he’ll still want, viciously and with a vengeance, enough to leave him terrified and only half in control of himself later, but for now he’s settled. He’s sure in his claim and his comfort.
Varka gathers Flins’ hair and sends it over his shoulder, strands mixing up with his fingers working on a set of buttons. A slight interruption. Flins could chide him for it, but Varka leans into him, brow against the back of his head, chest to back, hands featherlight on his hips. He’s so terribly warm. How to get used to that, Flins doesn’t know. He can’t turn off the voice in his head that smiles and whispers mine over and over again.
Instead of voicing that, his madness and pleasure both, he simply tips his head a little for Varka to breathe him in, moving his hair out of the way as he finishes his buttons.
“Will you stay with me tonight?” Varka asks, low to account for their proximity. His hands shift when Flins finishes, belting tight around his waist without fear of getting in the way. “You won’t go cold.”
“I am not bothered by the cold,” Flins reminds him. So many scars etched into Varka’s skin. Silver and pink depending on age. He sets a cool hand on Varka’s forearm.
Lips on the back of his neck. His false fae heart kicks in his chest. His fingers tighten. “You’ll sleep as well as you have in your life,” Varka murmurs, shaping the words right against skin.
Flins shuts his eyes, exhales a laugh. “I do not sleep.”
Varka chuckles, lays his forehead against Flins’ nape, arms tight, sturdy, stable around him. “You’ll never make things easy for me, will you?” he asks, and Flins, though he struggles to understand humans, Varka especially, isn’t entirely unaware of what seems to be his own effect. Just as Varka has made Flins want him through non-fear and persistence, something about Flins, human or not, has convinced Varka to want him too.
“And here I thought you loved a challenge,” he says, listening to the heart behind him, the breath, smothered under the heat of a human sun.
“Don’t you get tired?” Varka asks. His head lifts, his arms loosen. Flins turns to face him, delicately gathering his hair back behind him. “Don’t fae still need to rest?”
Flins inclines his head. “It’s different than with your kind,” he explains. “Reposing in my lantern is enough during moments of strain or fatigue.”
“So rest in your lantern next to me, if that’s your equivalent.”
The image is comical, so Flins laughs. Varka doesn’t. He’s serious, it seems, but Flins can’t picture himself as a lantern tucked neatly in the sheets beside his slumbering human companion. No, that wouldn’t do at all, because form is proportionate to feeling, and in moments like these, Varka almost makes him feel human. It would make sense, then, for his human shape to be the only one he can picture at Varka’s side.
“No,” he says, trying to smooth out his smile before he can cause offense. “No, I think I will simply lay with you for a while, if that’s your wish.”
Faint pleasure in Varka’s expression. “I won’t make you stay,” he says.
“And I won’t tie you down,” Flins replies in kind, “but still you choose to linger.”
“It’s a two way street,” Varka says.
“So it is.”
His smile grows wider. He reaches to take one of Flins’ hands. “Then lay with me for a bit,” he says. “Don’t feel like you have to stay if you get bored or your duties come knocking, but…”
“Then I shall,” Flins agrees, squeezing lightly. “At least until I’m sure you’re asleep.”