Chapter Text
The Sinner lurked, as he so often did, embraced by the shadows and the dampness of the sea, his movements as silent as the dead of night, his presence only betrayed by the restless ghosts, their heads turning, their empty gazes following his steps; around and around he went, and the ghosts watched him. Flins had no way to ease their unrest, other than to confront Rerir head on, which was something that could pose a legitimate threat to his wellbeing.
Or, he could ask the others for assistance, yet considering the fact that Rerir was lurking around the Lighthouse instead of hunting down Miss Columbina, well, Flins would rather have him there than out in the wilderness trying to rip the kind goddess to pieces. After all, the Sinner wasn’t doing anything of note, and he wasn’t harming anyone, yet, so Flins had no reason to panic, yet.
Perhaps he should have, all things considered, when those accursed abyssal hands slithered out from the shadows, their deep crimson visage scaring the ghosts away altogether, leaving him alone with hands undulating in the wind, not unlike the frostlamps scattered around him, their faint glow almost swallowed by the abyssal presence.
The night was deep, the sky overcast and the heavy, iron coloured clouds hanging low, their bellies wet. Even the sea was uneased, her waves clashing against the cliffs of the island with such intent it created a symphony of booming notes, almost a perfect song. The wind too started to twirl and rush around him, vibrating with a barely contained curiosity as one of the hands almost reached Flins.
Those fingers, long and bony, had a rather delicate look to them.
What if…
The wane light spilling from the top of the Lighthouse illuminated him through the gloomy atmosphere as he reached out, palm up, until the hand’s own palm hovered over his, which seemed to stop the limb’s advancement out of sheer confusion.
“Good evening,” Flins said, employing his best of voices, silky and pleasantly soft in ways it hadn’t been in oh so very long. “May I inquire about your visit tonight?”
As expected, the Sinner did not come out of hiding, and the rest of the hands paused in confusion, as if waiting for a command, for instructions on what to do.
With a smile on his lips hid into the collar of his cloak by a bow of his head, Flins raised his hand enough for his palm to touch the hand’s palm, a gentle brush, a steady connection, and he found it rather fortunate that the hand he was holding had the configuration of a left hand. It made it incredibly easy for him to twist his wrist just so, bend his fingers, his thumb gliding over sharp knuckles, as he held the hand.
“It is alright if you do not wish to tell me yet,” he murmured, bending forward, using his hold to bring the hand up to his lips. He had known already that the abyssal limbs were as cold as the blizzards up North, yet the smooth surface felt a tad lukewarm under his lips. “How fortunate that I am able to entertain you for the rest of the night.”
It was a rather novel experience, to bring a hand closer as if expecting its owner to follow, only to be met with more emptiness, but Flins could make do. He was, after all, never one to back down from an intriguing challenge.
“Say, would you be kind enough to bestow upon me the honour of a dance?”
The hand in his hold twitched, as if irritated by his flowery addressing and by the audacity to ask something like that, yet the other hands drew closer, a right hand with its fingers curled as if wishing to claw at his face being the nearest of them. Flins reached out for it just as surely as he did for the first one, the fingers remaining rather stiff even after he grasped them in between his.
“Would you prefer to lead?” his inquiry was met with a tightening around his fingers. “I do not have a preference, you know, but I shall lead the first dance then.”
Despite its initial reluctance, the hand curled around his shoulder in a rather mild manner, the hold sure yet those deadly long claws barely resting against his jacket.
“Let’s see now,” Flins murmured as more and more hands reached out from the darkness of the isle, their movements slow, as if wishing to witness his insanity before they started tearing into him. “Do excuse any display of clumsiness, I haven’t done this in a long time.”
Slowly, as if coaxing a partner into the movements, Flins started moving. One step, then another, a calculated pace that he timed to the crashing of the waves against jagged rocks and the howling of the wind.
Contrary to his words, and expectations too, his body soon remembered the motions of bygone days. “I used to sit on the side,” he mused out loud, adjusting his grip on the left hand as he started leading his invisible partner into a waltz. “Whenever the fae would circle each other like flickering lights, their touches careful yet deeply calculated, I simply watched.”
The hand on his shoulder seemed to melt into him with each step he took, the grip turning softer, more certain, almost tender.
“If I took anyone into my arms, it was only those I knew would match not only my steps, but my disposition too.”
A twirl, his steps mellow yet the motions faster, enough for the sections of the dance to join into a seamless glide across the moist grass.
“The court had countless dances, and even more so variations, gestures that could betray one’s interest or their animosity."
With the overcast sky darkening the atmosphere, the writhing shadows almost boiling over in a tangible anticipation that tasted sweetly acrid, Flins closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side, just so. As if knowing, the hand on his shoulder slid up, closer to his neck, so Flins could rest his cheek on its sharp knuckles.
“Such a shame, to turn an act as intimate and freeing as dancing, into a social battlefield.”
Another twirl, his back straight as he led the hands in the same patterns, over and over again, his left arm hanging in the air for lack of a waist where to settle it. If only Rerir would dare to step out of the shadows, to take those few steps separating them, so Flins’ palm could find the warmth — or would it be coldness that it would meet? — of his waist. Alas, not many used to ask Kyryll for a dance, and most who did were refused or talked in circles until the dance would be over.
Still, he wondered how it would feel, to have Rerir there, right in front of him.
He doubted that the Vinster King found it useful to teach his pretty little assassin the intricacies of waltzing, for there was no reason to twirl and glide across the ground flooded by the blood of your victims.
“See?” Flins murmured, his thumb rubbing circled into the skin of the hand held in his. “This was not so bad, after all.”
With one last step, he came to a halt, his waist bending as if he were dipping his imaginary partner.
“Were this back then, by the way your fingers have been playing with the hair at my nape, and considering how tight you’re holding my right hand,” he went on, the wind picking up, its roaring a deafening symphony as the first drop of rain fell onto the ground. “I’d keep you like this for a moment longer, enough for you to thank me for the dance, politely mind you, so I’d know that I should pull you up, kiss your hand, and bid you farewell for now.”
Flins did not move, and the hand twirling a strand of his hair remained doing so, while the one in his right hand simply twisted and moved, enough to grip Flins by the wrist. Surely and secure, a shackle he could hardly brush off even if he tried to.
“If not, then I’d bring you up just so,” he whispered, so so soft that the beast would have to crawl closer to hear him, as he moved his left arm closer to his chest. For a moment, he entertained the thought of the creature’s hulking body hanging on his arm, long limbs and boiling power resting prettily in Flins’ embrace. Hah! “And were you amenable enough…”
The waves of the sea, the raindrops splashing against his back, the coldness of them seeping into his clothes until it reached his already frigid skin. The boiling shadows and the countless arms hovering, hands reaching out, fingers almost touching.
“I would kiss your parted lips, and I would bring you back up to your feet while doing so.”
The hand on his shoulder moved, sliding into his hair oh so effortlessly as a pair of hands grabbed Flins by the waist, the hand around his wrist using its grip to pull him rather rudely upright. More hands followed, fingers tightening around his shins, sliding under the garters around his thighs, fingers sprawled in between his shoulder blades and a whole abyssal arm curling around his waist, the hand pressing against the small of his back as the rain fell, and the darkness spread.
The wind cried, and the sea raged, and Flins closed his eyes and tilted his head into the hand cupping his face.
“I accept your invitation,” he whispered amidst the deafening symphony of nature, the buzzing of the abyss closing in a surprisingly quiet and pleasant sound in comparison. “Lead the way.”
The hands did not move.
“How cruel,” Flins lamented, turning his head to speak into the palm of the hand caressing his face. “To deny me this last dance. Would you really kill this lowly fae without granting him this one last wish?”
Dancing with death was something Flins, no, Kyryll did before. Calculated steps and careful plans, hands building a grave with great care, his descent into nothingness slow and premeditated, each and every moment of it a certainty that Kyryll knew.
This? To be held so tightly, the arm around his waist pulling him closer to an invisible partner, a thumb rubbing circles against the apple of his cheek as the fingers in his hair scratched at his scalp? The steps, unknown to him yet clearly rehearsed over and over again, a lull and pull like the ebbing of the tides, the patterns and pace novel yet obviously distinct.
Rerir was waltzing with him to a form unknown to Flins, yet clearly not of the Sinner’s doing.
Perhaps the mad king had deemed it a necessity for his assassin to know how to dance, after all.
Or…
“Quite surprising,” he chuckled, delighted with how Rerir built up the pace, but also took care to give Flins enough room to get used to it. Perhaps the creature was not that far gone, or maybe not gone enough for him to be completely unreasonable. “You are an adept partner, attentive too.”
The hands, so many that Flins lost count of them, tightened their grip on him as if in warning.
Flins would do better to keep quiet. But when did he ever lay a matter at rest, when he could still probe and test it? It simply wasn’t in his nature.
“If only I had where to put my own hands,” he lamented his predicament, his arms bent at the elbows as the abyssal arms twirled and led him through the steps, their instructions forceful but not impossible to follow.
Still, the creature lurked, a moving shadow through the heavy rein soaking Flins to the bones. He did not show his body, but he used the hands to grip Flins’ and to bring them forward, up until a hand could wrap around his wrists. Oh, what an interesting choice.
“A prisoner to your embrace,” Flins drawled, his voice trembling with barely suppressed delight at the sheer madness of the situation. He should be afraid, at least enough to struggle if the hands were to act all at once, yet something about Rerir’s touch through them prevented the fear from catching.
Those long, bony fingers snuffled the flames of terror in their buds with small touches, with a steady grip whenever Flins almost stumbled, with a thumb gliding over his bottom lip and fingers brushing the sopping wet strands of hair away from his face.
On and on they went, the rain and the sea and the wind their orchestra, the dance evolving, growing more difficult only to return to a gentle lull, to the hands on his waist pulling him as if wishing him close to a chest that was not there to meet him. It unsettled him more than the fact that Rerir had his abyssal hands all over his body; the way they fit so well.
“You…” Flins started, only to stop, a flickering flame of self preservation making him reconsider if he wanted to go down that path.
Still, the dance did not stop. Dare he say, it even grew bolder.
Hands slid down his arms, fingers intertwined with his while his bound hands remained suspended not that high in the air — enough to match the height of Rerir’s neck were he there — and the motions turned mellow, thick as honey. Intimate.
“Did she teach you how to dance?”
The question, a wisp of sound lost in the uproar of nature, was loud enough to reach Rerir, loud and clear for the hands to stop and for Flins to remain in place.
With rain sliding down his face, Flins looked through the darkness of the night towards a place not so far away in front of him where the shadows seemed to vibrate, something heavy and deadly writhing in there as if ready to snap. Perhaps, if he dared to bring forth his flames, he’d be certain of Rerir’s silhouette, yet he knew that one wrong step could mean his imminent demise.
So he went lax in the hands’ hold, his fingers tightening around the hands’, his weight all but offered to the limbs to do with him as they pleased.
Slowly, as if loving to torment him with a whisper of the unknown, the hands started manhandling him.
The dip was careful, low and calculated, until raindrops splashed right against his face, the cold water clinging to his eyelashes and sliding down his neck. With his body suspended so, Flins had to bite his tongue from complaining out loud about how his hair was probably soaking in all the mud on the ground.
He could have thanked Rerir for the dance, a clear indication that he’d wish to be unhanded, yet his teeth remained shut, and his lips pursed, until an absolute darkness slid over his eyes, its shadows deep red as the hand over his face pressed almost painfully against it.
It was only then that Flins felt his body seize up in fear, its chilly presence a silent predator, each and every step masked by the howling of the wind, the crashing of the waves. His frigid body felt colder than possible, his flame ready to ignite, yet even his very essence felt damp and weak.
What if he had miscalculated?
What if the oppressing aura coming his way was something he could not outrun?
With his perception sharpening as he awaited for the creature's final move, Flins somehow managed to miss the tiniest of details.
The position.
The way the hand still cupping his cheek tilted his face up just so.
His body, still hovering yet cradled so securely in the hands’ embrace.
The cold, sharp metal of a claw brushing over his mouth made his lips part in a startled gasp, a few drops of cold rain sliding past them, wetting his tongue, before the rain stopped altogether.
No.
Better said, it was obstructed from reaching his face.
His lips remained parted as rough bandages pressed against them, that claw dragging up his cheek as a wisp of cold air was pushed into his mouth, spilling past his tongue and pouring into his counterfeit lungs; someone’s breath.
A certain someone, who retreated as if nothing ever happened, his fingers sliding down Flins’ jaw, his neck, over his still chest to stop at his waist where the hand cupped his waist, an abyssal limb offering its place to its master. Try as he might, Flins couldn’t suppress the shiver going down his spine when Rerir’s hand pressed fully against his waist.
Big, with a sure grip, the claws tapping against his back as rain started splashing once again over his face. Oh so very perfect to hold him, to lead him through the motions of an unending dance. Flins could picture it all, a momentary fantasy dispelled like smoke by the wind as the cold reality came back to him.
Would Rerir go, or would he take?
Flins did not know what to expect, or what outcome he wished for.
In the end, Rerir’s decision came fast and resolutely.
Without any decorum or preamble, all the hands disappeared, Rerir’s included, and Flins found himself gasping on the ground — out of shock more than anything else — as mud started clinging to his clothes, more of his hair as the Sinner disappeared.
He simply dropped Flins to the ground!
“No manners,” he spat, his eyes still closed as he let the rain wash over him.