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‘Do you have a moment?’
Silver knocks on the door of the hut, only after he has poked his head in.
Flint closes the book, sliding it onto the desk. ‘Yeah,’ he says, and gets to his feet. Silver slips inside, closing the door behind him.
‘I wanted to show you something,’ Silver announces. ‘I think you’ll like it.’
Flint raises an eyebrow. Silver holds out a closed fist, and Flint realises it’s a prompt to present his palm. When he does, Silver drops something into it.
Flint brings it closer to his face. It’s a ring, small and a blackened silver. When it comes to pilfering shiny things, Silver’s like a magpie; a habit which likely betrays more than Silver would like about a past spent picking over battlefields with the crows. Flint examines it and sees the catch: it’s an earring.
When he looks up, Silver is watching him expectantly.
‘I appreciate the thought,’ Flint tells him honestly, smiling. ‘I prefer to wear a stud, that’s the only thing.’
‘Oh,’ Silver says, and his voice doesn’t precisely sound disappointed. Something else, a little more musical, a little more dangerous. ‘I wanted you to put it in me.’
Flint counts to five in his head before he responds. He’s found that with Silver, it helps.
‘You want me to pierce your ear?’ Flint clarifies.
‘Yes,’ Silver gives him a small smile, eyes dancing in the candlelight. He takes a needle and a cork from his pocket. He came ready—he came to Flint’s quarters with every intention of leaving with his ear pierced.
‘Shouldn’t you ask Howell?’
Silver sighs. ‘Howell’s made me bleed enough for a lifetime. I’ve come to trust you with pointed objects near my face.’
Flint looks at him warily.
‘I want it to be you,’ Silver announces, placing the needle and the cork on the table. ‘Please.’
Flint should say no. But the problem is—and he’s sure Silver considered this thoroughly before asking—Flint has no good reason to say no. Except the one reason he can’t admit to Silver: the one which must stay unspoken, a bell never rung, a question on the tip of his tongue. The question Flint would swear, when Silver tempts him into flights of optimism, had a harmony on Silver’s own tongue, quirking there at the edge of his smirk and sparkling in his eyes.
Christ, Silver will be the end of him.
Silver flirts. It’s one of his many weapons, the insidious kind that slides under the skin like a barbed blade, pulling everything out of Flint’s insides when it’s withdrawn. Silver flirts like he flatters, cajoles, persuades, coerces, and goads: it’s a tool he applies to get what he wants, and abandons when he doesn’t need it. Flint knows this so well he should be immune to it. He steers his errant thoughts toward whatever it is Silver must want, the end for which flirting is only ever a means.
What do you want? he burns to ask Silver. Not what are you doing?—the answer to that has only become clearer since Flint told him about Thomas. Since something Silver likely didn’t understand himself had flickered in his eyes and smouldered there ever since. So the question is not what, because Flint will never take that as a certainty but it’s as certain as it can be, but why.
Flint takes a heavy breath in, letting it be mistaken for exasperation at Silver’s whims. It’s fond, too, because Silver has plied from him an undeniable fondness. The sort of fondness that can exist between friends—never has a word tasted so dry in Flint’s mouth, knowing what else they could be.
He pulls his chair out from the table. Silver sheds his jacket and belts, hanging them by the door, while Flint fetches a basin and fills it with a little water. He sets it on the table beside the needle, the cork, and a clean cloth. Silver settles in the chair, his feet kicked out and his back slouched. Flint dips the cloth in the basin, and Silver watches his fingers as he wrings it out.
‘Which side?’ Flint asks.
Silver bundles up his masses of curls, which pile handsomely on his head and then roll like a sea of ink over one shoulder. He lets his head slant to the side, and looks up at Flint through his lashes.
‘The right,’ he says. ‘To mirror yours.’
To mirror yours. It’s as good a side as any, and there’s no need for Silver to justify his choice, but that’s how he does. Flint has to resist touching on the silver stud in his own ear, thumbing the contours of it. He does it when he’s idle or restless, tugging it just enough to sting. And from now on he will see the ring in Silver’s ear, and he wonders if he’ll ever not be tempted to touch its twin.
Instead he tests the point of the needle, while Silver stretches, exposing his throat. As though he’s open, willing, vulnerable, trusting. As though he isn’t deadly in his own right.
Flint shakes his head, and drags over a stool to perch at Silver’s right side. He takes up the cloth again and wipes Silver’s ear clean, tucking his finger inside the fabric to get into the cleft behind Silver’s ear. Silver shivers, and Flint is so close he sees gooseflesh rise where he dabs the skin of Silver’s neck.
He folds the cloth neatly and drapes it over the edge of the basin. Silver is breathing deep and slow, his eyes unfocused, a hint of bright blue in dark lashes.
Flint takes his earlobe between finger and thumb, rolling it gently. Silver’s breath hitches as Flint drags the skin, stretching it over his thumb to guess the centre.
‘There,’ Silver murmurs, though he can’t see where Flint is aiming. ‘Just there.’
Flint reaches blindly for the cork, tucking it behind Silver’s ear until it rests there.
Silver shifts restlessly and Flint tells him: ‘Keep still.’ His voice comes out rasping.
Silver settles, languid but for his white-knuckled grip on the arm of the chair; the pulse visibly quickening in his throat; and the flash in his eyes as he follows Flint’s movements. Flint takes the needle and carefully aligns it over the centre of the lobe, his left hand splaying the skin and steadying the cork.
‘Last chance,’ he warns Silver, the point of the needle resting on the skin.
‘Do it,’ Silver answers.
The flesh puckers at the first prick, until Flint presses more surely in and feels it puncture. Silver utters a high, quavering whimper, and Flint watches a bead of blood welling as he guides the needle through. He sinks deeper and feels the moment of resistance before the point has met the cork, and spends a second watching sweat pool in Silver’s collarbone, listening to the throaty groan from Silver’s chest.
‘Alright?’ he asks, barely more than a breath.
Silver only replies with ‘hnnn,’ at first, then a soft, stuttering: ‘Yes.’
Flint exhales, and draws the needle back out smoothly. The moment it’s free, Silver writhes in the chair, breath uneven, eyes squeezed shut.
Flint eases the cork out—Silver squirms—and places it on the table with the needle. He takes up the cloth again and carefully catches the blood welling like a ruby in Silver’s earlobe. The cool water soothes searing hot skin as he cleans the back, chasing the trickle of blood that curls down Silver’s neck. Silver arches into it and Flint, unthinking, grabs his jaw to steady him. Silver settles immediately into the firm grip, which almost wraps around his throat. Flint can feel the flutter of Silver’s pulse, insistent against his fingertips. Silver clenches, testing Flint’s pressure on his windpipe, daring Flint to fall for the old temptation of wringing Silver’s neck.
Flint doesn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead, his touch strokes over Silver’s jaw. He catches Silver’s mouth with his thumb, but neither of them acknowledge that he’s done so. For a moment Flint wonders if Silver is daring enough to flick out his tongue, but he doesn’t. It’s Flint who swipes across his lip, dragging it down a little at the swell in the middle, following the edge of the cupid’s bow with his thumbnail. Silver’s breath is feverish, plumes of warmth on Flint’s skin.
Silver’s mouth falls open and Flint retracts his hand the moment it does. He adjusts himself on the stool, swiping another errant trail of blood before it creeps into the whorls of hair at the base of Silver’s skull. As he rinses the cloth in the basin, Silver seems transfixed by the pinkish water. Flint takes the ring and carefully undoes the catch.
‘This part will hurt more,’ he warns Silver.
Silver swallows thickly, and then nods. ‘I want you to.’
It’s not quite the right response. It’s as though, in his care to align the piercing properly, everything else has tilted off its axis.
Flint takes Silver’s earlobe in a careful grasp. He can feel the throb of Silver’s heart, see it jumping in Silver’s throat. It falters as Flint gently pulls on the skin. When he presses the metal into the hole, Silver hisses, a sharp and staggering sound that draws from Silver’s lungs until they empty. Flint threads the ring through, working by touch, because he can’t keep his eyes off Silver’s teeth where they bite into his lower lip, hard enough to leave marks. Silver is flushed all over. He can’t hold back a shudder as Flint closes the catch, the motion tickling the hairs on the back of Silver’s neck.
Flint touches more firmly, easing away some of the tension. His fingers caress from Silver’s jaw to his throat, as low as his collarbone before slipping around to the spine. There, Flint finds the nerves knotted from Silver holding himself so tightly, and digs in until some of the tension dissolves. Silver collapses like a puppet without strings, growling with pleasure as Flint works toward his skull. The movement becomes something dangerously close to Flint carding his fingers through Silver’s hair, each fingertip finding a different place in Silver’s spine that send him alternately shivering and pliant.
Silver lets out a sigh, pushing himself back into Flint’s hands. ‘Captain…’ he purrs, and Flint stops. He stands. Silver rolls his neck in frustration before getting up. He turns to face Flint, his expression changing from the hazy bliss lost moments ago to a curious, cunning look Flint knows well. But something remains, blurring the edges between them.
‘Do you like it?’ Silver is flushed, lips red where he was biting them. His hair tumbles endlessly over his shoulders, the tendon in his neck gleaming where he’s stretched it to show off the result.
The way he preens for Flint, the jewellery shines as another ring among the ringlets. It’s lovely, Flint thinks, even swollen and fresh. And Flint loves it, a pretty scar Silver has asked him to give. To make them a match.
‘It suits you,’ he says, and the gruffness in his tone likely betrays more than indifference.
Silver weaves impossibly near, his cheek turned to one side for Flint to admire. Flint makes an approving noise, thinking Silver will let it be, but Silver faces him. And one of Silver’s other insidious little weapons is knowing when not to speak, when to let a silence fill that hollow space between them until Flint is sure it will burst.
Flint looks away because he’s fooled himself like this before, with the intimacy Silver so easily creates between them.
‘Captain,’ Silver says, so near that Flint feels the gust of breath between syllables.
‘Mister Quartermaster,’ Flint replies, his voice a lot less steady than he’d like.
Flint has imagined this. He’s dreamt of this. And yet Silver is impossibly solid, heat radiating from him, smelling rich and heady with sweat that Flint couldn’t have conjured for a fantasy. And whatever game it is Silver thinks he’s playing, perhaps in the end it’s merely curiosity—perhaps that would be worse than anything.
Flint uses his height, squaring his shoulders as a reminder to Silver not to push his luck.
Silver only uses the position to slip closer, his chin tilting up to expose his throat, tipping to one side to let the fresh earring catch the light and blind Flint momentarily.
Silver’s lips are parted now, as though he has forgotten to close them, his eyes fixed on Flint’s mouth with unmistakeable intent.
‘You don’t want to,’ Flint murmurs. He’s not sure if he’s speaking to himself, voicing the adage he has repeated a thousand times. He’s not sure if it’s a warning to Silver, or a question. He feels the words grip his skin, now they’re outside him, a painful pressure only Silver can release.
‘What is it I don’t want to do?’ Silver breathes, and now his eyes are heavy-lidded, darkening, drinking in Flint’s voice.
Flint’s breath catches, and it knocks all the wind from his sails. ‘You know damn well.’
‘What I’ve always known damn well, Captain,’ Silver repeats the title again, and Flint is certain he’ll never hear that word from Silver without thinking of this moment. ‘Is exactly what I want.’
Flint almost whimpers, with how close Silver is, how long they have danced this dance together and every time missed the final step. He’s about to speak, about to say ’stop,’ or more likely what will come out is ‘please,’ and his lip trembles with the difficulty of it. The moment it does Silver’s gaze flashes from Flint’s mouth to his eyes, and ever-so-softly Silver whispers ‘oh,’ and there it is—there it is, and Silver kisses him.
Silver pulls him down by the shoulders and Flint is pulling him up by the waist, as if they can drag two bodies into one space. Silver’s clever tongue slips between Flint’s lips, tasting him, drawing him out, and Flint moans into Silver’s mouth and gives Silver everything he wants.
They part for breath with no small reluctance, Flint thinking wildly that he would rather drown in Silver than ever stop.
What was the beginning of this, that it led here? Did Silver plot it as he stole the needle, or when he found the ring? Did he not think anything of it until Flint was touching him, indulging in the curve of his lips? Does it stretch further back, up on the cliffs or deep in the forest? Were swords clashing or sharks circling? Was the earring only the latest token in a long courtship, initiated with a bosun’s whistle? Or was its beginning truly just now, when Silver caught him?
Silver’s mouth finds the corner of Flint’s, then his dimple, along his cheekbone and temple until finally Silver is nuzzling his ear, beard tickling Flint’s throat, that tongue curling around the stud in Flint’s earlobe and sucking it into the warm pressure of his mouth, teeth catching viciously, and then Flint does whimper.
‘I hoped you’d like it,’ Silver whispers.