Wheeling Gull Isle my fondest memory is getting stabbed with a variety of knives. (mtr.)

With his sister returned from Kintla and to his nephew and niece, now it was Vonnaruil’s turn to drift from the mountains. How long had it been since he’d been parted from the coast and its many mighteous males? It seemed that only the sea and the salted season would help to clear his lungs; unstopper the stagnancy in his ivory breast that’d come with the alpines of Diaspora.

The pale crow remembered fondly Severin — that delicious, dark hedonist he’d spent but a night and many hours with. He recalled, too, the gilded Rusalkan @Firefly from further on up — a promise he’d had yet to make due on, and one that, supposedly, may never arrive.

Hm.

Sterling eyes slanted across the surging springtide before and below him; even if he never chanced upon the sort of company he longed for, the crow liked to think he could languish in solitude, at least. With a decided hitch of his tail, the skraw moseyed his way through the sands, and did simply that.

The tide always pulled away from the island in the afternoon, leaving a few hours of empty wet sand as a road. In the days since his arrival Firefly had come to know this and expect it, which was one of the reasons he had taken up a station by the island's easternmost edge—usually found loitering in the forest in the morning hours and then further down the beach as the water receded, keeping an eye on the path in case of misfortune. He did not know what to expect, or even if he was truly guarding the place; at least one boy had crawled from the mainland to the island already and Firefly had not stopped him.

Maybe he was expecting fate to come crawling over too; perhaps an angry raid of Rusalkans trying to hunt the man down, or a legion of beasts from Stormrift set to avenge their fallen leader and wounded friends. A part of Firefly yearned to see those familiar faces again just to spit at them and fill the air with taunting. Had he the power, he would have baited them close and then called for the sea to fill the void—sweep them away with a biblical flourish.

Alas, he could not do such things. He was left to watch the growing gap and listen to the swooping sea birds (gulls, eagles too, opportunists he could appreciate) as they frenzied over the exposed crabs scuttling for cover.

“Brasta!”

The voice, the curse would be unmistakable to anyone who’d been graced with a working ear to have heard it. As it ever would, the throat it sailed from was none other than the crow — assuaged and swooping low as he narrowly evaded a gull by the webbing of its feet. So much for solitude.

But the ivory treader recovered, still cursing and shaking himself out, rocking back into his hocks. ...Eventually, though, his soured gaze soon sweetened when he sighted the corsair from afar the more he picked his way down the vacant shore. 

“¿Mi amor?” He practically trilled, that leonine grin curving scarred lips as he labored his way, abandonlessly, up the rises to reach his... flame, sort of? Flicker, maybe? “What ever are you doing here?”

The squall of birds competing for resources was the closest thing to the Fyre Festival that this place was ever going to get, thank god; but the sound of it was harsh on his ears, and it took concentration for Firefly to shut it out. He stopped watching the beach for just a few minutes (closing his eyes, imagining the birds drowning in the sea or something) when an exclamation that was not avian reached his one remaining ear.

He lazily opened his eyes and began to survey the sand, and was immediately set-upon by that boisterous voice speaking with a sing-song quality across the empty space; a voice he barely recognized, but the sight of the pale fellow crossing towards the island made Firefly raise to his full height and step boldly down from his resting perch.

What ever are you doing here? The foul Dragedan questioned of him. The tone of his voice was almost a taunt to Firefly, and he felt a sudden wave of quarrelsome emotion burn through his skin; if he'd been human he'd be blushing purple and trying to stay composed, but he was not, and could at least hide the uneasy sense of curiosity that sparked alongside his instantaneous desire to get up close and personal to the crow.

Not to kiss his face or anything gay, mind you. To bite him, pin him to the ground — give him a taste of his own medicine. The man swallowed a lump in his throat and countered, I live here. The fuck are you doing so far from the cliffs--? Oh, wait. Your people ran off on you, didn't they. He remembered the moment that Rusalka had realized the warriors had forfeit their claim and felt a swell of pride, but that was swiftly extinguished as he knew he had no right to think fondly of his old haunt.

All it took was one bated breath, one dry gulp of the thinning on his tongue, and Vonn barely heard what amor had to say through the dim of his blood roaring through every irrevocably sensual sliver of his body. The shit-eating grin faltered in favor of leaving the pursed, marred lips ‘o’-ing dumbly.

When he returned the silver of his eyes to the corsair’s— “My sweet sister was pregnant, actually, and elected what remained of the kru to move south.” Silver musculature listed beneath the heft of thigh and hip and stomach; rather tense, quite tense, hard to speak— “Along with that somber swain of hers, I’ll have you know.”

The crow lifted his chin, plainly baring his throat to the taller, more wiry male; hard to blink, to see him through this dizzying, heady veil of want. Fuck, when’d he’d lost his style? The suaveness that’s practically been so innate?—

He didn't like the way the man was looking at him. It was kind-of like the hungry eyes of a zombie, not that Firefly would know. He'd recognize it as the mirror-image of himself if he'd ever seen his own face during a moment of lust but, so far nobody he'd been with had that kind of kink — then again, how would that even work? Find a tide pool? A puddle? Some ice? Why was he thinking about this right now when this gutter-rat Dragedan was crossing so close to his goddamn island.

Blah blah, something about pregnancy which made him snort; his gaze darkened as he imagined a more feminized version of this pale asshole ripe in the belly, but it just didn't appeal. Blame Firefly for ruining all those perfectly good hook-ups and potential families along the way, he certainly placed a lot of blame on himself. It was not something he wanted to think about.

Swain? You use some flowery language. Did someone drop you as a kid? He sniped, sounding more playful than he really meant to; he wanted to rip this guy limb from limb and decorate the high-points of the tidal flats with his body just to make his point clear—but, crap, what was the point he was getting at? I thought that guy died, what with having his throat crushed by that old lady— Caiaphas. He hadn't thought about her in a while and felt his gut twist.

Maybe it wasn't guilt he was feeling. Maybe it wasn't in his gut, but somewhere lower, which he was fighting hard not to focus on.

“Twice I’ve fallen from the peaks of mountains, if that helps,” the crow croaked, voice a bit hoarse, and as Firefly continued his own soliloquy the rogue stept closer. It was a daring move, a foolhardy move, and he shamelessly reveled in the impending heaviness soon to come at his nethers.

But the next words made him pause, and Vonnaruil took that moment to draw in a steadying and futile breath. The scuplted column constricted, worked, as he made himself speak entirely without his own will: “Yes, your old, lovely lady ripped out his throat. And my sister mended it once more.” A curl nocked itself in his riddled snout, at that — two remarkable females had toiled over Verx in their own ways.

He didn’t want to think about the other sex, though. From somewhere between his throat and lungs, a cresting rumble issued; and he trembled with restraint, with want, faint but there. How else could he goad, beg this damned male to just—? “I thought you might’ve liked to feel me straining beneath you,” he sneered, almost panted, “Here I am, and still you won’t overwhelm me. Perhaps I am sorely mistaken? ...Or too superior?”

Old, lovely lady.

Firefly couldn't help but sneer at that; but the look faltered when the pale man spoke again — this time so bold that the guardian was taken by absolute surprise. Not so much for the language used, nor even the imagery that played through his mind (he was pinned to the sand and struggling, a flash of memory and a hesitant desire there he couldn't fully grasp) but for the tensing of his body around those words. His hindquarters shivered at a nearly imperceptible level. He would blame that on his wounds—or try to, but— Perhaps I am sorely mistaken?

He opened his mouth to reply with some witty, sharp-tongued phrase but didn't have time — ...Or too superior?

Fuck you, he tried to spit through a flash of teeth, but his voice wasn't as strong in the moment. It was more like a gasp and it carried with it the deep tone of desire unmasked— the fuck was wrong with him.

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: PIRATES ARE GAY GO MAKE MERMAIDS

Taut as his face had gone, it eased with a simper at that singular insult the corsair could cant at him. His marred lips parted just a touch, breath ragged, “You would like that, wouldn’t you, amor?” He had been more that willing to be the one pressed into sand for this encounter — and for every aftermath, if ever — but it seemed Vonn would be the one to reign once more.

As it’d been with the smoldering Severin, the crow winged forward, and began at the corner of Firefly’s jaw and soon journeyed down his throat; parried between nips, sucklings, and wanton, pressing laves of his tongue and teeth. When he’d given one last, fond gnaw to the shoulder, he moved on with a tender scrape of fangs along the scarred ribs.

Crescenting about him, nose featherlight on those scarred, trembling hocks. Vonn drew himself up, and cast the line of his shoulder and neck along the wiry length of Firefly’s hip and spine. “I am many things,” he rasped, preening at the cocoa fur there, “but I am no defiler. Do you want this? Do you want to feel me?”

He tensed and braced himself for attack despite the dulcet tones of the pale man; figuring they were attempting to throw him off-guard before launching an assault, but he would be ready. It was a split-second, if that. The wolf went for his throat and Firefly rumbled a deep warning that thrilled him almost as much as the closing proximity of the ghost but he couldn't move, struck by a fearful paralysis as the stranger crowded him and — yes, he went for his throat, but not in the way Firefly anticipated. Not with violence, but tenderness. He opens his mouth but can't form words as he is overwhelmed, confused, conflicted — waves of feeling that spread like wildfire with each touch, traveling, consuming.

He braces against the sand and shifts, tries to back up, to hip-check against the man's face as it trails from his spine to his hip; strides sideways as the man asks his alluring question. Firefly falters when another tremble creeps down his spine and through his haunch, and oh how he wants but its not right, none of this is right. But maybe it didn't have to be. He'd done this enough times to know the feeling of lust inside of his body, burning through him, but this was so much more intense. 

Do you want to feel me? The ghost croons, and Firefly recoils further, but he staggers and feels his limbs give out. He isn't strong enough to protest and with a look over his shoulder to the lusting poltergeist, cannot fathom language—his eyes are aflame with so much hunger and he doesn't know what to do with it.

Regarding the look proffered back to him was only more than Vonn could and would handle. In one breath be reined in the last of his sanity; and dispelled it all with another. Consent given, the crow was exceedingly patient as Firefly jostled about, forgave him for his fall, and teased up the line of his spine to show for it.

​Then, with a nudge to the tail, Vonn swept onto his hinds, and they finally — finally — joined. For the corsair’s sake, he went slow, so slow, and paused every half-beat or so to let him accommodate for... well, this foreign invasion. heh

A rasping, unholy groan left him, and for a moment Vonnaruil could only keep himself pressing against and into the burnished male beneath him; nuzzle and mouth at that untorn ear. “Me too,” he wisped, giving a languid, tormented rut — and then another, and another, until he hitched his hips, anchored into his hocks, and began a steady, incremental rhythm.

CUE MUSICAL INTERLUDE!

Firefly couldn't have fathomed the experience no matter how many women he'd screwed in his lifetime, but this was different, and he had wanted it — maybe out of some desperate need, some self-deprecating, hateful, gloriously rotten entitlement. A way of punishing himself for being such a self-righteous asshole to all the people in his life that he'd used and tossed aside.

Firefly knew that he'd wanted this for even longer than that. The first inkling was when the spectre had pinned him to the dry sand—but here, slick from the sopping sand of the retreating tide with drag-marks on either side of his body. The ghost had been careful, diligent, even tender but it was still a new experience and Firefly couldn't help but struggle against it.

They were knotted together as an awkward, tilted inuksuk until the stronger man atop could extricate himself, and the pirate was left sucking air while the skin across his whole body hummed. A part of him was tired of the fight, lazy and groggy as if bespelled by some sinful incantation. Not right, he thought as he felt his body beginning to cool in the sea air. 

Not right — his body quaked from exhaustion and soon enough Firefly would feel tender in places he didn't know could be tender — wrong wrong wrong — and all he could do was lay there seething.

He’d crooned and lilted the entire time; much quieter than it’d been the last time he’d lain someone of the coast. Vonn continued to do such, even after they’d unraveled from another and he’d slung himself out alongside the seafarer. His entire being shivered with exertion, just about spent, and he wished to go again all the same. Alas, he’d had to settle for cleaning his courtesan up, and then himself.

The pale rook was ravenous in a way he hadn’t been in quite some time, so Firefly’s discomfort didn’t immediately register; but then Vonn looked up from grooming a foreleg, and surrendered a crooked half-smile. “You were delicious, amor, if it’s any consolation,” he croaked, and then appraised him with half-moon eyes. “How are your legs?” Dios mio, he hadn’t ran him too ragged, had he?

He melted away in to the sand as if he were built of it himself, dry and brittle, swept by the beating tide of the man's pace until the end and he lay bare upon the beach. He felt the lightest touch of the crow as he tended to him but it was like wading through shallows; he felt the weight of it but there was a drifting, light fashion to it. Like it was happening to someone else and he just happened to be present to witness it. The trembling of Firefly's flesh had ceased, turned cold. His lust was spent and he was filled with an emptiness now and that, in time, would turn in to revulsion, to horror, as he came to terms with what had transpired.

The man should not have been so resistant to the concept of homosexuality — and Firefly certainly knew that such a thing was possible, that it existed in the world — but it didn't apply to him. This beast of a man who had taken woman after woman, fathered children, lusted for the feeling that a woman could give him. This entire event was not right. It couldn't be Firefly that had lusted after the pale man; it must have been a trick, some kind of subterfuge designed by the Dragedan. This was not his own doing. He had not wanted this. He — he couldn't have wanted this.

How are your legs? Murmured the poltergeist — to which Firefly could not respond, the aftermath of what had transpired was still working through him and his mind was reeling; his body felt unclean. After a minute or two he rolled away from the man and left a patch of compressed sand where he had been laying, worked up to a small ridge as he pushed off the dirt and tried to stand, take a step away — only to falter as he had faltered in the beginning, and Firefly had a frightful thought that it would happen again — I'm fine, he rasped, and with another step he kicked a clod of wet sand back against the man's pale face.

His mind was blank, save for the repetitive sound-memory of Vonnaruil's husky breathing, and a growing sense of dread twisting his gut. What did this mean, he thought. What does this make me?

If asked, Vonn would tell the corsair how perfectly, how deeply he felt that revulsion — used to, but instead all he’d gotten was a quip and some sand scuffed at him. Primly, he blinked through the dry churn, promptly shook himself free of it, and surged to his paws when he saw Firefly stumble again.

He was at his side in a few moments, near and steadying whether the pirate wished it or not. Vonn offered his shoulder all the same, and simply mused, “Once, I wouldn’t have thought myself fine with this — bedding males, that is.” He spoke entirely without apology but with every regard in Firefly’s best interest  ( that he tried to discern and feel, of course. )

“Once, I thought that this was some curse set upon me by the tormentor of my past.” A past that he’d allowed Aurëwen to portent to others; a past that he himself seldom spoke about. “When I was a yearling, I had my first female, like most,” was the wry, lewd drawl, “and then, I decided to indulge in the masculine in half that time. I try to not be lengthy about it, but, I no longer feel ashamed of what I’ve become. Nor do I feel endlessly sullied.”

The crow halted, and appraised Fly with a patient, considering — and nonetheless smoldering — look. “There are many beautiful things in this world, mi amor. I told myself it would be a shame to not discover them.” He pursed scarred lips, the infuriating curl returning to them, “If you decide there is no appeal of it to you, then, by all means, return to your females. I certainly wouldn’t blame you.”

The afterglow wasn't a big deal to him when he was with women; especially now that Firefly had been through all that he had, the man would've more than likely gone back for seconds and thirds without a care for his partner's comfort or desires. Maybe it was this ceaseless desire to use those women (especially now that he'd been betrayed by so many) that made Firefly so resistant to the presence of the ghost here in the present. Afraid that he might want more — and when the distance between them diminished Firefly could not help but tense further.

He didn't want to listen to what came out of his mouth. That alluring voice, the soft-spoken memories-turned-lessons that he could've heeded, drawn some sort of understanding from. The ghost spoke of previous conquests and of discovering himself — or some illness that he claimed, was unashamed of — and Firefly felt the empty chill of his blanking mind churn, his gut twist and ache. He didn't need to hear what the ghost said to know that some part of the one-way conversation rang true for himself too, and Firefly didn't know what to do with that.

A part of him loathed being near this man. 

A deeper part was aching for him, but was confused with the ache of his body as a whole; an absence, a guilt.

—by all means, return to your females. I certainly wouldn't blame you. It was like the ghost had somehow filled his mind. It was another trick, he thought. Another aspect of the illness, of the corruption — no, it was wrong. All of this was wrong.

He had to get out of here. Without a sound he pulled away from the company of the ghost and made to leave, struggling a few steps — nearly tripping on himself, clearly walking with a hitch to his gait likely put there by Vonnaruil — and paused with his back to him. Just long enough to spit, Get away from my island.

Though he understood the nature of which Firefly was going through — denial, some disgust — in that moment, what Vonn truly wanted to say was If you are a wastrel in this island then it is tended by none — but he kept that to himself, thinking it better for Firefly to figure that and himself out. Still, a meager part of the specter felt a little stricken by the dismissal, and for the apparent disregard to his past revelation.

Usually, he’d caw about something along the lines of How wounded I am! May I rest my head upon your bottom? (Usually, it worked.)

Vonnaruil instead swept in a flourish of a bow, peered at the turned back with hooded eyes and merely crooned, “As you wish, mi amor. Farewell.” And then he rose, turned northeast, and began to mosey unhurriedly away with a noticeably unhindered gate. It was as silky and refined and roguish as ever; taking his time before he eventually reached the spires; and slow enough in case Firefly wished to respond or stop him.