Chapter Text
“Tell him.”
“It’s not that simple, Halford. Things in my life are… complicated. You know that.”
“Your heart is not some minor detail in a mission briefing, you know.”
A spiteful retort nearly burst from Shaw before he had the good sense to stop himself; regardless of how friendly they had become over the course of the Kul Tiran campaign, Halford Wyrmbane was still his superior. Even a casual conversation with the man warranted a certain level of respect. “I will deal with the captain in my own time,” he said instead.
Wyrmbane scoffed lightly into his cup.
Once a week or so, depending on Shaw’s mood and schedule, he joined the high commander for tea at a small café not far from the center of the mage quarter. They talked, and Shaw pointlessly tried to pretend he didn’t deeply appreciate that there was someone out there willing to extend a hand in friendship. After all, everyone needed someone to talk to.
Lately, though, Wyrmbane had begun to pick at him over the one subject about which he had an unfortunate wealth of knowledge: Captain Flynn Fairwind, and Shaw’s even more unfortunate and very strong emotions regarding him. He was doing it out of a genuine sense of affection, of course; that, and his rank—along with the subsequent increased likelihood that someone would miss him if he abruptly and mysteriously disappeared—were the only reasons Shaw tolerated his insistent meddling.
“Do you remember what happened the last time you pushed me about this, Halford?”
Wyrmbane folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Yes, I’m properly devastated by the possibility of not being able to meet you for tea for the next two weeks,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“I could make it four.”
“I am only looking out for you, my friend. Your happiness—”
“Is at best a luxury,” Shaw finished for him. “Besides, the captain is tied up in his own affairs, when he’s not literally tied up somewhere. He seems to have found plenty to occupy his time between here and Boralus. A dubious relationship with a spy, assuming he is in fact capable of a relationship at all, is the last thing he needs.”
“But you are interested in him.”
“I’m beginning to wish you had never stumbled upon that bit of information.”
Wyrmbane smirked. Trust the man to gloat over the one time he successfully, and entirely accidentally, spied on a spy. Another reason Shaw was less than fond of ships. “But I did,” Wyrmbane replied, “and so it stands. Haven’t you considered that he might feel the same as you?”
“No.”
“Really?
“Yes.”
With a sigh, Wyrmbane took another judgmental sip. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you when the captain finds his affections returned elsewhere.”
“All the better for him,” Shaw muttered into his own cup.
They parted ways on a better note than expected once Wyrmbane finally dropped the subject of Flynn Fairwind. Shaw made it clear that he would consider meeting again, provided the ban on discussing all matters related to and regarding his social life was duly observed. Wyrmbane had smirked at his demand, but ultimately agreed. That might have been a relief if Shaw believed he actually meant it.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what he was doing or who he was dealing with, regardless of what the high commander seemed to believe. Based purely on the man’s history, real or (far more likely) embellished, Fairwind was quick to fall in lust, but not necessarily in love. At least not by any measure more informed than that of a heartsick adolescent. There was every reason to believe Flynn would be receptive, perhaps even enthusiastic about the notion of sharing his bed with the infamous Alliance spymaster… right up until he started to get bored of it.
Shaw wasn’t interested in being a novel experience and a notch in the bedpost. Or whatever sailors preferred to call it. Yes, it was really the captain’s own fault that he had never expressed his interest. That was all.
He entered the keep lost in thought, only to find the halls unexpectedly embroiled in chaos. It was more alarming that no one had come to get him under such circumstances, but Shaw didn’t have time to wonder who was at fault or who would be shouldering the blame for this oversight. He quickly made his way toward the throne room, heart pounding. That was where the disturbance seemed to be converging in a throng of onlookers.
If anything had happened to the king because he’d had his head in the clouds…
“I tell you, the ship just appeared out of thin air!” someone exclaimed. It was followed up by a nervous and hasty, “Your Majesty.”
“Ah, Master Shaw,” Genn Greymane called over the whispers and muttering that began to fill the vaulted chamber in the absence of an active speaker. He motioned for Shaw to join him and King Anduin up on the dais. “You’ve picked an auspicious moment to make your appearance. It seems we have something of a situation on our hands.”
Shaw looked around the room from his higher vantage point before the throne. There were seventeen visible petitioners loosely gathered in the center of the chamber. Many of them were commoners he recognized from his routine surveillance patrols, and a few others from the files he kept on them in his office. One or two were unfamiliar to him, but a few subtle gestures from his agents in the room made it clear they had already been assessed for any potential threat they might pose.
Why, then, were they all there? And why was Greymane so happy to see him?
“Please,” the king said, addressing the man in the group who had spoken before, “tell your story again if you don’t mind.”
The man stepped forward, twisting the hem of his tunic around his fingers. The others fell silent. “I was working down in the harbor, loading cargo onto the ships. Been doing it for years now, so I’d know right quick if something was amiss. There were three ships docked today, y’see. That merchant ship, the Golden Gull, was on the far end. Right where I was. Then the passenger ship to Northrend.” He shifted from foot to foot, looking down at where his hands seemed mere moments from rending his tunic. Just what had this man and the others seen?
“Last was one of your ships, Your Majesty, sir. That was all. No other ships due for at least four days.”
“Explain what you saw next,” Greymane prompted more gently than usual.
“Well I—I turned one way, and then I turned the other, and… If I hadn’t seen it myself I’d never have believed it, of course, but there was the Arva, sir.”
The Bold Arva. Flynn’s ship. But Flynn wasn’t in Stormwind, he was in Boralus. Shaw knew because for reasons solely related to the security of the kingdom and the safety of its king, he had requested a copy of the dockmaster’s schedule every week since his return from Kul Tiras. That it also happened to provide a complete list of all the Bold Arva’s incoming and outgoing ports of call was entirely coincidental and frankly irrelevant. At least until whatever had happened down in the harbor, anyway.
“Where is the crew?” he asked. “Were they aboard?”
“Oh, they were aboard, alright,” the man said, wide-eyed and nodding.
“Shaw.” The king pitched his voice low so that only the three of them would hear what he had to say. “I’ve spoken with Jaina. Captain Fairwind’s ship is docked in Boralus Harbor.”
Greymane looked at him as well. It was as though they both expected him to do something, or know something, about what seemed like an impossible event. But he still knew even less about it than they did.
“She must be wrong,” he said mechanically. What else could it possibly be? After all, were they meant to assume that the Lord Admiral of Kul Tiras had simply popped her head out of a window in Proudmoore Keep and recognized which sails belonged to the ship of a one-time pirate who had, for a period, hauled Azerite for the Alliance? Did Jaina even remember him?
Something of his thoughts must have translated to the look he was giving the two other men, because neither seemed satisfied with his response. In fact, if he’d been asked to guess, he would have thought they were offended by his easy dismissal. Which was madness given that it was the only possible explanation outside of very powerful magic—the sort of magic that would not lead someone who had access to it to conclude that copying the crew of a fairly insignificant vessel might be a worthwhile means to an end. Any end. It simply didn’t make sense.
“I assure you, she is certain,” the king replied. He produced a large, leather-bound book from beside the throne. The thing practically reeked of the tide-washed streets of Boralus Harbor. From that alone Shaw would have known its provenance, even without the Proudmoore sigil burned into its cover. It was the harbormaster’s log. Jaina must have passed it to Anduin through a portal for him to have received it so quickly after the ship’s appearance. That meant she had indeed gone down to the harbor herself. It also meant she had confirmed the presence of the Bold Arva.
There was no reason to look inside, he knew what he would find. “In that case, I need to figure out exactly who that is in our own harbor.”
“Please do. Genn, if you wouldn’t mind accompanying the spymaster?”
Greymane inclined his head. He gestured for Shaw to precede him from the chamber.
It was all very strange. What was Flynn doing in Stormwind if he was also in Boralus? Was it a trick? Had someone hoped to infiltrate the city by posing as a known friendly vessel?
He didn’t like operating under so much uncertainty.
Just as the dockhand had claimed she would be, they reached the harbor to find the Bold Arva waiting for them in the last slip. In fact the ship was exactly as she had appeared the last time she was in port, without any discernible differences. At least none that he could see from the dock below. She even had a tear in the mainsail that Shaw knew, for a fact, had been repaired before they departed Stormwind fifteen days prior.
Already it was clear that something was very, very wrong.
“No one has been allowed on or off the ship,” Greymane explained. He gestured to the figures milling about up on deck. Shaw recognized them all from their silhouettes, and none belonged to Flynn. “But they do seem to be growing restless, even if they have not pressed the matter.”
“I’ll board and speak with them,” he offered.
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
No more or less so than sending another agent or some hapless soldier aboard. He said as much before he climbed the ramp up to the ship, holding the ropes tightly out of nothing more than habit. He certainly wasn’t feeling anything even approaching apprehension.
It was a familiar face that met him at the top. “Master Shaw,” Swailes greeted him. “Didn’t expect to see you aboard.”
“I’m here on the king’s orders,” Shaw explained brusquely. It was all he managed to say before Flynn erupted from the open door leading off the main deck, arms up and gesturing wildly.
“Is that someone from the bloody harbormaster’s office at last?” he shouted. “It’s about damn time, how long are you lot planning to keep us waiting here with our thumbs up our… Shaw?” He stopped mid-rant and put his hands on his hips. “What are you doing here?”
“Captain Fairwind. As I was telling Mr. Swailes here, I’ve come aboard on official business. Could we speak in private?”
“Has this whole thing got to do with that crate of dried anchorweed your people found last time we were here? Because I genuinely did not know that was in there.”
“Captain.”
Flynn sighed. “Oh, alright. Let him aboard, would you?” he ordered Swailes, who nodded and moved aside to begin gathering rope into large coils. Shaw supposed it was for little more than the sheer novelty of having something to do.
“How long have you been waiting to speak to someone?” he asked Flynn once they were alone. He did his best to ignore the familiar hazy gray light that filtered into the captain’s cabin through the salt-stained glass, and the way the room smelled faintly of whiskey—though much less so than the last time he’d been aboard.
“At least two hours,” Flynn said with a shrug. “If not for the armed soldiers brandishing some very pointy weapons to ensure we remained aboard I might have thought they’d forgotten we were even here. You know, normally we don’t have to perform that whole silly dance with the inspections and the official manifests and whatnot. I’d thought perhaps our prior dealings might have seen to handling all that.”
“I assure you there are no such conditions in place, Captain. Any failure to inspect your vessel and its cargo prior to disembarking is merely an oversight. I will address the matter with the appropriate individuals once the current situation has been dealt with.”
“Lovely.”
Well, no sense trying to be subtle about the actual purpose of his visit. “How are you here, and also in Boralus,” he asked. His eyes remained with Flynn’s, searching for any sign of deception, any indication that he was not who he seemed. There was none.
“Have you been drinking?” Flynn asked suspiciously. He leaned forward and sniffed, making Shaw stumble back a little less elegantly than he would have liked.
“No, I have not been drinking, Fairwind. Answer the question.” He certainly acted like Flynn.
“Well, seeing as I’m here, and not there, I can’t really say I know. Is this some sort of test? Am I going to have to do this every time we dock from now on?”
He even smelled like Flynn. That one close brush with him had carried his scent straight to every dark corner of Shaw’s mind like embers on a dry wind.
“What happened to your sail?” he asked. In his mind he was stamping out those little fires one by one before they could catch.
“Oh, that.” Flynn shook his head. “Nasty encounter with some rather disagreeable harpies. A whole flock of them, roosting on the cliffside just ‘round the northwest coast of Stormsong. We took out half by my estimate. Now that you mention it, we’ll need some repairs if you’ve got anyone you might recommend. I’d just have the crew handle it if I hadn’t already promised them three days ashore.”
It was the truth, down to the last detail. The Arva’s mainsail had indeed been torn by harpies.
Two weeks ago.
“Thank you, Captain,” Shaw said with a nod. He turned back to the door, only to be stopped by a hand on his wrist.
“Hey, what is this?” Flynn demanded, still gentle despite the obvious alarm Shaw could hear brewing like storm clouds behind his words. He had every reason to be worried, and he knew it as well as Shaw himself did, if not why. “Why are you here asking these questions? How’d you even notice the sail?”
“I noticed because it’s my job to notice, Captain. And the same goes for the rest. I will return once I’ve spoken to the king.”
He freed his wrist from the searing brand of Flynn’s grip and quickly made his way back out onto the deck. There were footsteps behind him the whole way, and it was possible Flynn had been calling his name as well, but by the time he made it back out into the open air he was no longer listening. His mind was churning through information, examining one impossible possibility after another and discarding them again just as quickly. It didn’t make sense, and yet it had to. It was the only thing that did.
“So?” Greymane asked once he was safely back on the dock. “Is it him?”
He elected not to ask the Gilnean king why he assumed that was a question only Shaw himself was qualified to answer, though a disappointed part of him already knew. It was the same part that desperately wanted to be wrong, to have no idea who it was he’d just spoken to aboard the ship. He also hated that his body had confirmed the answer for him without any input from his rational mind. “I think so,” he said. “And I think I know what brought him here.” Just maybe not how.
Greymane waited a moment, and then he prompted, “Well, do explain.”
Explain? If not for the vast difference in station, Shaw might have laughed in the old king’s face.
He hardly knew where to begin.
A timely visit from the bronze dragon Chromie had confirmed Shaw’s suspicions, and though her explanation of what her flight considered nothing more than a ‘small, unforeseeable temporal event’ had eased fears of a sloppy assassination attempt, it nevertheless did not come with the promise of a solution any time soon. It seemed that, for the moment, Stormwind Keep would have no other choice but to play host to a recurrence of Flynn and his crew. They were welcomed as guests of the king after being informed of their unusual circumstances, asked to remain discreet about their presence in the city, and reassured that the bronze flight was working on a way to return them to their proper place in the timeline.
Just the sort of thing that happened sometimes in Stormwind, apparently.
Shaw sat in his office that evening, long after the sun had gone down and the city had grown quiet outside, nursing a glass of whiskey. He wasn’t even sure he liked whiskey. Maybe he only liked the smell of it.
“Knock-knock,” came an alarmingly familiar voice from the doorway.
Shaw was up on his feet and brandishing a knife before his recognition caught up to decades of hard-earned paranoia, and he froze. “Fairwind?”
“Oh, am I not still ‘Captain’ after hours? Suppose I can live with that arrangement.” Flynn sauntered into the room and dropped down into an empty chair without being invited to do so.
Shaw scrambled for something to say that wasn’t barking at the man to get his feet off the desk. “If you would prefer…”
But Flynn dismissed whatever he was going to offer with a distracted wave. “Awfully sparse in here. You’re not worried anything’s going to fall off the walls, are you?”
“Not usually,” Shaw scoffed into his glass. If fate was going to subject him to this torment, he was at least going to have a drink about it first.
“I ought to bring you a painting. Something to remind you of Kul Tiras.”
It was the height of summer in the Eastern Kingdoms, and even the nights did not allow them the luxury of forgetting that. Shaw scratched the bridge of his nose with his thumb, enjoying the way it pressed the cold glass in his hand against his forehead, and chuckled darkly at his own miserable predicament. “That’s just what I need,” he muttered. “How did you get in here, Fairwind?”
“The Shiv let me in.”
“He what?” Renzik was under strict orders not to allow Flynn Fairwind through the door, never mind up to Shaw’s office.
“Aye, I thought it was strange myself. Usually he turns me away without a word. Unless brandishing a knife passes for a complete sentence around these parts. Assumed he’d do the same tonight, only he waved me by saying something about how it ‘doesn’t technically count.’” He shrugged and reached for the bottle of whiskey—also without invitation.
Shaw didn’t stop him; he wasn’t sure he could have once Flynn upended the bottle and began to drink. A simple act that made his throat work in a sinuous rhythm, coinciding perfectly with the uptake in Shaw’s pulse.
“You there, mate?”
He blinked, and realized Flynn had already set the bottle back on the desk. “I was only thinking about your strange situation,” he lied, reaching for the bottle to replace the cork. It went back into the lowest drawer in his desk, where it could not cause either of them any further trouble. “If the bronzes are right, once they know exactly what caused it you should be returned to the moment you and your crew were removed from the timeline.”
“And if they’re not?”
The possibility had been raised during his recent meeting with the king and his advisors. It wasn’t as if having two of each of the Bold Arva’s crew wandering around would doom the world to darkness, but the implications were troubling nevertheless. If there were two Flynn Fairwinds, there could be two Mathias Shaws. Or two Nathanos Blightcallers, as horrifying as that was to imagine, and either one could cause untold chaos if left to roam free. No one had seemed particularly concerned about the presence of a second set of otherwise totally normal, seemingly harmless Kul Tiran sailors. No one but Shaw, of course. To Shaw, it was a potential nightmare in the making. Dealing with one Flynn was hard enough, but two?
“I suppose we will cross that bridge when we come to it, Captain.”
“Ah, he’s back on duty,” Flynn said with a friendly but resigned sigh. He stood and tipped his nonexistent hat toward Shaw. “Try and get some sleep tonight, Spymaster. You’ve got to be up bright and early to keep an eye on the rowdy sailors you’re hosting up in the keep.”
“There are agents who will do that for me,” Shaw said, making a show of straightening the blank papers on his desk. “I have a prior engagement tomorrow.”
Wyrmbane had somehow extracted a promise to meet him for tea first thing in the morning. It didn’t take a great deal of imagination to deduce why.
Flynn seemed disappointed by his answer, as though it actually mattered to him who spent the day fielding his pointless and apparently endless feedback regarding the lackluster hospitality of the crown. “Is that so?” he asked. There was something undeniably glum about his tone. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you around the keep, then. Unless they decide to send us packing back to our proper time before that.”
“The sooner the better, I’m sure.”
Silence met his reply, and Shaw looked up; Flynn was gazing at some distant point well past the confines of the office walls. He cleared his throat and nodded curtly. “Well. Goodnight, Spymaster.”
“Goodnight, Captain.”
Shaw waited for him to leave, and for the sound of his boots to fade into the night outside. Then he reached for the bottom drawer.
“Just say it, Halford.”
Wyrmbane sipped his tea. He had both hands on the cup, and his mouth was pinched into a smug little pout that made him look like he’d been sucking on a lemon.
Shaw mentally brushed aside a list of compounds that would paralyze the high commander’s facial muscles. Some were more temporary than others, but the idea still raised far too many complications.
“This could be an opportunity,” Wyrmbane spoke over the rim of his cup. He arched a brow as if that somehow gave meaning to his nonsense, instead of underscoring how ridiculous it was.
“Has it ever occurred to you that I possess enough knowledge to set events in motion that would certainly lead to another war? You could end up anywhere. Even back in Dragonblight.”
Wyrmbane laughed, evidently assuming that had been intended as a joke. “From what I’m told—”
“Gossiping with Greymane, no doubt.”
“—once the dragons determine the cause, the captain and his crew will not only be returned to their proper place and time, but they will likely retain no knowledge of the events that occurred during their displacement. Do you understand what that means? It’s a perfect opportunity to tell Captain Fairwind how you feel about him. If only to gauge his response.”
“You are a grown man, you know.”
“And you’re a lonely one, Mathias.”
The words hit him like the sting of an unexpected slap to the face. They cleaved right through every layer of armor and went straight to the bone, rendering Shaw too stunned to speak.
For his part, Wyrmbane didn’t even seem to notice. He sighed, seemingly disappointed by Shaw’s lack of enthusiasm. “I understand you don’t view these regular meetings of ours as confirmation of any profound friendship, Mathias, but I hope you know that I do. I am grateful we were able to get to know one another during our time in Kul Tiras, and I consider you a good friend. I also know you would have preferred if just about anyone else had uncovered the secret that causes you so much shame—provided you couldn’t keep someone from finding out at all.”
He set his teacup on the table, and his eyes stayed with it as the amber liquid in the bottom settled back to a flat calm. Shaw thought he sensed something more than frustration in the high commander’s refusal to meet his eyes. “You think that these subtle efforts to warn me off will make me think twice about putting my nose where it doesn’t belong,” Wyrmbane went on to say. “And you might have been right, were I any other man.”
He stood and carefully placed his cup and saucer back on the tray. Shaw knew that when they were both finished, an attendant from the cafe would come and remove it all, wipe down the table, and it would be as if their friendly meeting had never happened. All that humiliation, gone in a flash.
“Not many people are blessed with so many chances to get it right, Mathias,” Wyrmbane said, before he set two coins on the table and, with a respectful half-bow, turned and left.
It took another two days before Shaw actually worked up the nerve to call on Flynn. He sent a message asking to meet aboard the Bold Arva, which was presently sitting empty in the harbor. It was as close to truly alone as either of them would get in a city like Stormwind. After all, even the keep had ears. He knew because he had put them there.
“Lovely morning, isn’t it?” Flynn asked cheerfully as he swung himself up the last rung of the rope ladder that had been left unrolled for him. The gangway had been removed by necessity; the last thing anyone needed was a stowaway complicating matters when it came time to return Flynn and the others to their proper place in events.
“It’s after three.”
“Well, you can’t expect me to know that being so far from the water every day,” Flynn explained as he led Shaw into the captain’s cabin. “I’ve kept time by ship's bells most of my life, even before I took to the sea. Boralus is lousy with them.”
“I suppose the enormous clock tower directly across from the keep escaped your notice.”
Flynn frowned and scratched the back of his head. “Is that what that noise was? Thought it was those dwarves banging away at something. Well, I assume you called me here for some reason, so, what is it you need?”
The leap from casual but awkward greetings to banter to his purpose, his only purpose for asking Flynn down to the docks, suddenly seemed very abrupt. That was not at all how he had planned for the conversation to go. “Maybe we should back up,” he suggested.
“Back up to what? What’s gotten into you, anyway? I’m the one living in his own future, albeit only two week’s worth. Why are you acting as if that’s thrown your whole understanding of the world out of balance?” Flynn stepped closer, and Shaw resisted the urge to take a step back to match. “Are you alright?”
It didn’t matter. He had to remember that. Whatever he said to this Flynn, it would have no bearing on the Flynn who actually belonged there, in that time. He would never even know their conversation had occurred. In fact, as far as anyone knew, that Flynn was still unaware that he even had a temporally-displaced copy. Shaw could make an absolute fool of himself and no one would ever know.
He told himself that was why, rather than a fumbling confession of attraction or an awkward request to meet in some out-of-the-way, dimly lit locale, Shaw simply surged forward and covered Flynn’s mouth with his own. He kissed him with every ounce of feeling he possessed, trying to speak what he felt with his lips, because he didn’t trust his own voice to get it right.
Hands came up and around his shoulders, sliding down to his lower back. Flynn pulled him close so abruptly that it forced a gust of breath from Shaw’s lungs and into the kiss. He smiled against Flynn’s lips and let himself be nipped playfully, opening his mouth when he felt the slick warmth of Flynn’s tongue. His fingers, tangled in the front of Flynn’s shirt and that worn scarf he seemed to love so much, held on tight. As if he could somehow prevent a series of events that would inevitably wipe that moment away no differently than the café table, and hold on to it forever.
“You certain about this?” Flynn muttered, right before plunging back in to deny Shaw an opportunity to answer.
Shaw nodded and changed the angle, tilting his head to devour Flynn’s mouth completely, because it was all he’d wanted for so long that he could no longer remember what it felt like not to. He uncurled one hand and let it seek the growing heat between Flynn’s legs, and that was when he was stopped.
Flynn took a firm hold of his wrist and immediately withdrew his lips from Shaw’s. “Not here,” he said. “Not now.”
“I don’t understand.”
As an answer, Flynn tipped his head in the direction of the hammock that swayed lazily in one corner of the cabin. “Not ideal. Doable,” he grinned, “but not ideal.”
Protesting the need for a proper bed seemed perfectly reasonable in the face of his desire, but the more practical side of Shaw bit his tongue, forced to agree. However, stopping wasn’t just about where, but when, and that was a far more pressing issue in his admittedly rather partial opinion.
“Why wait?” He was aware of how desperate he sounded, but the part of him that was capable of shame had long since ceded the floor.
“Seems like this should be something special, doesn’t it?” Flynn asked. “Somewhere we can take our time and enjoy it. Enjoy each other.” He leaned in for another kiss to emphasize his point, and Shaw, mouth full of the man he had been fixated on for too long to rightly call it lust, melted into him.
It had all gone so much better than he could have expected. Better than he was certain even Halford Wyrmbane and his damned meddling might have imagined. Flynn wasn’t simply interested, he was eager. He wanted as much as he was wanted. The question of whether or not that interest might outlive his attention span suddenly seemed ridiculous when he was so invested already; after all, why worry about making it special if it wasn’t something he craved just as deeply? Something he needed as vitally as Shaw himself?
Those were the only thoughts in Shaw’s mind as he nodded, his focus shattered by the arousal burning through his veins, and allowed himself to be disentangled from Flynn like a prickly sea urchin from a fishing net. “When?” he asked breathlessly. His eyes were fixed on Flynn’s throat, and the lone bead of sweat that had left a trail down to his collar.
“Tomorrow night sound good to you?” Flynn was holding him back at arm’s length like some sort of unruly animal, searching his eyes for something Shaw was too aroused to discern. He didn’t really care what it was, anyway.
He nodded. “Where?”
“Come now, I’m sure a man like you can think of somewhere in this great big city where a couple of blokes can have a little fun in private?”
At least four safehouses immediately came to mind. One was in the Cathedral District, a part of the city that would be all but empty after nightfall. It wasn’t the most romantic location he could imagine, but Flynn was right that it would be a considerable step up from the floor of the captain’s cabin. He nodded. “I’ll have the location sent to your room in the keep.”
“I’ll be looking for it.” Flynn leaned down and captured his mouth one last time, holding Shaw’s hands between his. The pad of one rough thumb stroked his knuckles gently, and he shivered at the touch, and the realization of how much he had hungered for it. Somehow, planning their tryst made it seem not so much a clandestine affair as a culmination of a lifetime’s worth of denial, about to be undone in a single evening. And Shaw told himself that if it had to, that would be enough.
He lied to himself as easily as he did anyone else, after all. It was a skill he’d honed just as sharp as any other.
At exactly nine the following evening, Shaw set out from SI:7 headquarters. He was bound not for the small and serviceable home he kept in Old Town, but an even smaller, nondescript apartment tucked out of the way and around the corner from Cathedral Square. It had been a more active safehouse once upon a time, but over the years had fallen out of regular use simply because it was inconveniently located. As SI:7 would never allow an asset of any kind to fall out of its hands, however, the building was maintained.
As for the list of amenities it boasted, Shaw counted only one that actually mattered: it had a bed.
He was dressed simply, expressly for the purpose of the rendezvous with Flynn; boots he could easily slip out of and back into when needed; loose, comfortable clothing that would not feel stifling to hot skin warmed from contact with another; and his hair was, as ever, impeccably groomed. If Renzik or any of the other agents still milling about headquarters had found his change of attire unusual, they were all smart enough not to mention it.
The way in was deceptively hidden around back, through a small alleyway with a stone arch built far too low for most to bother investigating what was inside. Based on local chatter, it seemed like most of the neighbors assumed the alley was a dead end. An inconvenient confluence of adjoining buildings where no other purpose could be found for the space but some out-of-sight storage. They were almost right. What they didn’t see was the sharp turn that hooked the alley back toward the buildings facing the street. Sheer disinterest and lack of attention did the rest, preventing most people from noticing that there was at least one house in that row without a front door.
Shaw waited for the street to clear, double checked his route and ensured he hadn’t been followed, and then slipped into the alley. The windows around the corner showed lights burning inside, casting a golden glow onto the unusually pristine cobblestone below.
Flynn was in there.
He was struck all at once by how unbelievable, unlikely, and to a degree how incredibly risky the situation was. Was it all a mistake? What if the dragons couldn’t return the Bold Arva and her crew to their correct place in time? What if he had revealed feelings that had been buried far too long, left in limbo while Shaw denied them any hope of breaching the walls he’d purposely erected to block them in? Then he would be left with a Flynn who knew. There would be no erasing it, no reset. He would never get another chance.
But he didn’t need one, did he? If this Flynn stayed, then he would simply be Shaw’s Flynn. They were only two weeks apart, it didn’t really matter in the end which one it was. They were both the same man. The same personality. The same insufferably attractive individual, plaguing Shaw’s dreams at night and his idle thoughts during the day.
If nothing else, and one way or another, taking this step would hopefully cure him of that distraction. That was what he told himself, and what he tried fervently to believe.
He opened the front door Flynn had predictably left unlocked, and slid the deadbolt into place behind him. The stairs he took two at a time—not because he was anxious, of course, but simply to be expedient. Yet another afterthought easily dismissed with a convincing lie.
There was only a single room at the top, despite the front-facing layout that suggested otherwise. Inside was a small, one-room apartment, with a wood stove and a few cabinets to hold supplies, as well as a table, two chairs, and the bed. When Shaw opened the door at the top of the landing, that was exactly where he found Flynn sitting. Waiting for him. His coat was nowhere to be found, presumably cast aside wherever his scarf and boots had gone. He was wearing only an open, unlaced shirt and a pair of worn pants that had been carefully patched in too many places to count. He looked as though he’d come straight from tying off and disembarking after a long journey.
Shaw couldn’t say he disapproved.
So, they had both dressed for the occasion. That was as much of a relief as the look of anticipation he could see darkening Flynn’s gaze while he watched Shaw step lightly through the doorway. For just a moment they both waited there, observing one another, each undoubtedly just as lost for what to say. Shaw took another step, and Flynn said, “That’s probably fine.”
A moment of confusion left Shaw squinting, about to ask what that meant, when he heard a sound behind him. The scuff of a boot over floorboards so accustomed to disuse that they hadn’t ever loosened enough to acquire a telltale squeak; the change in air pressure as the door swung shut behind him and the latch fell into place. Someone else was with them.
Shaw, never without something sharp on his person regardless of where he was, spun around to face what his mind was telling him had to be a trap. Perhaps it wasn’t an inconvenient hiccup in time after all; perhaps it was something far more sinister, and this Flynn, the duplicate Flynn, wasn’t Flynn at all. That would explain it all very neatly, wouldn’t it? How else could he have imagined a man like Captain Flynn Fairwind falling for him? A plot was all that had ever made sense.
He was halfway to reaching for a blade when he found himself facing what he at first took to be a mirror.
Just… not one made of glass.