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Siren Call

Chapter 4

Summary:

Stranded together on a lonely little island, Keith and Shiro have nothing but time.

Notes:

Thank you so much for reading! And to Marlee, without whom this fic would not exist/would not be half as cool! Thank you for so many inspiring ideas and I hope you love the story <3
this chapter is a long boi (with a ratings change) please enjoi

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

 

A siren.

A siren? Even with the astounding proof of it staring him in the eye, Keith hunts for a means to argue. He glances down at the backs of his own trembling hands, assuring himself that he does indeed look nothing like her—no dark, rending claws nor watery sheen across purple-tinged skin. Nothing inhuman about him at all. Nothing.

“You really expect me to believe that you’re my mother?” Keith questions as he shrinks back against the far side of the boat, Shiro’s unconscious body cradled close. The dagger in his hands suddenly feels like far too little for what he faces. “Just because you knew my name? Because of my—because you heard me sing? Who are you, even?”

“Krolia,” she answers, the points of pearly fangs exposed as she speaks. There is a somber lilt to her lips as her gaze roves over Keith’s hardened expression, lingering noticeably on his viciously wounded cheek. “And I could tell you more, if you need to hear it. That your father bore a scar along his eyebrow, right here. That you were born during the Orionids. That it was your father who named you Keith, after a man who once saved his life.”

Keith’s eyes widen further still at such easily offered truths. His palms are clammy where they grip Shiro, his weak legs trembling as he tries to keep them as far as possible from this creature who knows him too well.

“There will be time for such conversations,” Krolia says, a watery hiss to the edges of her otherwise clear, bell-toned voice. “But first, we must find you somewhere more hospitable to rest.”

The siren—Krolia, Keith has to remind himself—tightens her grasp on the longboat, her claws pushing deep into the wood siding along its bow. Then she sinks out of sight, only her slender hand and arm visible, and begins to swim.

The boat is tugged along with her, Keith swaying as it suddenly lurches into speedy motion. He holds tighter to Shiro and scrambles backward to the stern, still clutching his dagger in hand. Too stunned to say anything more, he focuses on drawing deep enough breaths to stave off of the buzzing darkness encroaching around the periphery of his vision.

The long days at sea have done a number on him, truly. Keith knows his body is weak with hunger and fatigue, yes, but has it spread to his mind, too? Only some phantom born out of his memories would know of his long-dead father’s face or the valiant boatswain who became Keith’s namesake. Time and again, he digs his nails into his palms, his wrists, his cheeks, trying to rouse himself from whatever deathly fever dream has him in its grip—one in which sirens are real and his long-lost mother numbers among them. 

All the while, Krolia tirelessly swims and effortlessly tows their little longboat along. Keith lets his head loll against the side of the boat and stares into the water, heart thumping in his ears. The sea seems to smooth out before them, the very currents giving way before her; Keith finds it unsettlingly familiar, for the first time thinking he might understand the awe and perplexion Shiro so often affords his sailing.

In a matter of hours, they must cross leagues and leagues of empty, sprawling ocean. The bright blue of the sky above takes on its first licks of gold and glowing orange. And ahead, an island rises into view.

Keith sits up at once, his witheringly dry mouth parted in a relief so potent that it nearly devastates him. Land. He’d never thought he would be so moved to see it!

The island’s shores are a mix of jagged grey rocks that rise steeply out of the sea and pristine white beaches; its mountainous slopes are blanketed in the green growth of a semi-tropical forest. Birds mill and spin through the air above, their calls like music to Keith’s ears.

Under them, the tide surges. A wave builds out of nowhere, powerful enough to carry their longboat high up onto the sandy beach, gently running it aground. And then, just as quickly, the seawater foams and ebbs, leaving just them and Krolia resting on wet sand.

“This island should be rife with places to take shelter,” Krolia tells him, her words thin and strained. One by one, she pulls her claws free of the boat’s wooden planks and flexes her fingers. “I can tell you are strong. Make yourself a fire and find water, and you will be fine.”

Keith stares at her, trailing the tip of his thumb along the dagger’s grip all the while. Krolia may have ferried them here, sparing them a slow death at sea, but Keith knows nothing of her intentions. Her aid is as baffling as her existence, and if Keith has learned anything of sirens in his young life at sea, it is that they are best known for luring sailors to their doom.

Even if he is her son, and even if Krolia does hold some shred of care for him after the better part of two decades apart… well, any mercy extended to Keith might not be so generously bestowed upon Shiro, who is entirely mortal and all too close to death as it is.

“I know I’ll be fine,” he murmurs with a sidelong look at Krolia, who still lingers too close for his liking.

There is little to do about it, though. Keith’s limbs are leaden and quick to tremble at the slightest strain, while Shiro lies unconscious and utterly vulnerable. There is no quick escape, here. He would be lucky if he could even fight her off, were she to turn those rending claws and sharp fangs onto them.

Or her song. Keith dares not think of what that would do to them, for surely Shiro cannot withstand much more hardship. He trails the backs of his fingers along Shiro’s sunken cheek and then holds his hand to those split, bleeding lips, feeling the worryingly delicate puffs of his shallow breathing.

Shiro has been like this for at least a week. Longer, probably, given that Sendak’s cruelties had delivered him to this state well before Keith found him. That he has stubbornly survived this long is a miracle of the highest order, and Keith is terrified that their luck will run dry at any moment.

Krolia’s eerie gaze drifts down to the unconscious man cradled in Keith’s arms, quietly observing as Keith gingerly adjusts his remaining arm and tenderly touches his back. Her head tilts. Her strangely lit eyes squint. And for a moment she raises a hand, as if to reach out to him—perhaps to help, or perhaps to strike. 

Keith takes no chances. A warning glint from the dagger in his hand gives her pause, and for a long moment, he holds her stare with a look of utter murderousness. If she is offended by his unspoken threat, she doesn’t show it. Rather, the corners of Krolia’s mouth curl into the barest smile and her sharp, inhuman features gentle.

“Keep singing to him,” she advises, her clawed fingers curling as she withdraws her hand. “If you wish to see him live.”

“Of course I want him to live!” Keith snaps back, his temper and patience both threadbare. His anger burns hot, like a spark, and then fades into weariness. His fingers curl into the crimson coat draped around Shiro’s shoulders, squeezing him as tightly as he dares. “Just begone already.”

Krolia’s expression doesn’t even flicker at his outburst. Keith barely takes notice, though, his gaze instead cast down on Shiro’s slack, sweat-sheened features, worry overrunning his every other thought.

While he gathers Shiro’s limp form into his arms and tests the strength left in his limbs, Krolia slowly retreats toward the sea, crawling her way down to the frothing waves rolling onto shore. Her movements are anything but fluid and elegant here, away from the deep waters from whence she’d first emerged—like an octopus caught on dry land, she drags and slinks her way over the wet sand, only regaining her composure once she is surrounded by the lapping waves of the incoming tide.

And Keith finds some measure of relief in that. Krolia may have ways of commanding the sea itself, but it seems she cannot stray far from the ocean without it taking a heavy toll.

Where she sits in the surf, the sunset highlighting her glossy wet skin in pinks and golds, Krolia seems just as aware of the divide—resigned to it, her stare trailing after Keith as her fingers curl down into loose sand.

“I will be here again tomorrow,” she calls out as Keith staggers to his feet with Shiro draped in his arms, summoning reserves of strength he had not known he had.

The way she says it leaves something unspoken hanging in the air. If you care to find me again. If you need me. If you should not fear me so much.

Keith pauses just a step from the longboat, held by some thread of want that he can barely justify, let alone understand. It would be easier to turn from Krolia and never see her again, the way she had apparently turned from him. Easier to pretend that nothing she had said struck home, too steeped in reality to dismiss. Easier to ignore the possibility that he might truly be less than human, every bit the monster that his harshest critics had named him.

Keith draws a shaky breath as he turns from the sea, arms straining under the weight of even a half-starved Shiro. And then he looks back.

“Alright,” he acknowledges, his voice almost too soft to reach Krolia. He nods at her, once, and then turns to leave.


Keith takes refuge in the first passable shelter he finds—a cave, dry and shallow, with trickling waterfalls coursing down the mossy cliff face it occupies.

Darkness is already falling as he cuts down palm fronds and rushes to spread over the cavern’s stony floor, making some cushion for Shiro to lie upon. In cupped hands, Keith gathers fresh water to slake his own thirst, to wet Shiro’s lips, and to wash his festering wounds clean once more. And then, left with little else to try, Keith starts to sing.

Maybe Krolia’s words hold some truth. And if there is something unnatural in his blood, then maybe some good can come of it, at least.

He sings whatever refrains come to him. Anything that sounds right. Anything he knows Shiro likes. And all the while, he strokes along the matted tangles of Shiro’s hair, dismayed by how much of the white is stained with washed-out pinks and rusty reds.

Around dawn, Keith finally slumps into slumber alongside Shiro, atop the same bed of rushes and palm fronds, with his crimson jacket laid over the other man as a blanket. At sunset, he wakes again to feed Shiro a few handfuls of water and starts singing to him anew.

And by the next sunrise, Keith notices some color in Shiro’s hollowed cheeks. He blinks, rubs his eyes, and crawls closer to make sure.

Impossibly, fantastically, Shiro does look less sallow than he had just yesterday. His breathing is deeper, stronger, and more even. His skin doesn’t feel like it’s aflame with fever, and even the blistered, peeling sunburn seems to have faded.

Perhaps Shiro, perpetual fighter that he is, only needed water and better rest to turn a corner. Or perhaps Krolia’s enigmatic advice was worth heeding. Perhaps both.

Regardless, it hasn’t worked all miracles. When Keith gingerly checks Shiro’s back, he finds the lashmarks are still carved deep, although they look less angry and raw. They still look and smell like some infection has settled in, though, which makes worry rise like bile in the back of Keith’s throat. The wounds must be a source of constant agony, Keith thinks, and he wonders if maybe it is a mercy that Shiro has slept through so much.

And while Shiro continues to rest and heal, the task of properly caring for him consumes a very willing Keith. He had vowed to stay by Shiro’s side and stave off death itself, after all. He labors to the fullest, relieved to at last feel as though he can actually do some good.

With Shiro looking a sight better than he’s been since Keith found him, he chances the risk of leaving him alone for an hour or so. If they mean to survive here, he needs to find food and build a more livable shelter. And if they mean to one day leave—and to survive the trip—that little longboat from the Sincline might be their only hope.

With that in mind, Keith slowly picks his way back down to the beach they’d arrived upon, feeling winded by the short journey. There are still supplies nestled in the belly of the boat—flint, ointments, rope, a flare, and his fine gloves that are now likely ruined with sun and seawater. Canvas, too, which Keith hopes to retrieve and fashion into some good cover for when it inevitably rains.

As the forest gives way to open sand, the roll of the sea and the calls of its birds growing louder, Keith startles to find Krolia sitting there on the shore, waiting.

His steps waver and then stall, his hand habitually settling on his sheathed dagger. He hadn’t expected—well, he didn’t believe she would really come back. Not the next day, as she had said. And certainly not two days after that, even after Keith failed to show himself.

Krolia, for her part, surveys him with a calm that borders on impassive. Kneeling there among the rolling surf, she looks like some figment conjured out of seafoam and surface tension. It is nigh impossible to tell exactly where she ends and the sea begins, or if that distinction is ever truly constant.

“You returned,” she greets, her lovely, almost predatory features brightening. “How does he fare?”

Keith chews the inside of his cheek for a moment, torn between his wariness of this unknown siren and his gnawing curiosity to know more, if only for Shiro’s sake. He just doesn’t know how to speak to a mother he has never met nor barely heard of—a mother who isn’t even human, and who thus marks him as something inhuman, too.

That she seems to have concern for Shiro’s fate is… reassuring, though. Marginally.

“Better. Much better,” he begrudgingly admits, stepping in closer to the longboat. Some ten feet separate it from the reach of the lapping tides; he guesses Krolia’s reach cannot extend much further than that. Quietly, he asks, “Do you really think my singing helped him?”

“By the look of that man when you first came ashore, you might have been the only thread still tethering him here,” she says, her mouth curving into a faint smile. “If your song can sway that mortal’s soul to stay on this side of the Styx, then coaxing his body to heal ought to be no more difficult.”

Keith has no words to answer that astounding supposition, although his heart quickens at the hope that he can do for Shiro what he had so ardently promised. He idles there in the sand for a moment, his toes curling into the dry grains under his feet, and flusters under Krolia’s quiet scrutiny.

“I thought sirens’ songs were for luring sailors to their deaths,” he eventually says, scarcely tearing his eyes from Krolia even as he kneels beside the longboat and starts rifling for anything of use. “Not for nursing them back to health.”

Krolia’s lips part in an open-mouthed inhale, her wet hair shimmering like silk. Though she makes no move to draw closer, the way she leans forward and buries her hands into the foamy sand suggests that she would like to. “Our voices are far more commonly used to that end, yes—humans have a regrettable habit of sailing into waters they are not meant to wander. But that is not the extent of what you can do, or I.”

Distracted from the task at hand, Keith finds himself feeling along the curves of his upper ears, assuring himself that they bear no resemblance to Krolia’s long, pointed tips. His canines might be a little sharper than others’, and a smidge longer, but they’re not fangs. But for all the outward ways that he appears as human as his father, Keith cannot shake loose the worming, bewildering feeling that everything Krolia has said is true.

“I have no idea what it is that I can do. Or what I am doing, even,” Keith huffs, jaw squeezing tight as he resumes hastily unloading the longboat. “I haven’t done anything but parrot old tavern songs and shanties. I don’t know any ancient siren songs or magic words. I don’t even have a nice voice.” 

Krolia closes her eyes and smiles to herself, her head giving the barest shake. “I think every mortal walking this earth would disagree. You sing beautifully, Keith. Passionately,” she says, a warm note of pride slipping into her praise. “And your intentions matter more than the words you choose. The stronger you feel it in your heart, the more powerful your song will be. And your feelings must run deep.”

Warmth crawls up the back of Keith’s neck and itches under his skin. He’d been lost in thoughts of Shiro when Krolia first heard and sought him out, unaware that anyone or anything might be listening to his private, mournful lament. And while he cannot quite bring himself to hold it against her, he is far from thrilled that she’d come across him in such a vulnerable state.

“How many other half-sirens are out there?” he wonders out loud as he bundles up the supplies within the canvas, cinching it into a tight bundle to carry back—anything to turn the tide of the conversation from his feelings and how nice his singing is.

“None other, as far as I am aware,” Krolia answers. “Unions like mine and your father’s are exceedingly rare.”

It doesn’t surprise Keith terribly. And it does make sense to him, in some all too fitting way, that his very birth would leave him out of step with the whole of humankind. Little wonder that the other children his age had found reason to avoid him! Others must have been quicker to sense what he had been blind to—that he never did really belong, not fully, and never would. 

“Just me, then,” Keith murmurs as he picks up the tightly folded canvas under his arm and stands, suddenly feeling the weight of a secret he knows he will have to bear all the rest of his life. “Alright.”

“Keith. Wait. I brought something for you to eat,” Krolia calls out, already dragging a stuffed net out of the shallow surf. From a distance, Keith can see it teeming with movement. “You still look as though you have barely eaten.”

“I haven’t,” Keith confirms, and neither has Shiro. He takes an uncertain step forward, a little dizzy just from the mention of something to eat after so long spent subsisting on water and slim pickings. Another step closer and he realizes the netting is filled with crabs, scallops, writhing eels, and bunches of purple and green seaweed.

His stomach gives a plaintive whine. Keith sighs and trudges closer, until the sand under his feet is cool and wet.

“You need not come any closer,” Krolia tells him, holding up a slender hand.

While Keith watches, she lifts the heavy bundle of seafood and lets an errant wave buoy it out of her grip. As if guided along on a string, it bobs its way directly to Keith, a surge of water depositing the seaweed and shellfish right at his feet.

He glances up, his eyebrows arched high. “How did you do that? That’s—”

Krolia smiles, her sharp teeth tucked away behind the slightly sly curve of her lips. “A parlor trick, as your father would have called it,” she splashes against the water pooled around her hips and sends the current swirling, a tiny whirlpool weaving its way along the shallow roll of the tide before it disperses in front of Keith. “My bloodline—your bloodline—shares an exceptionally close bond with the sea. I would not be surprised if you inherited some similar gifts.”

“I… I have been called unnaturally lucky when it comes to sailing,” Keith says, thinking of Shiro’s starry-eyed journaling about him as he scratches his stinging, itching cheek. He inches closer, until his toes brush the writhing net of seafood and waves lick hungrily around his ankles.  “Knowing how to pass through reefs. Being able to find ships. Or avoid them, sometimes. Is that what you mean?”

Krolia’s smile splits into a grin, bearing pearl-white teeth and pointed fangs. “That is part of it, yes. Master that connection well enough and you can will whirlpools into existence,” she tells him. “Or out of it.”

Keith’s eyebrows rise even higher of their own volition. Everything Krolia says sounds too impossible to believe—but here she is, a siren, sitting before him in flesh and seafoam. How long can he cling to doubt after encountering a being straight out of ancient myth?

“You know, that really would’ve proved useful about a week ago,” Keith dryly mumbles.

“I can only imagine,” Krolia says, her head tilting as she looks up at Keith and the halfway-healed slice up his cheek. Then her chin dips down again, her hands dipping down into the rushing seawater. “I have more to give you, too, before you go.”

Keith follows the distorted shape of her hands under the water, alarm trilling through his tensed muscles—until he notices what lies in the surf beside Krolia, gently pushes back and forth by the passing waves. Arrayed around her are cloudy seaglass bottles, tightly bundled rolls of kelp, and glittering shells unlike any he has ever seen.

“What is all that?” he asks, squinting at the shifting colors under the surface.

“These are cures for your human lover, drawn from the deepest and most unknown reaches of the sea,” she says, turning to pluck a few out of the water whilst Keith feels every ounce of breath evacuate his chest, leaving his lungs to curl and shrivel out of shock. In ones and twos, Krolia sets her gifts adrift, the current once again ferrying them toward Keith.

“He—no, no, he’s not my—Shiro is my captain,” Keith manages to say through the burning flush that engulfs him from head to toe, half worried that the water lapping at his ankles will start to steam, “and my dearest friend. That is… that is where things stand.”

Krolia turns and stares at him for several long moments, her expression inscrutable. “I see…”

Her flatly disbelieving look is anything but comforting. Keith curls his lips inward, almost wishing he hadn’t said anything at all.

“Regardless,” Krolia continues, once again in motion, “you may use these to help him heal faster. And yourself, too,” she adds, looking pointedly to the poorly tended slash across his cheek.

It takes a few seconds for Keith to lurch back into motion after being so taken off-guard. That Krolia would go out of her way to bring them food and aid makes Keith want to trust her. He wants her cures to work, to help Shiro recover, to bring him back to himself as soon as possible. Keith wades further out, stepping around the net of seafood—close enough that Krolia could grab him by the ankle and drag him out to sea, if she were so inclined—and bends at the waist to pluck up the shells and jars bobbing patiently toward him.

“What do I do with them?”

“Apply these mixtures to his wounds, in this order,” Krolia says, pointing out the bottles to him by the hazy, clouded colors of their glass, “and then bind his wounds with this kelp before you sing to him again.”

“And these snails?” Keith asks, squinting as he peers into one of the spiraled, gold-flecked shells. There is some slug-like creature nestled inside, gooey and golden and translucent in a way that reminds him of honey.

“You eat them.”

“Oh.” He frowns and starts filling his pockets with snail shells and wads of wet kelp, long past the point of caring if his clothes soak through. “And how do you know these things will work safely on him? A human, I mean.”

Krolia’s smile softens down to a small, slight lift of the corners of her mouth. As she looks upon Keith, the corners of her eyes crease and the set of her slim brows eases. “They worked well enough for your father.”


Keith trudges back to the cave with his arms laden, weary and hungry as he sets about starting a proper fire. Once his stomach is filled with crab and fresh, springy seaweed, he fishes out the deep-sea cures Krolia gave him, testing each one on his own cheek before delicately dabbing them over every scrape and laceration still carved deep into Shiro’s flesh.

He blankets Shiro in the strange, purplish kelp and then covers his sleeping form with the too-small jacket. And, careful to leave a bit of space between them, Keith lies down beside Shiro and sings until his tongue grows tired and slumber takes him, too.

By the next morning, he cannot deny the results.

There is a soft, rejuvenated glow to Shiro. His skin is warmed through with life, all the burns eased away to reveal skin that is sun-kissed and golden and vibrant, a slate wiped clean of its many ugly bruises and carelessly-given cuts. His rest is peaceful. Without the pained creases that had etched themselves into his expression, he looks like a spring youth without all the cares of his commission weighing upon him night and day. Even the wicked gashes across Shiro’s back have finished mending themselves, the scars faded down to smooth, slightly off-color flesh overnight. 

Satisfied that Shiro is well-healed, Keith touches his fingers to his own cheek, feeling for the gouge that has been radiating pain up and down his jaw for a week. It… doesn’t sting at the slightest touch, which is an improvement. He has no mirror by which to check his own appearance, but he can form a mental picture as he traces the span of it. There is still a noticeable divot where Sendak’s sword had caught him, and his skin feels raw at its edges; his healing isn’t as drastic as Shiro’s, it seems, but Keith can live with that. He is pleased enough to have softened the severity of the wound before Shiro wakes to see it.

If he wakes.

Keith trusts he will, though. Sooner rather than later, he hopes.

With a hand folded around Shiro’s, Keith sings to him once more. His recent conversation with Krolia sits at the forefront of his mind, and he makes a conscious, willful effort to draw Shiro back to him—to beckon him forth out of whatever distant dream has gripped his mind while his body clung to life by fraying threads. It is the work of hours, leaving Keith’s throat raw and scratchy for lack of rest. He weaves his intentions into words spoken from fond memory and notes drawn from the heart, and eventually Shiro’s breathing shifts, his placid expression pinches with sleepy confusion, and his eyes blink open.

Keith has never been so moved to see that familiar burnished grey.

Shiro’s voice is as rasped and grating as sand over dry wood as he murmurs out a weak, “Keith?”

“Shiro?” Keith squeezes tight around Shiro’s hand without thinking, his every muscle spasming tight in wondrous surprise. Then he lets go, trading his rigid grip on Shiro’s hand to cup his face, to smooth over his hair, to grasp at his shoulders, worrying over every inch of him. “Shiro! You’re—you’re awake! You woke up. How are you? Are you in pain? Does it hurt here? Do you need—”

“I’m guessing I was out longer than the last time,” Shiro interrupts, his head lolling weakly in Keith’s direction. It is labored and faint, but he tries for a smile.

“I—yeah. Yes. You were,” Keith says, sniffing and wiping at his nose as he fights back a small waterfall of ugly, grateful tears. “Much longer and much worse for wear. I was afraid, Shiro. Deathly afraid. For you.” 

“Mn,” Shiro acknowledges, his eyes slipping shut. It takes a few moments for him to muster the strength to open them again, his stare wandering before it finds Keith once more. “The last thing I remember is being bound to the main mast of the Purification for a few days,” he says, something flickering in the depths of his eyes as he searches Keith’s gaunt, scarred face. “I don’t imagine Sendak simply handed me over to you.”

“No,” Keith tells Shiro, stroking over the matted tangle of Shiro’s hair. It’s more for his own comfort than Shiro’s, at this point. “He’s dead. By my hand.”

“Dead?” Shiro echoes, blinking slowly. His dry lips part, then purse, and then open again. “How did you even find me, Keith? Much less save me?” 

“Sheer stubbornness. I told you once before that I’d protect you, didn’t I?” Keith says, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I had to make good on my word. And it didn’t hurt that I had some assistance, particularly from Allura. I don’t know about the state of the Purification itself, unfortunately, but hopefully Lotor left it broken at the bottom of the sea.”

“Lotor, eh?” Shiro shifts slightly where he lies, like he’s testing his own body after so long without use. “That’s interesting.”

Keith grunts and settles back down on his folded legs, quietly watching as Shiro flexes his hand, curls his toes, and works his jaw loose. Shiro seems to take stock of himself a little bit at a time, continually surprised at how little pain lances through him with each movement; he works his hand under his lower back, feeling for the worst of the injuries he can recall, and his eyes blink open wide when he finds his flesh whole and healed.

“Keith… just how long was I asleep?”

“Ah. Well, you were unconscious when I first found you, which was around a week ago. I have no idea how long you were out before that,” Keith glumly acknowledges. Only Shiro would know what had transpired about the Purification at that time, but whatever torture he’d been put through might well have robbed him of his memory of it. A flare of anger takes hold in the pit of Keith’s stomach, like a dormant sea serpent uncoiling, and there is a tremble in his voice as he asks, “What did he do to you, Shiro?

As soon as the words leave his lips, Keith regrets them.

A flicker of anguish crosses Shiro’s features, too reflexive to be squashed out. Then he swallows, smiles, and offers, “That doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

No. No, it doesn’t, Keith supposes. The damage is done and the perpetrator punished, and Shiro deserves to spend the rest of his life without sparing a second thought for Sendak and his ilk.

“I will say,” Shiro adds after a moment, wincing through his smile, “that keelhauling is exactly as awful as it appears.”

Keith’s hands tremble, itching to soothe Shiro as much as they yearn to find Sendak’s pierced throat and strangle the life out of him again. If he were still the Red Shrike—and if Sendak hadn’t already fallen under his blade—Keith would make it his business to drag Sendak behind the Songbird at twenty knots, day and night, until the abrasive salt water and hungry sea creatures had picked him apart.

As things are, Keith can only take Shiro’s hand between his own and murmur, “You ought never have had to endure that. None of it. But you’re strong, Shiro, to have done so. To have fought for so long, so fiercely.”

Shiro gives a faint, gently disbelieving hum. “I cannot say I feel particularly strong at the moment.”

“Are you hungry?” Keith asks, shuffling closer. He grabs one of the eels he had skewered and smoked above the fire, offering it to Shiro. “I have some sea snails for you, too. Or do you need more water, first?”

“Eel first, water second, sea snails third,” Shiro quickly decides, cracking a small grin as Keith breaks off chunks of pale, delicate flesh and hand feeds him without a second thought. It’s a woefully light meal to start, but that is for the best—gaunt as he is, Shiro likely can’t stomach too much at once. 

Water comes next, spilling around the corners of Shiro’s mouth as Keith helps hold a water skin to his lips. Once Shiro feels up to it, Keith helps pull him up into a sitting position, one hand braced gently at the small of Shiro’s back.

Shiro eats a little more, drinks a little more, and questions Keith left and right: Where are we? An island? Did you swim us here? Oh, you rowed? What latitude would you say we’re at? Does it seem like any ships have passed close by? Have you been taking care of yourself, too? Keith, you look like you’ve been run ragged.

And as Shiro starts worrying and fretting over him in turn—his scarred cheek, his disheveled appearance, the dark circles under his eyes—Keith sighs through his open, relieved smile and savors the sound of Shiro’s voice.


Krolia brings more gifts from the depths the next day: squid and urchins and rich, fatty fish to supplement the wild fruit Keith forages on the island; a chest pulled from some wreck god-knows-where, filled with relatively untouched clothing that smells of sea salt and cedarwood; and an artfully-carved whale bone comb inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

Keith alights on the comb at once, eager to put it to good use.

He tells Shiro that he found the chest washed up on shore, miraculously intact. While Shiro happily marvels at their good luck and sifts through its contents, Keith quietly gnaws the inside of his cheek. It doesn’t feel good to lie to the one person who has always tried to do right by him, but he knows it will feel worse to broach the truth. Shiro will have questions—many of them, all deserving an answer—and Keith isn’t ready to face them.

How is he even to go about admitting that he is only half human? That his mother has fangs and wicked claws and watery flesh? That spellcraft comes so naturally to him that he never knew he had it? Men have been hanged for lesser suspicions of sorcery, assumed cursedness, and the sheer misfortune of being markedly different.

Keith puts all thought of his siren blood out of his mind, unwilling to further weigh what it might mean for Shiro’s view of him.

They share a meal, picking fine bones out of whole roasted fish, and then spend a number of hours shoring up the canvas that stretches over the entrance of the cave.

With their shelter better braced against the rough winds that suggest an oncoming storm, they settle together in front of a low-burning fire for the evening, with Keith perched on the chest Krolia brought him and Shiro sitting cross-legged right before him.

Keith takes the carven comb to Shiro’s tangled hair, diligently working through each knot from the bottom-up. After, he rubs his hands with a few precious drops of the oil that came with the longboat’s supplies and runs them through those coarse strands, restoring more of their usual shine. And if he lingers on the task a few minutes more than is absolutely necessary, neither of them have any complaint.

Shiro’s hair is so much paler than Keith remembers it being even a month ago. Just a few thick streaks of midnight black are left, stark and striking where they cut through the silvery-white that crowns the rest of Shiro’s head. Silvery-white like moonlight reflected on still water, or the seafoam that crests whitecaps in choppy winds. A color that makes him look as ethereal as any siren—so alluring that Keith would unquestionably chase him down to the deepest, darkest reaches of the ocean if he had to.

“Mn. Thank you, Keith.” Shiro sighs, rubbing at the scruff grown in along his jaw, and idly complains, “Wish I could shave, too.”

“It doesn’t look bad on you,” Keith tells him, but offers right after: “You can borrow my dagger, though, if you’d like. It’s plenty sharp.”

Shiro half-turns, looking back over his shoulder at Keith, and gives him a rueful smile. “That dagger?” he asks, gaze flitting down to the wickedly honed blade at Keith’s hip. “Without a mirror? Keith, I already have one very prominent facial scar. Surely two would be a bit much?”

The last word ends slightly clipped. Shiro quietly sucks in air between his teeth as his eyes dart to the fresh scar laid into Keith’s cheek, then away, like he’s worried of making light of something that now afflicts Keith, too.

For his part, Keith just smiles.

“Then I’ll do it for you,” he says while tying back Shiro’s neatly combed hair with a strip of cloth cut from his own crimson jacket. The red looks good against Shiro’s black-and-white hair. Better still, it feels like Shiro is wearing a little memento of him. “If you trust me with a blade so close to your throat, that is,” he teases.

Shiro twists a little more where he sits in front of Keith. Under the fading light of sunset and the flickering of the dying firelight, his expression takes on an even softer warmth. “Of course I trust you, Keith.”

With buzzing sparks astir in the pit of Keith’s belly, he warms some water over the fire, works the soap into a lather between his hands, and then oh-so-carefully takes the edge of his dagger to Shiro’s skin.

His every movement he makes is painstakingly delicate, unwilling to give Shiro even one scrape or bloody nick. Each short stroke clears away a little of the lather and the sparse, dark hair grown in around Shiro’s mouth, along his chin, down from those usually-neat sideburns. Keith takes his sweet time, the pads of his fingers light on Shiro’s jaw as he turns his head this way and that. Inwardly, he marvels at how unquestioningly Shiro does trust him—enough to lean back into the open splay of Keith’s legs, the back of his head cushioned against one lean thigh, his eyes closed while his bowed neck lays bare.

But that’s always been the case, hasn’t it? Hasn’t Shiro always held more faith in him than anyone else? Hasn’t he always thought higher of him, expected more of him, and wanted more for him?

As the razor edge of the dagger glides up the strong, handsome curve of Shiro’s exposed throat, Shiro swallows; Keith watches the gentle bob of his Adam’s apple, entranced by the movement. He thinks of trading the blade for his own hand, running a thumb up along the column of Shiro’s windpipe and feeling him swallow. He thinks of pressing his lips there, testing the smoothness of Shiro’s freshly shaven skin under his tongue.

And then Keith exhales, adjusts his grip, and sets his mind firmly on the task of shaving the underside of Shiro’s sharp, square-cut jaw.

Keith has never understood where Shiro’s willingness to believe in him spawned from in the first place. He certainly didn’t deserve it back then, as a cutthroat pirate who’d have just as soon sunk the Calypso and Shiro with her; as a terror on the seas, sending men much like his own father to early deaths for the ill-fate of crossing his path.

Maybe that was his siren blood at work, he muses, long before he’d even known of it. He chased rather than lured, but the result was the same: drowned sailors, sunken ships, and his own little legend as a foreboding, bloodthirsty creature. In hindsight, it seems that he had always taken after Krolia, despite his human looks.

And as he washes his dagger clean and helps dab Shiro’s face dry, Keith can’t help but wonder if Shiro’s trust in him would falter if he knew that the man he’d taken in was not even fully human, born out of a lineage best known for bringing ships to wreck. Would he, like Keith, reflect on all his past actions and see them in a new light?

What would Shiro think if he saw Krolia slithering through the surf with a haul of squid and writhing eels in tow, her long claws raking through the sand and her pearled fangs bared? And what would he think if he knew the same blood ran in Keith? If he realized that Keith might possess the same bewitching powers of his siren mother?

What if he suspected Keith of using them?

… What if he had?

He turns away from Shiro and squats to stoke the embers of the fire, frowning. Unbeknownst to himself or anyone else, Keith had spent all his life at sea quietly making use of gifts that apparently came from Krolia’s bloodline: the gut feelings he had about currents; whether storms were billowing beyond sight; the unspoken sense of where pitfalls and reefs and deep harbors lay; the way any ship could move faster under his hand, could be more nimbly maneuvered. Things he shouldn’t and couldn’t have managed, if he were only human.

And then there’s the singing.

Keith swallows thickly as he starts slicing apart one of the small sea creatures that he’d left strung over the fire to dry and smoke, fixing himself and Shiro a supper of squid, freshly foraged seaweed, and some boiled, cassava-like roots he’d found. And while his hands move, his thoughts start to race round and round themselves, dredging up worries like silt at the bottom of the sea.

How many evenings had he sung for Shiro, behind closed doors? Dozens and dozens, at least. He’d thought it safe because Shiro never reacted the way others had—dazedly vacant or hungrily leering, quick to forget themselves and reach out for him with unsettling interest—but that doesn’t mean his voice had no effect. If his singing is as powerful as Krolia thinks, couldn’t it influence Shiro with ease, unbeknownst to either of them? If Keith can heal Shiro with his voice, could he not hurt him as well? Cast some kind of spell over him? Exert his will and bend Shiro to it?

The realization plunges Keith into doubt, the sensation more chilling than a steep drop into arctic waters.

He has heard enough stories to know that sirens are meant to be alluring, captivating things. The notion doesn’t seem to fit him in appearance—he lacks his mothers strange, ethereal beauty, certainly, along with her talons and pointed ears—but perhaps it bleeds through in whatever music he makes, or other things yet unseen and unrealized. Perhaps his father was made immune by the blood he shares with Keith, but Shiro… 

There is nothing to protect Shiro from whatever strange means of manipulation Keith has. From whatever oddity he is.

Maybe that explains the frankly inexplicable goodwill Shiro has shown him from the start, so captivated that he risked his own life to convince Keith not to throw away his; it would make far more sense than Keith winning a navy captain’s confidence on his own, if he’s being honest. And when he’d sung for Shiro—with love in his heart, whether he had recognized it yet or not—how easy it would’ve been to let his own wants impose themselves on his unsuspecting friend.

Shiro is too kind-hearted, really, and too willing to extend his trust, and Keith has always thought those traits as unwise as they are endearing. When he first threw caution to the wind and sang for his captain, he was delighted that Shiro didn’t change into some glassy-eyed, unsettling version of himself; at that moment, Keith fancied that Shiro was different, that Shiro was special, that Shiro alone could hold at bay whatever caused others to react so troublingly to his voice.

Now, he has good reason to consider otherwise. Maybe it isn’t that Shiro was strong enough to resist whatever siren charms Keith has in spades, but that he was more susceptible to them from the very start. Perhaps Shiro only looks at him as softly as he does, with as much unflinching trust as he does, because Keith’s influential nature has left him with little choice in the matter.

“I can practically hear you thinking over there,” Shiro says, interrupting Keith’s spiraling, worsening thoughts from the other side of the fire, pouring fresh water into their cups. He comes and settles near Keith, puts down their drinks, and takes a soft cube of the root vegetable from the wooden plank in Keith’s hands. “What is that scowl for? I thought you liked squid.”

“I do. I do,” Keith murmurs, stuffing a few rings of it into his mouth and chewing to buy himself time to muster some convincing words. “Just… thinking about how we’ll ever get off of this island. If we can get off. And how long we can survive in the interim.”

“Ah.” Shiro rubs along the slightly reddened skin of his smooth, freshly-shaven jaw. “Well, we will cross that bridge in time. Or perhaps some ship will moor itself nearby to resupply their water. Hopefully a Coalition ship,” he adds, his eyebrows giving a little rise, “as I am currently lacking a sword or a pistol.”

Keith hums in absent agreement, eating away at their supper plate while staring into the low-burning fire.

“And you have already done a marvelous job of setting us up here, Keith,” Shiro continues, leaning his head forward and purposefully edging into Keith’s unfocused frame of view. “The shelter. The bed. Even this fresh clothing. And the food, goodness. I can scarcely fathom how you have found the time to forage and catch and prepare so much. I would not be able to feed myself half as well, if I were stranded here alone.”

“It’s nothing,” Keith says, shooting Shiro a furtive glance as he shrugs one shoulder. In truth, it’s Krolia who has made light work of feeding himself and Shiro, always dragging some bounty from the sea along with her—not that Shiro can know that.

“It is far from nothing,” Shiro argues, resting his arm atop his bent knees. “You have saved my life many times over, Keith, but this time… this time you went to ridiculous, awe-inspiring lengths to do it. And here you are doing it again by keeping me alive and well, even on a deserted island in the middle of god-knows-where.”

Keith’s chest jerks with a dry, half-humored scoff. “Quite the predicament.”

Shiro smiles, and for now his mild expression doesn’t share a lick of Keith’s despondency or frustration. With a sigh, he moves himself closer to Keith, so their shoulders brush together where they sit beside the warm glow of the fire just beyond their makeshift shelter. “It is. And I find myself thoroughly grateful for it, all recent events considered.”

The subtle pull of Shiro’s warmth is one of the greatest temptations Keith has ever known. His heartstrings cinch tight. He hooks his fingers around each other, knotting his hands together to refrain from making any errant moves. How he wants to lean against Shiro and be assured that the man’s overgenerous affinity for him is all real and of his own volition rather than a sign of Keith’s siren traits preying on his inherent kindness.

His mind’s eye flashes to that last drawn-out, excruciating day in the longboat, clinging to an unconscious Shiro while scattering kisses over his bruised, sweat-covered skin. With the spectre of immediate death looming over them, it had felt right. Comforting. Certain. A pittance of what he and Shiro might have had. Now, with all of the urgency removed and the possibility of his mother’s siren magic at work in his veins, Keith is suddenly, immeasurably relieved that he never did confess his feelings in so many words. It would feel worse, he thinks, if he had.

He folds his arms around himself, grasping at his own elbows, and forces himself to recoil from the gentle heat Shiro gives off—subtly enough to go unnoticed, he thinks, while keeping a sliver of air between them. Then he stares adamantly into the flaring embers of the fire, wishing he could be more alone with his thoughts. Wishing he could slip down to Krolia’s beach without Shiro knowing or growing suspicious, to lay a whole new set of questions at her proverbial feet.

Beside him, Shiro shifts again, further widening the narrow gap between them. Then he sighs, troubled and sympathetic. As Keith continues to pointedly skirt his gaze, Shiro instead tips his head up to look at the stars that have begun to wink into view across the darkening sky

“You know, if I am to be trapped on a tropical island, potentially for the rest of my days,” Shiro offers in whisper-soft tones, his voice a soothing counter to Keith’s quiet turmoil, “I am glad it is with you.”


That night, a raging storm batters the island for hours on end, wind ripping at the lean-to of wood and palm fronds that blocks their cave’s entrance. Cold, wet air snakes its way past the canvas and into their meager shelter, snuffing out the last feeble embers of their indoors fire. And as the thunder reverberates all around them, like the growl of a creature that has them in the pit of its stomach, Keith feels Shiro shift closer to him upon their reed bed.

He can feel Shiro shivering, so near that each intake of breath causes Shiro’s chest to press into his spine. So near that Keith can feel the coolness of Shiro’s exhalations on his nape. Close, but not quite close enough to pool their warmth in any meaningful way. So while flecks of cold rain chase their way into the cave and thunder shakes the heavens and the earth around them, they lie there, uncomfortably awake.


They wake late the next morning, lazy from interrupted slumber and sticky with sweat from a humid, sunny morning.

Despite the less than restful night and Keith’s pleas for Shiro to take it easy, Shiro insists on helping to clean up their storm-wrecked camp. Shades of his usual stubbornness rear their head in his many declarations of, ‘I promise, I feel fine,’ and ‘Let me help or I will go stir-crazy here,’ and ‘No, no, I can do it myself,’ and Keith almost finds the familiarity of it as comforting as it is exasperating.

After lunch, Shiro suggests they range a little further out together, exploring reaches of the island that Keith hasn’t yet scouted out. And though Keith desperately wants to steal away to the shaded stretch of beach where Krolia visits, he cannot bring himself to deny Shiro, willful and optimistic as he is.

They end up pacing the coastline all the way to the far side of the island, heretofore unseen. Shiro’s voice crests over the ever-present rolling of the nearby waves, filling the air. He speculates aloud about where they might be located within the vastness of the ocean, and points out flora and fauna that look curiously unfamiliar, and moans despondently about all his books and painstakingly-kept journals that were lost when the Kerberos was attacked.

“I was able to salvage your violin, at least,” Keith pipes up as they trudge through the silky white sand, the fine grains warm as they sift between his toes. “Matt has it in safe-keeping, for now. Did I mention that already?”

“What? No, I had no idea, Keith,” he says, head whipping in Keith’s direction. He wears a makeshift sunhat Keith had tried to weave out of long, broad-leaved grasses to better shield Shiro’s skin from any more burns; the end result is ugly, misshapen, and fraught with holey gaps, but Shiro insists on wearing it anyway. “How? I mean, that is wonderful, but I hadn’t—I didn’t expect much of anything to be recovered.”

Keith gives a mild grunt in agreement. “It was lucky, how it washed up ashore. It’ll never play the same, if it plays at all, but…”

“I would still be glad to have it,” Shiro tells him. “It means a great deal to me, regardless of its condition. So, thank you, Keith.”

Keith can’t help but smile at Shiro’s pleasure in hearing the news, although it is tempered by the gravity of their situation. “It’s the least I could do, Shiro. And even then, I guess it doesn’t make much difference where the violin is if we remain stuck on this island forever.”

Shiro hums a low, thoughtfully concerned note and then lapses into silence, letting the chattering of the island’s birds take over. “Where did you beach the longboat that brought us here? Is it still seaworthy?”

Keith nibbles at his bottom lip and picks at the sand under his nails. “I… don’t know if it could carry us through another long voyage,” he says, measuring out each word.

“Perhaps we could find a way to modify it, make it sturdier,” Shiro mumbles to himself, now clearly preoccupied with the thought.

Inwardly, Keith quails. Leading Shiro to the longboat is as good as leading him to Krolia, who always seems to be waiting when Keith appears, and Keith cannot even guess at how severe Shiro’s reception to her might be.

Hell, Keith’s own reaction to Krolia was less than cool and collected, and he is her son. Shiro has no such blood ties to reassure him, even a little, and he cannot imagine what thoughts the man might turn to upon realizing he is alone on this island with a death-dealing siren and a death-dealing half-siren.

They tread another hundred or so paces, rounding the curve of a little inlet, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Keith’s eye keeps sliding seaward, out over the waves that spill across the shore, half expecting Krolia to appear here, too—as a gliding shadow under the surface, like a shark prowling the shallows for prey, or as a beautiful woman fashioned out of water itself, dripping and glimmering where she rises out of the waves. There is nothing stopping her from visiting wherever the island’s shores meet land, really. There is no reason she couldn’t be observing them right now, just out of sight.

A sudden gasp from Shiro startles Keith to the quick. He has barely turned, barely set his fingers to the grip of his dagger, when Shiro seizes his shoulder and gives him an excited jostle.

“Keith, look,” Shiro tells him, equal parts urgent and thrilled as he starts loping quicker across the sand, tugging Keith alongside him.

Following Shiro’s line of sight, Keith spies a curious silhouette on the beach up ahead: a ship. A small, single-masted cutter, by the looks of it. A vessel meant for speedy sailing, judging by the shape of the hull that sits exposed where it rests heavily upon the sandy beach. One meant to be exceptionally difficult to catch.

“Where do you think her crew might be?” Shiro ponders, running his hand along a plank of wood near the bow that is painted with the name Interloper.

“Not around here,” Keith guesses. The exposed wood is dry, but not so sun-baked and aged that it has begun to shrivel and gap. It landed here just days ago, perhaps.

There is no sound of life within the beached cutter, nor any signs that a stranded crew has been living out of it. And this close, Keith can tell that the Interloper is in awfully good condition for a ship run aground. Sure, the mast is listing heavily to one side and there are parts of the railing in need of repair, but they have trees aplenty on their little island. The rudder might be jammed, but that can be fixed as well. The sail can be mended, if there isn’t a spare left aboard. All in all, it is easily salvageable.

Keith wanders around the ship, a hand trailing over its sun-dried planks of wood, marveling at their fine luck. It’s the perfect size ship for them, really, probably built for a full crew of twenty or less—large enough to weather a storm and harness the winds, but small enough that they ought to be able to manage decently with just the two of them to steer and handle the rigging.

Along the starboard side, Keith grips onto the railing and hoists himself up onto the sloping deck of the grounded cutter. Then he turns back, gripping Shiro’s offered hand, and helps heave him aboard, too.

“Keith, our luck might be turning around,” Shiro says, half-smiling even as he pants from the exertion on his still-recovering body. “This could be our way off of this island. Our way back home.”

“She’s in good shape,” Keith comments as he carefully wanders above deck, one hand always on his dagger and one eye always on Shiro. The cutter is fairly nondescript, built for speed, and bears no flag. “Might’ve belonged to smugglers.”

Shiro grunts, easily agreeing with the assessment. “They do love fast ships. Not unlike yourself,” he adds, winking at Keith.

Keith’s skin flares hot from that wretchedly tiny gesture alone; god save him from this man and his effortless charms.

He darts below deck to hide the flush crawling up along his cheeks, seeking the shade. The cutter’s hold is still stocked with barrels of pitch, rum, oil, dried stores of food, carpentry tools, canvas, and more basic necessities. The tiny cabin still has blankets and clothing that haven’t yet gone musty, along with account books that detail a rather impressive number of illicit ventures between Coalition and Empire territory.

But there is no recent sign of the crew that had manned the smuggling ship. The hammocks in the cramped hold hang empty. There are chests of clothing still sealed and untouched—until Keith picks the locks, that is, and grabs up armfuls of shirts and breeches that they can make use of. There is little sign of a struggle or any grave damage that would’ve sent the cutter limping to the nearest shore.

It is as though the Interloper’s crew abandoned a perfectly sound ship.

“What do you think happened here?” Shiro asks as he slips on a large pair of boots they’d found, looking equal parts relieved to be spared from constantly walking barefoot and perplexed at the state of the ship they’d stumbled upon. “The crew, I mean. Could they be somewhere on the island, too? But if they were, why would they leave behind all these supplies?”

Keith hums in lieu of an answer. His fingertips ghost along the spokes of the helm, imagining how deft this small, flighty ship must be when she’s out on the waves—and how unlikely it is she would ever end up here like this, intact and empty.

Whatever happened to this cutter’s crew, Keith doubts they’re sharing the same deserted island. He doubts they’re alive at all.


While Shiro takes a rest in the cool shelter of their cave and finishes sorting out their new supplies, Keith wanders back to a familiar stretch of shore to fetch their supper for the night. He passes the empty longboat, paces to a jutting path of dark basalt a bit further down the beach, and settles down on the stone.

The sun sits low in the sky, hovering just above the horizon. With a sigh, Keith dips his legs into the cool saltwater, submerging them up to his bent knees, and then swishes his feet back and forth. It doesn’t take long for a dark shadow to arrive underneath the breaking waves, seeking him out.

Krolia’s face breaks the surface of the water first, followed by a plume of deep, seaweed-purple hair. Her body seems to coalesce just as she rises up out of the ocean, seafoam crowning her head and a shimmering coat of water across her skin. Her glistening form catches the remaining sunlight like crystal, gleaming in a million tiny facets, and makes her already-ethereal features appear even more alluring.

Once again, Keith finds himself with a deeper understanding of why sailors would flock to her if she beckoned them, despite the biting fangs behind her full lips and the dark talons that tip her slender fingers. 

“I did not know if I would see you today,” Krolia says from where she drifts amid the waves, letting herself be gently pushed and pulled by the tides. “Or tomorrow, even.”

For Keith, her tone is hard to place—longing or disappointed? He can’t quite tell, but it is hard to imagine being missed by anyone but Shiro. He still isn’t sure what he is to Krolia—progeny worthy of interest now that he’s demonstrated some siren talents? A passing curiosity for her, as his father must’ve been? A child she cares for enough to spare him a slow death at sea, but not enough to remain a fixture in his young life?

“Well… I’m here,” he lamely answers, shrugging his shoulders. “With questions for you.”

“I see,” Krolia says after several long seconds of silence have lapsed. “I have something for you as well.”

Keith expects more sea snails or a string of fish for roasting, but Krolia only raises her hand, those clawed fingers curled into a loose fist. She drifts closer to the stone where he sits, reaches up, and spills a handful of pearls onto the hexagonal surface of a basalt column within arm’s reach of Keith.

“I understand humans to be fond of them, even when they serve little use,” she explains.

The pearls roll and bounce over the rock, a few tumbling into crevices or back into the ocean. Most of them are a lustrous, creamy white, but a precious few verge on silvery or golden or rich, shimmering black. And Keith, who had never before been one for gemstones or jewelry, finds himself admiring the unnecessary gift—less for himself, though, and more for whether Shiro might fancy them.

“Thank you,” Keith says, gathering up the pearls and pocketing them. Krolia has no use for them anyway, it sounds like, and if he leaves them here they’ll just be swept back into the sea. “I appreciate how much you’ve given us. Me. Especially the things that helped heal Shiro. I can scarcely believe how well they worked. Like magic.”

Krolia lays her hands atop the stone and rests her cheek upon them, looking up at Keith as she gives a wan smile. “All the real magic left in the world lies at the bottom of the sea. Sharing it with you is the least I can do, Keith.”

Keith wonders at that. Wonders at Krolia, who had once seen fit to leave him and his father with nary a word but now lays all the bounty of the sea at his feet. He understands her as little as he understands the tangle of emotion coiled tight within his own body, wrapped around heart and mind alike. It is easier to imagine that Krolia is not so different from the depths of the ocean itself—a force of nature, mysterious and unfathomable, unfazed by human whims—but time and again, she acts in ways that undercut all of Keith’s wary expectations.

“We found a small ship around the other side of the island,” he says, not quite looking Krolia in the eye. “One in very good condition. One small enough that a measly crew of two might be able to see her safely to the nearest port. Still well-stocked, too. I’d guess it can’t have been beached there more than a week.” He pauses, his stare meeting hers. “Was that your handiwork?”

Krolia’s head tilts a scant few degrees, the impression of a smile left faint on her lips.

“You needed something a bit sturdier than that,” she says, swishing a flick of water toward the longboat still resting high on the shore, “if you mean to return to the rest of humankind once more.”

The admission only adds an air of certainty to what Keith had already expected. Known, really.

“Is it lacking in some regard?” Krolia asks a moment after, some concern trickling into her soft, musical voice. “Or do you merely object to my providing it?”

“No and no,” Keith quickly answers, shaking his head. Even if his newfound mother did drown a crew of smugglers and steal their ship, he has precious little room to criticize, considering his own past. “We do need it, if we’re to have a chance of sailing home, and a cutter like that will serve us well. And I’ve been known to put crews to the sword for lesser reasons, so…” 

Krolia nods to herself, satisfied that Keith is satisfied, and bobs along in the water.

“And you would be fine with my leaving this island, then?” Keith questions with slow, hitched words, watching Krolia’s face for any flicker of reaction. “Easy come, easy go?”

At first, there is only the placid cool of her usual expression. Then Krolia’s water-flecked features contort, perturbed, before softening down into something more resigned. “Fine is not the word I would choose, no. But I would not keep you here, nor hold you back from returning where you belong.”

Tentatively, she draws herself along the half-submerged pillars of stone, closer to where Keith sits with water licking up his calves. When Keith makes no startled movement, no objection, she lays her slender hands atop a low rise of rock, water pooling under her palms. Her talons scrape across the basalt as she pulls herself up and halfway out of the sea, her fluid form twisting at her hips; she sits at an angle, as Keith might imagine a mermaid would, with her legs and feet still submerged.

Extending this far out of the water, Krolia looks more… solid, at least from the waist up. More likely to hold firm if Keith were to touch her, rather than dissolve and spill through his fingers. More humanlike, although her ears still have pointed tips and her skin is still a deep, cool shade of mauve.

“I know that our first meeting must have come as a shock to you on so many fronts, Keith. I have never begrudged you your mistrust,” Krolia starts, as if worried Keith is liable to bolt inland at any moment now that she has closed the gap between them. “And I never, ever anticipated that I would be apart from you for so long, and years of absence—time lost from the people you love most—is not an easy thing to mend, much less in a matter of days or weeks.” 

Keith doesn’t have the words to answer that. Doesn’t even know where to begin grappling with it, although the word love sticks in his ears like an echo that just won’t fade. He came here to ask about Shiro, about what can be done to undo anything untoward his songs might have done to the man, but instead Keith finds himself drawn to a subject he has pointedly avoided ever since meeting Krolia.

“But you left,” he says after a minute of silence steadily swelling between them. “Or maybe we did. Either way, I never knew you. Never even knew of you. And how can you—how can anyone love someone that they don’t know?”

Krolia’s slender eyebrows pinch inward and her lips part, and the look in her strange, gold-tinged eyes is almost grief-stricken. “I am sorry, Keith. Parting from you was a necessity, never something I wished. Whether you believe me or not, I do love you. I always have, from the moment I first held you in my arms.”

Keith’s shoulders lift as he draws in a swift, shaking breath, his hands braced on either side of himself. Even after meeting Krolia, he had thought himself long past the point of needing or wanting a parent again; it seems that childhood yearning for the mother who’d always been lost to him is hard to shake.

“You were… a surprise,” Krolia tells him, her eyes wetter along their corners even as she smiles. “Half-sirens are a rarity for a reason. We were overjoyed, though, Keith. Both of us.”

She pauses, glancing down and to one side.

“But it quickly became apparent that you took strongly after your father,” she says, on the verge of a sigh. “The sea is the source of my strength, and I cannot part from it. Yet its waters were too cold for you, its salt and sand too harsh on your skin. So often, I could only sit nearby and watch your father hold you.”

The severe, tensed set of Keith’s shoulders softens slightly. Krolia is almost near enough to touch, if he wished to reach out to her.

“Your father was a solitary man, and while we enjoyed our life together, we both agreed that our circumstances were not right for you. You deserved better than utter isolation, with only your parents for lifelong company. You deserved more than a mother who could never join you on land, nor nurse you when you took ill, nor sleep beside you when you were frightened,” she adds, her voice trailing into a rueful, hoarse-throated whisper. “I knew you would fare better in the human world with your father, among people more like yourself.”

But I didn’t, is what Keith half wants to tell her, curling his hands into the stone underneath him. I didn’t fare better. Even surrounded by people, I grew up alone. Even aboard ships crowded like jars of sardines, I was alone. First no mother, then no father, and no one left to mourn me when my turn inevitably came. 

“Father told me you were gone, when he ever spoke of you at all,” is what he says instead, at a loss for why he had been left in the dark for all of his life. “Why couldn’t I see you even once? We had a cottage right by the shore. A stone’s throw from the beach.”

Krolia shakes her head, her eyes squeezing shut. “Myriad reasons. When your father took you back to the mainland, you had no memories of me. We thought it would be easier if we kept it that way, lest you mention a strange woman in the sea to the townspeople and raise their suspicions. Lest the wrong people see you speaking to me. Lest anyone begin to murmur that you yourself might not be entirely human.”

Keith can see the reason in that, even if he finds it no less bitter and disappointing.

“Your father thought to tell you the truth once you were older,” Krolia whispers, as though that might console him. At Keith’s prolonged silence, her gaze drops to the short stretch of empty stone that lies between them, idly scratching a long, dark claw over its surface. “Once you knew well how to keep a secret. And after you’d had a chance at a normal life, so that you could choose for yourself how or if I might fit into it.”

Keith draws his legs up out of the cooling seawater and plants his heels on the basalt, resting his chin upon his bent knees. He lets out a breath and finds his chest lighter afterward, his body a little less tense. These aren’t satisfying answers. They don’t undo the years of loneliness he’d spent on his own, nor the way he’d grown into something stunted and hard and prickly as a result. But the reassurance that his mother had wanted him, missed him, loved him? It does manage to soothe some of the deeper bruises in his heart, lessening an ache that Keith had long tried his best to ignore.

He had spent so much of his childhood wishing for either his mother or father to be around, and now he has been granted that very opportunity out of the blue.

Keith’s toes, slightly pruny from their soak, curl in on themselves. “So… how did you two meet?”

“It would be quite a long story,” Krolia sighs, her smile brightening even as the glimmering look in her eyes turns fond and faraway, “best saved for another time, as I am certain Shiro will be missing you shortly. But for now, I can tell you that he saved me, once, when I was at my weakest, and later I spared his life in return. On an island not so unlike this one, we grew to know and love each other.”

Keith can’t help but smile at that. “Did you ever see him after we left? When he was out sailing?”

“We crossed paths, yes,” Krolia answers as she slips back down into the water, quiet as a solitary raindrop. At once, her skin softens to its usual semi-translucent, watery sheen and her kelplike hair billows with life. Cradled by the ocean waves, she immediately appears more comfortable. “I could not always tell when or where he was out on the sea, but sometimes I would feel this… little pull in a certain direction. And when I did, I would swim leagues and leagues until I saw his ship on the horizon. We would look for each other during his night watches and steal a few words—and a few touches, once, when he leaned too far over the railing and fell overboard.”

Keith gives a short chuckle, the recollection of what his father looked like a bit hazy as he tries to picture him toppling over the side of a merchant ship and right into Krolia’s grasp. And then he sighs at all this talk of his father, his smile slowly fading. With his arms still looped around his legs, Keith squeezes himself tight and says, “I wish he were still here.”

“As do I, constantly.” She folds her hands upon the stone and rests her chin atop them, her dripping eyelashes lowered. But then her gaze lifts, settling warmly on Keith. “He would be overjoyed to see you now, Keith—a man of fierce loyalty and conviction, with a kind and generous heart.”  

Keith rolls his head to one side and huffs out in disbelief. He is a great many things, but neither kind nor generous would make first billing.

“Do not scoff at me,” Krolia warns, although her voice lacks the venom that those sharp fangs call to mind. “I may not have had the opportunity to meet him yet, but I am certain your Shiro would agree with me.”

Shiro. Right.

“Well, of course he would. That’s just how Shiro is. He’s always thought more highly of me than anyone else. Even myself.” He thinks of the lost journals that had named him Eurybia’s Star and can’t help but smile, despite all his worrying; Shiro is, at his heart, a sentimental and stubbornly optimistic man fascinated with the world around him, and that will never be anything less than endearing. Quietly, almost urgently, Keith adds, “And I’m afraid I might have wronged him, because of that.”

Keith glances back toward the shore, nervous that Shiro will come looking for him and somehow stumble onto the very path that leads here. With a soft grunt, he eases himself off of the basalt pillars and slides down into the high tide alongside his mother, letting the saltwater soak into his breeches and lick its way up to his chest. It’ll be easier to duck out of sight this way, just in case.

“Keith?” Krolia murmurs as she glides in closer, an air of attentive concern about her. Her hands rise from the water, hovering well shy of taking Keith by the shoulders the way she wants to.

“With all this half-siren nonsense I never knew about,” Keith continues, just able to keep his voice from cracking,  “the more I find out, the more I’m afraid that I tricked Shiro into—I don’t know, caring more than he ought to? Treating me well at his own expense? I just—I sang for him so much, and well before the longboat incident. Even if he didn’t respond to it like everyone else, it had to be doing something to him, didn’t it?”

Keith takes a moment to breathe. He feels weary, the weight of his worry like an anchor hung around his neck; it is a smidge lighter, though, having been able to voice them aloud to the one person who can hopefully understand them.

“I cannot claim to know everything,” Krolia whispers, her hands finally cupping around Keith’s shoulders and giving him a gentle squeeze, “but I will tell you what I do know. A siren’s song can work great and terrible wonders, but whatever it makes a mortal feel in their heart—lust, ardor, admiration—is ultimately illusory. It fades when the song ends or when they die, whichever comes first. The first genuine emotion to follow is usually confusion or abject terror, in my experience,” she adds, almost offhandedly.

Keith quietly nods along, exhaling in relief at the reassurance of any damage he’d done only being temporary.

Eye to eye with Keith, Krolia continues. “Is Shiro a different man when you sing to him? Does he lose all control of himself? Does he clamor to touch you and promise you everything under the sun? Does he drop to his knees, awed and overpowered?”

“What? No. No, he’s not at all different. Nothing like any of that at all,” Keith chokes out, equal parts horrified at the thought of witching Shiro into passion and at the low, quickly-squashed thrill the picture rouses in him. And then Keith has to wonder, “Why is that? Only he and father have heard me and brushed it off.”

Krolia’s lips curl up into a smile, while the look in her eye wavers somewhere between deeply pleased and mischievous.

“There is one thing which seems to dull the hooks of a siren’s song,” she says, “which at its most elemental and innate seeks to cause an infatuation which can overpower the senses—even that of self-preservation. But if the listener is already truly adoring, truly devoted, truly loving of the siren they hear, what room is there for a lesser illusion to take root?”

It takes time for Krolia’s meaning to ripple through Keith’s mind and dissipate into some semblance of understanding. On its heels comes a smarting blush and a wave of self-consciousness. Keith immediately sinks down into the water, out of his mother’s sight, to soothe his burning skin and let the steady woosh of the barreling waves off the shore quiet his pounding thoughts.

When he rises up out of the dark, sunless water again, it’s to the sound of a low, subdued laugh slipping out between Krolia’s pointed teeth and full lips. She is already within arm’s length, still bubbly with amusement at Keith’s sudden shyness. Careful of her claws, she parts his wet locks and combs them out of Keith’s face—tenderly, affectionately, the very picture of the doting mother he had never been privileged to know. 

Keith finds he doesn’t mind his mother’s touch at all; not even while he feels so vulnerable, both in and out of his element as they drift in the shallow, swirling waters along the beach. He closes his eyes and swallows, his adam’s apple bobbing against the water that laps up against his throat.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean, um, romantic love,” Keith slowly reasons out, wary of letting his carefully managed hopes run away with him. If it can be said that Shiro loves him, it’s a mite more realistic that it would be as a friend or a brother before anything else.

“No, not necessarily,” Krolia concedes. “A father’s love for his son can be just as powerful and unwavering.” Then, with a lift of her brow, she adds, “But I have seen the way he looks at you.”

“What?” Keith startles right out of her reach, splashing as he wheels backward. “When?”

“Just this afternoon, as you walked along the beach,” Krolia answers with a cheeky shrug of one shoulder.

Keith sighs. He’d expected as much. No wonder he’d felt so keenly that she might be near, ready to pop up out of the sea at any moment.

“It’s more complicated than that. Even if Shiro did feel for me in that way,” Keith says, nearly stumbling over his own tongue, “there are a hundred good reasons for him to never pursue it. So it’s—it isn’t worth seriously considering.”

“Oh?” Krolia tips her head, her voice high with feigned curiosity. “And what are these reasons?”

“His status, his good reputation, his father’s ire,” Keith rattles off. There’s quite a rabbit hole he could travel down if he really wanted to make a definitive list. “My checkered past doesn’t help matters. And now there’s—” he gestures toward himself, “—the whole siren deal, too.”

“More unlikely matches have been made, you know,” she reminds him, her smile half sly and half proud. “And he would be quite lucky to have you.”

Keith snorts in blatant disbelief, then sinks lower into the sea as Krolia’s pleased expression quickly withers. Feeling the need to defend both his response, he rises back up just enough to speak without saltwater spilling into his mouth. “You haven’t properly met Shiro yet. If you had, you’d understand.”

“Mhm,” Krolia dryly agrees without really agreeing at all, her eyes following Keith as he rests nose-deep in the waves, ready to wink out of sight at any moment. “I have met you, though, and you are a fine catch yourself. Have a little confidence, Keith.”

Keith drops back underwater, a flood of rising bubbles left in his wake, unable to bear another second of Krolia’s mortifyingly generous flattery. When he reemerges once more, his hair plastered down to his skin and his chin dripping, it’s to quietly murmur, “He’s done more for me than you can imagine. It’s hard to feel worthy of someone that good.”

“But you are. Would he ever have twined his life into yours if he thought any less?” Krolia gently reassures, her soaking hair spilling to one side as she tips her head. Under the blackening water, beyond sight, she finds Keith’s hand and takes it into her own. “Look, the sun has already set. You should get back to Shiro before you are too long missed.”

Keith nods, treading his feet until they settle back into loose, sifting sand. Before he lets go of his mother’s hand, he gives it a light squeeze. “I should. But thanks for listening to me. I like having someone to talk about father with. And siren business. Or half-siren business, anyway.”

“I will always help you in any manner I can. I have many lost years to begin making up for.” Krolia hesitates for a moment, her eyes squinting underneath those long, perpetually dewy lashes. “If you would like me to.”

Still trudging his way up out of the surf, Keith nods. Smiles, too, to his own surprise. It’s been ages since he’s had a living parent at all, let alone a mother, and while the feeling is still enmeshed in awkward uncertainty, he thinks he could definitely get used to it.

“Before I forget,” Krolia calls out just before she fades into the nighttime-dark water that rushes up from the sea, only a swirl of foamy seawater left in her wake. The soothing sound of the waves rolls on. And then she reemerges just as suddenly, her watery shape turning solid as she hauls up a woven net packed with shells and shellfish, and presses it into Keith’s arms. “For you and Shiro. And I hope that one day soon I will be able to meet him properly, as you said.”


After reuniting with a relieved Shiro, Keith starts roasting the oysters and crabs in the low embers of the fire. He picks the meat free with the tip of a small paring knife they’d found on the abandoned ship, piling it up atop a waxy leaf. He tells Shiro to help himself more than once, but Shiro refuses to take a bite until Keith is finished and ready to eat, too.

They bed down not long after, Keith curled on his side as he lies awake half the night wondering how he will ever broach the topic of his mother with Shiro. 

In a strange way, he misses the clarity he had felt as they laid in that little longboat lost at sea; how much easier it had been, then, to flay himself bare before Shiro and make his every reserved thought known, unafraid of incurring any toll on their bond. Now, all of that desperate courage is nowhere to be found. Knots of anxiety tangle around Keith’s guts, cinching tight and forcing a cool sweat along his brow before loosening just long enough for his breath to steady. His certainty crests and ebbs from one minute to the next.

Shiro had accepted him even as a murderous pirate, had forgiven him even after winding up on the pointy end of Keith’s dagger, and had tarnished his own reputation to defend Keith’s, so perhaps he could take a bit of siren blood well in stride, too. Or… maybe this is a bridge too far, even for him. Even if sailors weren’t already the most superstitious creatures to walk the earth, Keith knows that these are not traits liable to endear him to anyone: ties to the dreaded sirens of ancient myth, inhuman blood in his veins, and a predisposition toward sea sorcery.

While Keith wrestles for the right words—ones that will let him be truthful to Shiro without risking the loss of his good will—Shiro himself wrestles with some figment of his imagination.

At first, Keith takes it for the man’s habitual sleep-murmuring, but Shiro’s lips don’t move with half-formed orders or Keith’s own name, dreaming of work even while he rests. No, it’s nothing like that.

A cool sweat rises along Shiro’s temples, glistening bright under the thin shafts of moonlight that pour into their shelter. Furrows grow between his brows. That strong, squared jaw clicks with the heavy grinding of teeth. His eyes twitch frantically under their lids, and as Shiro’s breaths turn shallow and fevered, a groan keens out of his parted mouth.

Keith hesitates, neither wanting to embarrass Shiro nor disturb his well-earned slumber. But as Shiro’s sleeping form curls in on itself and his murmurs turn low, pained, whimpering, Keith cannot stop himself.

He reaches out for Shiro in the dark, gripping his shoulder and jostling him awake, his hands running down the man’s flanks and up his chest, trying to soothe away the awful phantasm that had gripped him. Shiro rouses in a daze, his breathing still quick and short; for a moment, he doesn’t seem to recognize Keith at all, a fearful glimmer in his watery, unfocused eyes.

And then the last of the nightmare’s fog releases him, Shiro’s long lashes fluttering as he blinks away the last of whatever horrible picture his mind’s eye had painted for him. When the weight of his gaze settles on Keith anew, it is with relief and weariness both.

“Keith.”

“Sorry to wake you, Shiro,” Keith tells him in low, apologetic tones. His hands linger on Shiro for a moment, frozen where they’d been when Shiro woke; then Keith withdraws them, tucks his arms close to his body, and curls his fingers into the rushes underneath them. “Whatever you were dreaming about sounded unpleasant.”

“It was,” Shiro croaks back. “Very unpleasant.”

He clears his throat and lets his head drop back onto their grassy bed, his chest shuddering with a long, stuttering exhale. His eyes squeeze shut tight, as if blocking out the lingering thought of it, his fine features pinched with distress. And then Shiro seems to remember that Keith is here, right beside him, watching on in concern; he abruptly rolls onto his back and tips his head aside, away from Keith’s sight, drawing in a long and unsteady breath.

“Shiro?” A long beat of silence drags by. In a whisper, Keith asks, “Is there anything I can do?”

“Nothing to be done about it,” Shiro eventually answers, sighing as he rolls back onto his side and faces Keith once more. He still looks a little haggard, a little haunted around the tired droop of his eyes, but the flicker of a dry smile over his lips is obviously meant to reassure. “But I appreciate being awoken.”

Keit gives a low, agreeing hum. No one enjoys being trapped in the quicksand of a dream gone awry.

“I know it’s been weeks,” Shiro murmurs shortly after, “or at least I think it has, anyway… but sometimes, my mind is still there.”

Keith’s chest tightens with foreboding. “Sendak’s ship?”

A miniscule flinch runs down the length of Shiro’s body. “Mm.”

Keith stews in that answer, his hands curling into tight fists underneath him, a white-knuckled anger supplanting any whiff of restful sleep that might’ve been coming his way. What he wouldn’t give to be able to rake Sendak over the coals as he rightly deserves—but that ship has come and gone, and Keith has no outlet for the blinding fury that sparks inside of him at the sight of Shiro still blighted by that cruel man’s existence.

But there is Shiro here, in need of comfort, and Keith wants nothing more than to give it.

“I could try to distract your thoughts from it,” Keith offers, scooting closer toward Shiro. But not close enough to brush shoulders or knock their ankles together, of course. “Talk of other things until you fall asleep. My father used to soothe me that way.”

He’d brush Keith’s hair, too, and hum him to sleep by the hearth fire. Keith’s fingers twitch as he glances at the silver-and-ink of Shiro’s mussed hair, left loose while he sleeps, very much wishing he could do the same.

“Keith,” Shiro says, his name half a sigh. His smile is still small, half-hidden as he rubs his cheek into their reed bed, but it feels genuine. “You are an angel, but you need not worry about me. I had some trouble sleeping after I lost my arm, too. I can weather my way through this just the same.”

“And I’m supposed to sit idly by while you do?” Keith mutters, now galled by Shiro’s resignation to quietly suffering on his own. “Shiro. It’s not as if I have anything better to do, and surely it can’t hurt. You need your rest.”

“As do you,” Shiro counters, one of his knees pointedly bumping into Keith’s, the brief friction of it nearly enough to make Keith leap out of his skin. “Sleep. It’s bad enough that I already woke you with my grousing.”

“You didn’t wake me,” Keith argues. “I hadn’t even fallen asleep yet.”

“All the more reason you ought to get some shut-eye, then.”

In the dark, Keith resigns himself to the improbability of getting a wink of sleep tonight. His thoughts had already been a whirling mess of doubt before Shiro had been stirred awake by phantoms of the recent past. Now, they’re aflutter all over again, his heart churning once more with the worry that the longer he holds this part of himself secret from Shiro, the more he will have to answer for when the truth inevitably comes out.

Sweat slicks itself over Keith’s palms as he whispers out a tentative, “Shiro?” and halfway hopes there will be no reply.

It’s slow to come, but Shiro answers with a drawn, sleepy, “Mm?”

“I have something to tell you.” Keith can barely hold still for the rattling of his heart against his ribs, half-deafened by the pounding of his pulse in his own ears. His clammy hands wind into the pile of reeds they’re bedded down on as he inwardly steels himself to retreat somewhere else to sleep after this—to give Shiro time to process the revelation, to reconsider Keith and their bond, to hopefully accept him as is. “Now might not be a good time, but I worry that if I don’t say it, I’ll lose courage by morning.”

“Oh?” Shiro’s voice rings clearer at that, all traces of weariness replaced with interest and concern. “Then go on, Keith.”

“I, ah… I met my mother recently,” Keith whispers, watching as Shiro’s sleep-heavy eyes gradually grow wide and round, the bright moonlight turning their grey into pure silver. “Very recently.”

Shiro’s lips part, a surprised intake of air slipping through. “You—oh? Well, Keith, congratulations! That is wonderful news. You came across her… oh, I suppose it must have been while I was imprisoned on the Purification? A spot of good luck amid everything else, then. In what town? Or is she a sailor like you?”

“No,” Keith croaks back, feeling more nervous in the face of Shiro’s very understandable assumptions. “No, we met much more recently than that.”

In the mellow darkness and fallen moonlight, Keith watches as Shiro’s expression shifts from one of pleasant surprise to furrowed-brow confusion, those gunmetal eyes glinting as he tries to make sense of Keith’s words.

“Aboard Sendak’s ship?” Shiro questions in a razor thin whisper, the look in his eyes inscrutable.

“No, no, not there either,” Keith quickly corrects. “She… she found us at sea, after everything else. She brought us to this island, actually.”

Keith doesn’t wait for Shiro to ask anything more—better to fling it all at his feet now and let him make of it what he will. Keith draws in a deep breath first, disappointed when it does absolutely nothing to calm his nerves. “She is a siren.”

“A siren,” Shiro repeats, his lips barely moving. His features don’t change this time, not even with shock, and his stare remains riveted on Keith like he is afraid to leave him out of sight for even a heartbeat.  

“Like the kind out of old sailors’ myths,” Keith further confirms, wringing his hands together where he lay. He shifts himself a few inches further away from Shiro, not wanting the man to feel penned in or endangered, even for a moment; god knows he’s been through enough as it is. With a sad sort of humor, he shrugs and adds, “Strange but true. Half the blood in my veins isn’t human at all.”

Shiro doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink.

“I didn’t know, Shiro, for the longest time. I swear it,” Keith hurries to assure, suddenly afraid that Shiro will think that he has deceived him all along. “My father never mentioned her, and she had no idea of my whereabouts after he died. And I… if I knew, I would’ve told you, for whatever that’s worth, and I would never have sung around you at all. And I understand if learning this changes things between us. If you’re unsettled, having me around. If you want me to go, or—or anything, Shiro, I—”

“Go where?” Shiro asks at once, his brow knitting tight. The stunned spell that had taken hold of him at the first mention of Keith’s mother fades, and Shiro’s features recompose themselves into a familiar look of patient, kind-eyed reassurance. “Keith, you are not to go anywhere, understood?”

Keith swallows back everything else he’d been ready to babble out—promises, pleas, tales of his mother’s aid—and nods, not even thinking of whether Shiro can see him in the dark. His nose scrunches as he forces back the quick pinprick of tears at the corners of his eyes, and his lips thin as he presses them tight and worries them between his teeth.

He barely notices the faint rustle of the dry rushes they sleep on, some movement under the threadbare quilt they share pushing the grassy stalks this way and that. But then something warm brushes across the knuckles of Keith’s clenched hand and he withdraws in a flinch, as if a spark of ember from a roaring fire had seared him.

“Keith,” Shiro says, quietly imploring, and Keith realizes the touch must’ve been him.

When Keith gingerly relaxes his arm and lowers his hand once more, he finds an open palm and splayed fingers waiting.

Shiro’s hand is larger than his, its palm broad and squared and creased with lines of fate and heart and whatever else. There’s no leather between them to blunt the warmth that blooms from Shiro’s flesh, nor to mask the softness of his skin. His fingers are thicker, stronger, less calloused than Keith’s; they curl up around Keith’s smaller, slighter hand and hold fast, the touch making goosepimples rise all along Keith’s forearms.

“I believe you, Keith. Implicitly. Discovering another facet of you doesn’t change that,“ Shiro comforts, his grip tightening around Keith’s hand in silent emphasis. “You are the same Keith who handpicked all the crabmeat for my supper, aren’t you? And the one who nursed me back to health time and again? The same man I named my navigator and spent the better part of two years sailing with?”

At the sweetly sentimental reassurances, Keith flexes his fingers within Shiro’s grasp. His throat is lodged with half-formed words, every swallow turned gummy with a seaswell of emotion that could capsize his self-control in a heartbeat. He should like to grip Shiro’s hand tight between both of his own and draw it close to his chest; to sleep like that, holding Shiro to him through the night.

“You will always be what matters to me, rather than whatever blood you carry within you. And you are still the very same Keith that I have always known. And always liked,” Shiro adds, the smile evident from his tone alone.

His thumb strokes up along the side of Keith’s palm, its nail dragging lightly against the delicate underside of his wrist. Shiro doesn’t slacken his grip on Keith even as he shifts closer under the ragged quilt they’d salvaged from the Interloper, as if determined to prove his steadfastness and continued trust in Keith’s nature.

“Shiro…” Keith finally manages to say, the name sticky within his dry mouth. “I don’t know what to say. I would’ve understood if you became wary of me, even just for a while.”

“How could I doubt you, after all we’ve been through together?” Shiro asks, his short, breezy laugh making Keith’s heart leap and his skin flush. “Keith. You saved me from the jaws of hell, more or less, by sheer will alone. If you think a little thing like being born of a notoriously dangerous, heretofore mythological creature would make me forsake you, you are sorely mistaken.”

“Forgive me,” Keith sighs, awash in a radiant, half-giddy relief. “There have been many people who despised and mistrusted me for far less. And you… you’ve already overlooked and forgiven so many of my, um, past indiscretions. I worried I was pressing my luck past its limit.”

The rushes crinkle as Shiro slowly shakes his head. In the soft darkness, Keith can make out the slight curve of full lips and the fanning of dark lashes along half-lidded eyes. “Far from it.”

At that, Keith well and truly relaxes where he lay. It is as though a yoke bolted around his neck has finally loosened and heavy manacles of his own making have fallen free from his wrists. And the way Shiro still holds his hand… ah, that makes him feel lighter, too.

“I will confess that I feel somewhat vindicated,” Shiro murmurs as he considers the man lying directly beside him, their faces turned toward each other and barely more than a foot apart. “I had always fancied there was something about you, you know? Some aspect of you that I couldn not quite ascribe to seafaring experience or pure, dumb luck. You have always been exceptional for myriad reasons, and this… it does make sense to me, outlandish as it is.”

“You had a better inkling of it than I did, then,” Keith murmurs, his insides bubbling with a heady, thrilling dose of relief, similar to the rush of averting a near disaster. “Whenever I worried that I might be fundamentally different from other people, I assumed it was a personal deficit. Nothing spectacular. Nothing useful. Nothing a man such as yourself might admire.”

“Well,” Shiro says, humming under his breath. “Some things are easier to notice through another’s eyes. And speaking of, for all those times you mercilessly teased me for what I called you in my journal, I wasn’t actually that far off.”

“A siren is a bit different than a sea goddess,” Keith points out, the corner of his mouth quirking.

“Not that different,” Shiro insists, and Keith can tell by his tone that he intends to dig his heels in on this one small matter of pride. “It is sort of splitting hairs, is it not? Between one unlikely, legendary influence and another?”

“If you say so,” Keith blandly answers, if only to make Shiro huff and grumble.

They lapse into silence, but it’s entirely unlike the pensive quiet that Keith had spent most of the night brewing in. Contentment layers over him like a second blanket. His breathing turns deeper and more relaxed, much like Shiro’s. Keith’s skin is warm rather than nervously clammy, and Shiro’s hand remains secure around his own, like a lifeline to buoy him all through the night.

And then Shiro whispers, “You know, Lance always complained that you thought too highly of yourself to join in whenever the crew started up a shanty. And I simply took you for shy and in need of a little encouragement. Now, I suppose your reluctance must have had to do with this siren business all along?”

Keith grunts. “Mn. All I knew back then was that my singing voice drew a lot of unpleasant attention. I didn’t mean for it to, but… it affected people. In disquieting ways. So I stopped.”

Shiro answers with a soft, thoughtful sound. “But I have listened to you sing—and fairly often at that—without suffering any adverse effects,” he muses out loud, a note of wonder in his voice. “At least, none that I have noticed.”

“There can be exceptions, apparently,” Keith offers, fidgeting as his mother’s words on the matter cross his mind for the hundredth time that day. He tamps down on his bottom lip as he briefly considers giving Shiro the supposed reason—love on the listener’s part, pure and powerful—and then gauging his reaction. Just as quickly, Keith decides against it, wary of complicating what has already been a rather momentous night in terms of personal revelation. “But they’re rare. Exceedingly rare.”

“Ah. Must be my usual good fortune at work, then,” Shiro jokes, grinning until Keith finally smiles back. “But really. I mean it. I would consider myself very unlucky indeed to have never been able to hear your singing and properly appreciate it.”

“It’s nothing to write home about.” Keith absently flexes his grip around Shiro’s hand and lets his eyes fall halfway shut. At the moment, he would like nothing more than to roll onto his other side, sling Shiro’s arm over himself, and nestle up close, his back pressed to Shiro’s front; as it is, though, all he can bring himself to do is stroke his thumb along Shiro’s knuckle.

“It’s incredible,” Shiro counters, turning his head aside as he yawns right after. “Your songs always set me at ease.”

“Would you want me to sing for you now?” Keith asks. It only takes a heartbeat to second-guess himself for it, but Shiro is somehow even quicker.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Shiro murmurs, the gentle grip of his hand finally loosening. But he doesn’t wrest himself free or draw back—simply leaves it where it lay, palm to palm against Keith’s. “I think I would sleep more soundly for it.”

Well, Keith can hardly deny him that, as there aren’t many hours left before dawn finds them. He clears his throat and starts a slow, mournful number from years ago, first heard in bits and pieces when he’d laid awake and heard his father singing to himself beside the hearth. He doesn’t even remember remembering it, honestly, but the words surface in his mind like bubbles inexorably finding their way upward from the deepest trenches of the sea. The tune itself stirs something in Keith, shaking dust off of memories he had locked away and forgotten.

In the moonlight-softened darkness, he watches as the faint outline of Shiro’s lingering smile fades and his mouth gently falls slack. The hand cupped around Keith’s goes utterly limp, pliant even as Keith absently strokes along the backs of strong fingers and over his nails. The parts of Shiro’s face where moonglow falls appear years younger and a lifetime softer: the shadowed creases at the corners of his eyes turn whisper-fine; the tension threaded into Shiro’s brow disappears, like a plucked string finally released; the habitual clench of his jaw lies dormant.

And only when Keith is certain that Shiro is dreaming again—happily, this time—does he finally go quiet, too. 


Keith wakes with his nose pressed into a warm, broad stretch of chest, where the loose vee of Shiro’s unlaced shirt hangs open and bare, scar-patterned skin peeks out. Breath moves against his hair, its rhythm still steady in the manner that only slumber can achieve. Warm, comforting weight drapes over Keith, loosely caging him in. When he moves to sleepily stretch his legs, he is met with a similar sensation—a pleasant firmness on either side of his left leg, heat radiating up his slim thigh as he sleepily pushes his bent knee deeper into the squeeze that surrounds it.

Wincing at the bright sunlight pouring in, Keith’s gaze slides up over fine clavicles and the hollow of Shiro’s throat. Then the strong column of his windpipe. His adam’s apple. The underside of his jaw… its corner right there, at the juncture where his neck and skull meet, nestled just under one of Shiro’s slightly large, well-shaped ears. Close enough for Keith to tickle with his breath, if he were to tilt his head a bit. Or if he started here, just above Shiro’s steadily-beating heart, Keith could lick one clean, continuous stripe all the way up to that tempting spot; he could bury his nose in Shiro’s hair and graze his teeth along the shapely curve of his jaw, suckling his way to the earlobe just—

Keith catches himself with his lips parted and the tip of his tongue a hair’s breadth from the rise and fall of Shiro’s chest. He’d been slow to rouse, yes—drunk on deep, contented sleep and the unfamiliar warmth of another body—but now waking awareness converges on Keith with the force of a crossbow bolt between the eyes.

A compromising position doesn’t suffice. Keith is clinging to Shiro like an especially avid octopus, plastered to his front with his face sunken into the exposed hills and valley of his chest. His thigh is jammed in between Shiro’s, every shift he makes indecent. And he had, in his sleep-addled fogginess, very seriously considered mouthing his way up Shiro’s bare throat and nibbling at his ear.

Utterly mortifying. Or at least it ought to be—not all of Keith seems to be in agreement on the matter… 

With great pains and a considerable amount of nervous sweat, Keith carefully extricates himself from a peacefully slumbering Shiro and slowly rolls himself away, across their makeshift bed, and out of the cavern shelter.

He flees to the freshwater spring they’ve been using to bathe and takes himself in hand, working away the excitement his body had found in being so close to Shiro, and then scrubs away the sweat and faint guilt that still cling to his skin. They had fallen asleep at arm’s length, as usual. He had expected to wake in much the same manner.

Keith wrings out his hair and thanks whatever god might have spared him that Shiro had not been the first to wake, as he so often is. He isn’t sure he could’ve withstood the outcome, whether it was Shiro shoving him away in scandalized shock or awkwardly, politely assuring that he won’t hold that against Keith, either. As it is, Keith doesn’t know how he’ll be able to meet Shiro’s eyes for the rest of the day. And imagine if he had forsaken any semblance of control and put his mouth on Shiro!

And imagine if Shiro had been awake to feel it…

Keith’s skin heats again, all over, and by the time he slinks back to their camp from the mossy, flower-strewn spring, he worries he’ll look sun-scorched.

“Keith!” Shiro greets from where he sits by the fire, feeding it dry twigs and strips of bark. His smile is bright, not even a shadow of a cloud to dim his expression, and that much gives Keith some relief. “Here, I tried making some breakfast. It will not be as good as anything you cook, but…”

“It’ll be delicious,” Keith says, giving a shy, fleeing smile as he settles down opposite Shiro and starts poking at the conches bubbling away in a pot on the fire. He can feel Shiro’s eyes on him as he fishes them out and starts picking at the cooling meat within their shells, igniting his nerves anew.

“Does your mother ever come around? Or was it a one-time experience?” Shiro asks, and the abruptness of it makes Keith wonder if Shiro has been chewing on questions like these since last night. “Is she somewhere on the island with us, or…”

“No. But yes, she does come around. Frequently,” Keith adds. He points out the smoked squid and fish strung above their fire. “She’s brought a lot of our food, actually. And healing salves for you, along with pretty much every useful item we have. She… she’s been of great help.”

Shiro’s smile returns. “You mentioned that she brought us here, so that alone made me grateful. Food and necessities just make me like her more. In the abstract, I guess. How does she feel about humans?”

Keith can’t quite hold back a cheeky grin. “Well, she certainly had warm feelings for one human, wouldn’t you say?”

“Ah. Hah. Well, yes, I suppose so. I am more fishing to find out what she might think of me, though. Or what she might do to me if she were to learn that I once held her son at swordpoint as his ship sank,” he says, his dry laugh quickly tapering off.

“Even if she could muster a grudge over that, I wouldn’t let a thing happen to you, Shiro. But you’ve no need to worry, I think. You can even meet her, if you’d like. If you’re curious,” Keith adds, knowing full well that Shiro’s inquisitive nature must be eating him up inside.

“I would like that,” Shiro murmurs, letting his head hang to one side. “If you are certain that my presence would not be unwelcome.”

Keith nods. At this point, he doubts Krolia would ever try to harm Shiro. And if she did, Keith knows himself capable of acting accordingly; whatever common blood they might share, and however much he might still yearn for the mother he’d lacked for so long, Keith’s loyalty is firmly vested in Shiro alone.

They finish a quick breakfast of conch meat and sliced fruit, and then Shiro insists on washing up and changing into a fresh set of clothes from the scavenged ship. Once his hair is combed and neatly tied back by Keith’s nimble fingers, he gives a nervous grin and declares himself ready.

Under the late mid-morning sun, Keith leads Shiro down the narrow path to the secluded strip of beach where Krolia has returned time and again. The way is dappled with shade, at least, and the weight of Shiro’s steps behind him is always a comfort.

Along the beach ahead, Keith sees her—first a shadow moving under the waves, so like the sleek figure of a shark, before she crests above the rolling surf. Krolia glimmers in the mid-morning light, her figure nearly translucent along the edges, as if she really is just seawater given life and steady form. And he knows Shiro must’ve glimpsed her, too, given the way he suddenly sucks in a startled gasp.

“Keith,” Shiro whispers as the path they’re strolling down turns from soft, mulchy earth to loose sand. “Is that—that is your mother? She doesn’t look at all like the depictions of sirens in my books.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her that she doesn’t live up to your expectations.”

A hand seizes Keith’s wrist and gives a pleading tug. “Keith!”

“I’m only teasing,” Keith promises even as he immediately gives himself over to Shiro’s grip, halting in his tracks until Shiro sighs and releases his wrist, grumbling under his breath about being too nervous for games.

And, emboldened for reasons unknown, Keith catches Shiro’s hand before it can fall back by his side. His fingers slide into Shiro’s loose grasp, their pads skimming over the tender center of his palm. It’s mainly to reassure Shiro, he inwardly justifies—a physical reminder that Keith will not let him be lost or taken, no matter where they tread or who they meet. It’s repaying him for the way he had reached out and taken Keith’s hand last night, when he was wary and uncertain. And… and the gesture might also stem from Keith’s growing hunger to be close to Shiro, to feel his comforting warmth, to touch his skin and know that he is here, safe, alive. 

But whatever Keith’s reasons, Shiro doesn’t object to it. He allows Keith to take his hand and hold it, even curling his own fingers around Keith’s in turn.

Keith mourns that he barely has the time to enjoy it, short as the rest of their walk to Krolia is. Shiro’s grip grows firmer around his hand as their bare feet sink into wet sand and the foamy lather of waves gently lapping ashore. Keith runs the callused pad of his thumb along the side of Shiro’s hand in automatic answer and hopes that Shiro can’t feel the hummingbird thrumming of his pulse through his fingers.

They slow to a stop with the surf swirling around their calves, the cuffs of their breeches rolled high, and Keith doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Shiro’s spine so rigid nor his shoulders so stiff.

“Morning,” he says to Krolia, holding tighter to Shiro as she rises up out of the water, drawing herself to a full height that matches Shiro. “I brought someone to meet you. This is Captain Takashi Shirogane.”

Seawater courses down over her slick, purple-tinged skin like it pours from some unending font; her wet hair billows in the air for a moment, as if still underwater, before it cascades down around her shoulders in a sleek curtain. Her sharp eyes dart from Keith to Shiro to their linked hands, and there is a hint of a fang in her smile.

“Madam,” Shiro politely greets, dipping his head. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance.”

Krolia’s eyebrows lift in surprise, her gaze briefly flitting to Keith. He can only offer a smile back, as charmed by Shiro’s gentlemanly behaviour as his mother appears to be.

“Krolia,” she replies, introducing herself. “I have heard much about you from Keith, and all that you have done for him. You have my gratitude, Captain Shirogane.”

“Shiro serves me just as well, if you do not mind,” he offers back, a dusting of color settling across his cheeks. “And thank you, but it is only half as much as he has done for me. Without Keith, I would not be standing here right now.”

Keith shakes his head, equal parts hopeless and endeared. “The same could be said of me, if not for you.”

“I brought these for you,” Krolia says, interrupting before they can continue their back-and-forth. She hoists a sizeable tuna up by its tail and a dripping, woven net filled with blue crabs and prickly sea urchins. “I trust you two have been eating well?”

“I—y-yes, very well,” Shiro manages to stammer out, still gawking at the sudden gift of so much food. “I understand that we have you to thank for that, in large part. So, ah—thank you. We would have a much harder time catching ourselves even a tenth of this.”

Krolia bends to lay the fresh seafood in the gently bobbing surf at their feet. “Of course. I am simply glad for the chance to take care of my son in some manner, small as it is. And I am very pleased to finally meet you, Shiro. I imagine that learning of Keith’s lineage was quite a surprise and I am glad to see that it has left no rift between you.”

“No, no, of course not. A surprise? Yes, I cannot deny that much,” Shiro says, on the verge of a laugh. “But after the initial shock of sharing the sea with living, breathing sirens wore off, I found that it made perfectly good sense. Keith is… well, he can sail any ship like a phantom, pass through sinking graveyards untouched, lead man o’ wars to ruin. I had to meet him face-to-face to convince myself that he was a mortal man, and even then…” Shiro trails off, shrugs, tosses Keith a fleeting, sidelong look. “He is like a force of nature. Awe-inspiring to witness, fearsome to cross. His having siren blood felt like a puzzle piece that had been there all along, perfectly fitted to the rest of him. Why should I resent part of what makes him so extraordinary?”

Krolia’s eyes crease slightly at their corners. Keith, still clinging to Shiro’s hand through the deluge of compliments, burns from the tips of his ears down the back of his neck. It reminds him of those evenings spent eavesdropping on meetings between Shiro and the officers of other ships, listening in as his captain sang ten of his praises for every criticism thrown his way, wondering then—as he still does now, at this very moment—how he had ever won himself such a staunch defender in the first place.  

“Very good,” is all Krolia says, and Keith does think she looks rather satisfied with Shiro’s mild-mannered outburst. “It sets my heart at ease, knowing there is someone to help protect Keith even where I cannot tread.”

“I am happy to, although he doesn’t need much looking after,” Shiro answers. “Have you seen him with a sword? Downright intimidating.”

“I can step away,” Keith dryly interjects, “if you two would like to discuss me at length.”

Krolia merely laughs as she looks between the two of them. Shiro, for his part, looks slightly chastened. As if realizing that he might’ve spoken too freely—both for Keith’s comfort and his own—his smile settles into a familiar, well-practiced shape even as his skin blushes a shade worthy of carnelians.

“No, no, you’re not going anywhere, Keith. Far be it from me to monopolize time spent with your mother,” he murmurs, a there-and-gone glimmer of something faraway in the grey of his eyes. “If anyone here ought to step away, it is I.”

“What? No. I just was teasing again,” Keith says, tightening his hold of Shiro’s hand, “not trying to shoo you away.”

“I know. But now that we have been introduced, I think it best if I leave you two be again. For now, anyway. We haven’t been here all that long, after all, and you two have a lifetime spent apart to catch up on,” he says, smiling as he gives Keith’s hand a quick and reassuring squeeze just before letting go. “I can always join in later.”

Now, when Shiro meets Krolia’s level stare, it is only with a twinge of skittishness; most of that awkward stiffness he’d worn as they waded into the water has been shed in exchange for something like his usual, easygoing air. “Krolia, I am most pleased to have met you, but I have intruded long enough. We will have to continue comparing notes on Keith later, out of earshot.”

Krolia’s smile curls at its corners, wryly amused and faintly approving. “I will find you,” she calmly promises, to Shiro’s smiling but slightly anxious reception.

Keith can only stare as Shiro politely bows his head to Krolia and then stoops to pick up the woven net full of seafood, mumbling something about preparing their lunch. With a small farewell wave, Shiro backs his way out of the surf and onto the shore, leaving Keith lingering in the ocean with his mother.

“I like him,” Krolia comments as they watch Shiro retreat up the forest path together.

“Mm. Me too,” Keith absently agrees, his stare following Shiro—who must feel the weight of two sets of eyes upon him, for he turns just before venturing out of sight to give them one last wave. 

“I am surprised he was willing to let go of your hand,” Krolia says as she and Keith both raise their hands to return the gesture. “He held onto you like he feared he might be dragged out to sea, otherwise. Am I that intimidating?”

“Yes,” Keith answers honestly, returning his mother’s sharp-fanged smile in kind. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so nervous before—not even at swordpoint or in the jaws of raging hurricanes. But I think he enjoyed meeting you nonetheless.”

“Good,” Krolia murmurs under her breath. “Because I am looking forward to sitting him down for a longer conversation soon.”

“Why? It’s a miracle he hasn’t been scared off from me already,” Keith complains. “Don’t do anything that would make him reconsider that. And it should go without saying, but if you hurt him—”

“I will not harm him,” Krolia says, her tone mollifying in its calm, absolute certainty. “Barring some betrayal of you, of course.”

“Not even then,” Keith warns, wholly trusting that Shiro would never do him wrong. Not intentionally, if he could help it. Not in any way that was undeserved.

Krolia hums low, under her breath, her lids half lowered as she considers her son. And then her mouth parts into a sigh, a renewed smile curling at its corners. “He can really go on and on when it comes to singing your praises, can’t he?”

Keith sighs and shrugs a shoulder, red-faced at his mother’s overt wheedling regarding Shiro. “That’s just how he is,” he huffs, as flustered as ever by the man’s praise. “Optimistic. Supportive. Naturally charming.” 

Krolia hums, looking amused despite the arch to her narrow brows, and Keith can’t help but wonder aloud, “What, do you disagree?”

“Not at all,” Krolia says as she turns and wades a little deeper into the surf, beckoning Keith to follow. Her smile is easy, her gaze distant. “I was simply thinking that we might share a similar weakness in human men.”


“You look a great deal like her,” Shiro comments when Keith finally returns to their camp with feet gone pale and pruny from lingering so long in the sea. “Your mother.”

“Do I?” Keith questions.

Much of his own first reaction to Krolia had been shock and awe at her inhumanity, fearfully worried of recognizing the same fiendish features in himself. He’d spent most of the time he’d known her shying from comparisons that might reveal more than he wanted to know, reluctant to acknowledge that he truly was his mother’s son.

Now, though… he is curious to know how Shiro’s eye has measured him against Krolia.

Shiro leans back and squints at Keith, as if taking him in anew and double checking. “You do. It’s all there—the shape of your eyes, the height of your cheekbones, the curve of your nose, the set of your mouth. Seeing the two of you side by side, there really can’t be any doubt.”

“Seems like all I took from my father was his human appearance,” Keith snorts.

Shiro only smiles and keeps slicing open sea urchins, slow and careful as he insists on preparing a passable lunch for the both of them. 

That afternoon, they start the task of making the beached ship seaworthy once more. The work continues the next day, and the next, drawn out by their sparse toolkit and a lack of any pressing need to rush.

They fell trees to hew out new planks of wood, weave new ropes and nets, and stitch up the ripped sails and canvases found in the Interloper’s hold. It gives them a purpose to work toward together—eventual escape from the isolation of their remote little island—and Keith is unsurprised to discover that even hard labor is enjoyable when Shiro is sweating beside him.

Honestly… the isolation isn’t half-bad, either. There is no one to interrupt the two of them, no matter how late they stay up talking nor how long they spend trailing their way up and down the shore. There’s no standing on formality out here. No mention of rank, except in jest. Neither of them have to heed the dress codes or decorum that the navy calls for, either, so Keith takes to wearing his hair loose some days and Shiro takes to wandering around in unbuttoned shirts that flutter open in the slightest breeze. Barefoot and half-dressed, they’re largely free to do as they please. It reminds Keith of his brief command of the Songbird, but carefree and blessed with all the companionship he’ll ever need.

They settle into a routine before long.

After breakfast, while Shiro tidies up their camp, Keith pads down to the beach for his daily visit with Krolia.

She brings them more gifts to see them through their inevitable journey: glass jugs, watertight casks of beer, bits of metal not yet savaged by rust and rot. And then Keith will lie down in the surf beside her, basking in the feel of the ocean rolling around him, as they talk—for hours, sometimes. Often about his father, at least to start, but gradually Keith finds himself telling Krolia about his lonely childhood, his bloodsoaked life at sea, and the comfortable sense of belonging he had finally found at Shiro’s side.

And though Shiro makes a point of leaving Keith and Krolia to do their bonding alone, he occasionally accompanies Keith down to the shore to pay his respects, chatting with Krolia about their recent endeavors before heading off for some time on his own. 

But for all of that, it isn’t uncommon for Keith to catch the two of them alone, either—talking about him, presumably, or else finding some other topics on which to bond. He spies them along different patches of beach or rocky shore, Krolia half-hidden in clouded waters while Shiro wades knee deep out to meet her. She plies him with fresh seaweed and rust-covered astronomical tools, which Shiro excitedly shows off to Keith when he returns.

And so it is of little surprise one late afternoon when Keith notices Shiro walking back from a watery inlet with a length of sword in hand—another gift, no doubt, raised out of the water by Krolia’s clawed hand. 

“What do you have there?” Keith calls out as he drops the pile of gathered driftwood in his arms to the sand and lifts the hem of his shirt to wipe away the sweat dotted along his forehead.

“A cutlass, courtesy of your mother,” Shiro says, grinning. He unsheathes the blade and flourishes it, his movements only a hair clumsy from a couple of months without practice. “And not in terrible condition, all things considered. I wonder where on earth she found it?” he muses out loud, turning the sword this way and that as he admires it.

Keith snorts. “An unlucky officer on some not-too-far ship would be my guess.”

“Ah. Oh. Right. I forget sometimes,” Shiro murmurs, his cheeks a little pink at the reminder that Krolia is, for all of her gentleness toward them, still a siren of terrifying power, and not at all shy about luring others to a watery end.

It doesn’t seem to put Shiro off of the cutlass, though.

Keith watches as Shiro goes through a few practice steps with his new sword, testing its weight with each swing and lunge. In time, he starts pacing a wide ring around the man, a curl to his lips as he admires Shiro’s well-ingrained form and traditional style.

“It’s been a very long time since we sparred,” Keith says, a sudden and sweet nostalgia blooming in the back of his mind, clouding his thoughts.

“Too long,” Shiro agrees at once.

It was always a challenge to clear space on the deck of the Kerberos when they wanted to test their swords against each other, and even more so when every living soul aboard was eager to crowd around to watch. Sparring hand-to-hand was easier to pull-off in tight quarters but carried its own set of tricky circumstances, especially while serving on a royal ship of the navy—namely, the notion of a baseborn former-pirate leaving the captain with a black-eye didn’t really sit well with anyone.

But Shiro was adamant in his desire to hone himself against someone who knew how to fight dirty, whether with a weapon or barehanded, and Keith could never deny him much of anything at all. And while their mock swordfights always carried a certain control and refinement, largely thanks to Shiro’s expert command of the blade, barefisted brawling can only be messy—at least the way Keith grew up doing it, anyway.

“We could fix that,” Keith lightly suggests, his fingers already strumming along the grip of his dagger.

Shiro grins toothily, spinning the fine new sword in his hand as he looks Keith up and down. “A cutlass like this against your little dagger doesn’t really seem like a fair fight, does it?”

“Perhaps you could use the advantage,” Keith teases as he draws out his own blade and gives it a short flip into the air, deftly catching it again as it falls. At Shiro’s soft, mock-offended hmph, he laughs and adds, “Would you like to see something my mother showed me how to do? Something magical?”

“Depends,” Shiro says, still smiling as he plants the point of his sword in the sand and lets it rest there. “Are you going to turn me into a crab or something of the like?”

“No,” Keith tells him, emphatic. “I’m going to do this.”

He drags the dripping pads of his index and middle fingers along the flat of the blade, awakening a line of starlight-faint, unfamiliar symbols that are nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. They brighten under his purposeful touch, flaring with a milky light as the metal under his fingertips changes, the dagger’s blade turning to a silky, watery quicksilver that stretches and curves before it solidifies once more into something sharp-edged and severe.

It reminds Keith of Krolia’s own mercurial nature, able to glide along the waves in one moment, her form mixed with the sea, and the next to stand on two solid legs, her fluidity briefly traded for something less mutable. And that makes sense, considering that this dagger had belonged to her for ages before she had seen fit to entrust it to him.

“Keith, I—that really is magical!” Shiro says, drawing close enough to touch his fingers to the wickedly curved length of the fully awoken sword. “How…?”

Keith shrugs. “You would have to ask her for a proper explanation. I only know how to make it happen.”

“No small feat,” Shiro says approvingly, glancing back over his shoulder as he retreats to pull his cutlass from the sand. He gives the blade another spin and adjusts his grip around it. “So, are you up for a round or two? Or are you shy of taking another sound thrashing, like the one I gave you in Karthulian Bay?”

Keith answers by taking a lunge toward Shiro, his dagger-turned-sword flashing in the afternoon sunlight. His whirling strike is easily blocked, his blade turned aside. It’s a gentle rebuff, all things considered, and Keith’s feet sink into soft sand as he changes his stance and thrusts forward once more.

Shiro is an unparalleled defensive fighter, a bulwark even without a shield, his swift parries jarring each of Keith’s blows to a resounding halt. He bides his time, patiently waiting for a sliver of an opening, and only then does he bring his cutlass around in a punishing sweep that Keith has to drop low to avoid.

“Are you aiming to take my head off?” Keith teases as he springs back up and forces his way in close, his own sword raised high, its tip aimed at Shiro’s broad chest.

“You’re too quick for that,” Shiro scoffs as he deftly knocks Keith’s sword off-mark and weaves to one side, laughing.

On his stretch of barren, open beach, without any curious bystanders in the way nor judgmental eyes mincing apart his every move, it is easier for Keith to give himself over to his instincts. It is a pleasure to fight without dire cause for it, free to test his mettle against Shiro for sheer thrill alone. There is no desperation to unsteady his hand, no anger to cloud his mind, no chilling readiness to kill in his heart—just a desire to impress, whether he is victorious or not.

Getting to witness Shiro in the throes of swordwork is a hefty bonus, though. It reminds Keith that they are far more similar to one another than not, in many of the ways that matter most.

That caring nature of his belies the utter ruin Shiro can bring when he wishes to, whether with a man o’ war or a blade or his bare hand. The hunting look in those steely eyes is like a hook sunken low and deep into Keith’s insides, drawing out the most inopportune feelings of animalistic delight. Every sound he makes—disappointed grunts when he swings wide, the faint rumblings of laughter when Keith outmaneuvers him, the roughened panting for breath—coaxes Keith’s heart to beat quicker. 

Shiro is sun-soaked and half-dressed, the waist of his trousers nearly low enough to show his navel. His body is filled back out with muscle, his skin temptingly smooth but for where it is scarred. He is handsome as ever with his hair fading to white quicker than leaves turn in autumn, and even more striking when he moves with such enviable skill and clear purpose.

The self-control Keith has cultivated within himself wanes thin as Shiro grins and presses his own attack, fierce and just shy of merciless, and Keith isn’t sure which he wants more: to drop to his knees in front of Shiro and offer willing surrender, or to bear the man down to the ground and stake an inarguable victory over him.

Keith picks the latter. He lets the agitation prickling under his skin and the heat in his veins fuel him, striking quick and furious as the lash of a barbed whip. It helps that the sword in his hands is unnaturally light for its length, slashing through the air with the gentle hiss of a well-slung arrow. In Keith’s hand, it maneuvers like a piece that belongs to him, an extension of his very body. Its blade finds Shiro’s every time, the clatter of tempered metal ringing out again and again and again, driving the other man back one step at a time.

And Shiro, usually so attentive about minding the battlefield and controlling what ground he gives up, is forced to give way to Keith’s furious onslaught. He is pressed at every turn, afforded fewer and fewer opportunities to shape the fight in his own favor. Even as he continues to deflect Keith’s thrusts with timely parries, Shiro is backed further into a metaphorical corner, up the beach and into stringy weeds— 

And then right against a tree.

Shiro grunts as his shoulder blades meet uneven bark and unbudging wood, left with nowhere to turn as Keith advances in one swift lunge. The curved tip of that siren blade falls right at the hollow of his throat, its edge kissing against Shiro’s skin with every winded heave of his chest. His own cutlass remains gripped in the hand that falls to his side, shoulders drooping in unspoken defeat.

And the open shirt hanging off of them droops a little further, too, the sweat-soaked fabric clinging fast to the rounded muscle of Shiro’s upper arms. 

Shiro himself is a man undone—locks of his hair fallen haphazardly to frame his well-chiseled face, his eyes half-lidded as he lowers his gaze to the sword laid across his chest, his throat flexing and his full lips parted to draw in heavy, hurried breaths. A thin sheen of sweat makes his sun-kissed skin glisten; a rosy flush accompanies it, color blooming over sloping cheeks and rounding the tips of his ears.

Keith’s lips and mouth feel suddenly, wickedly dry. For a moment, he can barely keep his knees from buckling underneath him, much less speak in full words. 

“Yield?” he finally manages, his own voice crackly to his ears. He tries for a playful smile and ends up swallowing thickly instead.

Shiro doesn’t answer right away, instead casting him a hazy look from under the shadow of those long, coal-black lashes. His mouth closes, a tongue prodding into his cheek as he considers it. His lips stick a little as they part again.

“What if I refuse?” Shiro poses instead, something like defiance creeping into those low tones. He makes no move to challenge the blade still raised against him, but neither does he drop his own cutlass.

“If you refuse to yield?” Keith questions, shifting his weight from one foot to another. Pettily competitive as Shiro can sometimes be, he’s never before outright refused to recognize Keith besting him. “Then I suppose we’re stuck here like this. Forever. You, me, and that tree.”

There is a soft thunk as the back of Shiro’s head meets the tree flush behind him. His throat flexes. One corner of his mouth twitches in the fleeting impression of a smile. “That would be fine by me, actually.”

It is a little frustrating.

Keith exhales heavily through his nose and lets the very tip of his sword trail featherlight over Shiro’s skin, right under the dip between his clavicles. Rushing blood still pounds in his ears, urging him not to back down, however impetuous Shiro might be. He is too long pent-up to let Shiro play coy and smart-mouth his way out of a clear and decisive loss.

With a flick of his wrist, Keith lifts his sword and angles it anew. Quick as the scorch of lightning on a mast, he lunges into mortal striking distance, closing the lofty gap between them into a heated splinter of space. The sword’s upper edge slices into the tree behind Shiro, shaving off bark and fine moss, while the lower third of the blade is drawn up to graze Shiro’s throat.

At once, Shiro’s chin snaps up and his spine goes taut. The cutlass in his hand drops to the sparse grasses at his feet. And with his neck and shoulders pressed so firmly into unyielding wood, the rest of his body—his chest, his belly, his hips—bows out slightly to compensate.

The air between them changes, like the breath of a billows sending tiny sparks to scorching heights. Keith means to enjoin Shiro to yield once more, but this time his words truly fail him. Standing this close to Shiro, only their heavy breaths and the width of a blade between them, Keith can feel that subtle arch that moves through the other man and all the places where it brings their bodies to meet.

Keith loses the thread of his thoughts, some sweeping current of pining thirst carrying him away instead. It’s dangerous, like hovering on the event horizon of a whirlpool that will draw him right down to some crushing point in the depths of the deepest trench. Keith stutters on air as he watches a bead of sweat roll slow down Shiro’s temple as they both stand as still as their wanting lungs will allow. The sword in his hand nearly wavers.

And just as Keith gains enough stock of himself to recognize the need to disentangle himself—to withdraw his sword and step back to breathe clear air, and then maybe vent his frustrations through some hand-to-hand—a hand grips at his waist and holds him fast.

The woven cotton of Keith’s shirt bunches under Shiro’s thumb as it strokes back and forth over Keith’s trim waist, along his bottom ribs. His touch sears the tender skin underneath, tingling like the gentlest afterburn of rum or whisky.

The sound of Keith’s own breathing swells to fill his ears, that familiar rush of blood roaring just under it. When he blinks, it’s with the slow stupor of someone coming out of slumber, not quite certain what is dream and what is real. He’s pretty sure that is Shiro’s hand on him, though, with strong fingers curled around his flank. He’s pretty sure it is neither innocent nor careless. And it feels an awful lot like an unspoken invitation, if not something stronger.

“Shiro,” Keith murmurs, the huskiness of his own voice unfamiliar.

He eases his blade away from Shiro’s throat, any thought of their sparring match fading down to nought at all. Withdrawn, the sword quietly reverts to its shorter, stouter dagger form as it is rather carelessly dropped to the ground at their feet.

“I hope you don’t object,” Shiro says, the column of his newly freed throat flexing with a resolute swallow. The hand on Keith’s waist gives a purposeful squeeze before sinking to his hip, making sure his meaning is known.

Keith promptly forgets how to breathe. His heart hammers within his ribcage with the frantic tempo of a snare drum. Shiro’s words sound through his mind like the reverberating echo of a heavy church bell. Of course he doesn’t object. How could he? Even this much is more than he had ever expected to receive.

As a measure of silence trickles by, though, Shiro’s blush grows, deepens, swallows him whole. His heavy, intent stare softens under the shadow of blinking, fluttering lashes. “O-Or have I deeply misjudged—” 

Keith hooks a hand around the back of Shiro’s neck and surges upward, planting his mouth on Shiro’s before that miserably doubtful thought can finish.

The shock on those parted lips melts away as Keith moves against them, hungry to taste every bit of Shiro that is allowed to him. Under their slightly rough, weathered skin, Shiro’s lips are pleasantly soft, their fullness taking the brunt of Keith’s overenthusiasm. He can hardly help himself, though. Keith rises up on his toes too quickly and it knocks their jaws together. Their teeth click. His incisors scrape lightly over Shiro’s saliva-slick skin, struggling to find the purchase to hold their kisses the way he wants. 

And all it takes is a patient, accommodating little tilt of Shiro’s head for their mouths to slot together properly, the tip of Shiro’s nose poking into Keith’s cheek each time he ducks his head down a little further to deepen the kiss. He tastes faintly of seaspray and the wine they’d recovered from the beached ship. He smells of salt and sweat. And his tongue is every bit as deft as Keith had surreptitiously imagined.

Keith’s fingers curl around Shiro’s nape, desperate to keep the other man close. To keep him from slipping away again—ever—but least of all now, when Keith thinks that being parted from him for even a minute would truly drive him into a mindless frenzy.

The thought of kissing never held much appeal, until Shiro. Many things he’d once dismissed as simply not for him have found new meaning in Shiro, in fact—five years ago, Keith would never have imagined being willing to swim to the ends of the earth for another person, to fight for them, to die with them. He would never have pictured himself yearning, much less for a man well above his station. Love of every kind always eluded him, and so Keith had made himself strong enough to live without the expectation of it.

And then, well… Shiro.

The hand planted on Keith’s hip migrates to the small of his back, palm flat against his spine. Shiro pulls him in closer, until Keith’s hips and belly are firmly flush against his own, pinned there under the weight of his touch.

While gently clasping his teeth around Shiro’s bottom lip, Keith arches into it. Every second of contact with Shiro ignites something more urgent and unquenchable within him. Under the confines of his loose, billowing shirt and roughspun breeches—which now feel far too restrictive—his skin is aflame.

In an attempt to sate himself, he presses himself against Shiro with smothering tenacity. Keith wedges his left thigh between Shiro’s, nudging them apart to make room for himself. His palms travel up the rounded curves of Shiro’s chest, over his broad shoulders, and under the fabric still loosely draped around Shiro’s torso. Keith is lean, but he’s strong, too; he wields that strength almost carelessly as he throws himself up against Shiro, leaving not a sliver of space between them.

The tree at Shiro’s back gives a shake as he pushes Shiro harder into its smooth bark, the leafy branches above swaying. He groans into Keith’s mouth at the force of it, the sound trailing into a low keen as Keith’s body rolls into his, frantic with need. The friction between them is like a monsoon after too many months without a drop of rain, running roughshod over everything left in its path. It’s more than Keith can bear but still somehow not nearly enough, and Keith can do nothing but desperately chase relief.

There’s no grace to any of it. Not at this point. Not with Keith as worked up as he is, keyed to an absolute frenzy by the soft moans Shiro makes every time they break to gasp for breath. He hikes up his right leg in an effort to jam his hips more fully against Shiro’s, utterly shameless as he works to half-straddle Shiro where he stands. Shiro must not mind it either, given how his hand comes down to grip Keith’s raised thigh and keep him steady.

The new angle works for Keith, for a while. He bites down on his own lip while Shiro kisses at the corners of his mouth, his jaw, his squeezed-shut eyes. But all the frantic bucking of his hips only gets Keith so far, even with Shiro helping to pull him higher, firmer against himself. With a frustrated growl, Keith settles back down on both heels, his arms looped tight and unyielding around the muscled slopes of Shiro’s shoulders.

Amid his own bubbling, overexcited frustration, Keith feels the shape of Shiro’s smile against his lips. Only a moment after, there are fingers worming their way in between the press of their bodies, followed by the knuckles that gently dig their way into the softness of Keith’s belly. Shiro’s hand has to work to wedge itself between them, fighting to wriggle deeper down and in. 

And as it forces its way down into the tight juncture of their hips, Keith lets out a low whine. He can’t help but grind himself against the back of Shiro’s firm hand until the man lets out an exasperated huff into his ear.

“You do know I need this hand when we’re done, don’t you?” Shiro pants out, fighting against Keith’s wanton writhing as he struggles to undo the buttons on his breeches. “I only have the one left.”

Shiro must succeed in his endeavor, because Keith registers two things in quick succession: an obscene groan that ripples through Shiro like he is in the throes of ecstasy, and a firm, heated, slightly sticky shape that gently prods against Keith’s abdomen as he plasters himself against Shiro.

And the realization of what it is—of how Shiro himself is no less eager or aroused—is almost enough to undo Keith on the spot. He winds his arms tighter around Shiro’s shoulders and buries his face into the man’s neck. “S-Sorry. I’m just…”

“I know. I have you,” Shiro assures, his nose and lips buried in the crowning fluff of Keith’s unruly hair.

The backs of curled fingers make a pointed stroke up against Keith, stroking the aching hardness still tucked away in his own breeches. Then Keith feels a slight tug on the cotton-lined wool, a twist as Shiro roughly undoes the buttons. Lightly calloused fingers fumble the fabric aside and then take Keith in hand.

Keith’s lashes flutter at the sensation of fitting snugly in Shiro’s fist, almost dizzy at the intensity of such a sudden and direct touch. He arches into it, strung taut as a bowstring as he clings to Shiro with the desperation of a man fearful of being washed out to sea. It is nothing like the feel of his own hand—slender and rough-palmed and brusque with himself, always rushing to find release and be done.

Shiro feels him out with sinful patience—or as best he can with Keith half-wound around him, arms and legs trembling, somehow still not near enough Shiro for his liking. Between the crushing press of their bodies, he manages a few slow, pumping strokes. His thumb traces its way up the underside of Keith’s length and then lingers at its tip, rubbing slick little circles until Keith thinks he’s going to see stars in the daytime.

And then Shiro’s hand unfurls around him and withdraws, that perfect pressure dissipating so quickly that Keith sighs out in disappointment, bereft. It doesn’t last but a moment, though.

A little jolt courses up Keith’s spine as Shiro’s heavy, twitching cock slides against his own, its head nudging at Keith’s belly through the thin fabric that separates them. It feels bigger, to match the rest of Shiro’s impressive stature. More insistent, too, if such a thing were possible. And as Keith nips needily at Shiro’s mouth and levers up onto his toes to better rut himself against Shiro, he receives another helping hand.

This time, Shiro’s fingers curl around them both, squeezing Keith’s shaft against his. Even the slightest movement rubs them together, skin slippery with precum.

And all together, it is enough to bodily swing Keith right over the edge: Shiro’s palm curled around him, the swollen heat of Shiro’s length heavy against him, the body flush with his own, the lips dragging over his cheek and temple, the heated breath on his skin, the voice calling his name.

Keith’s teeth sink into the rounded muscle of Shiro’s shoulder as he comes, his arms coiled tight around Shiro and his hip stuttering into every last, weakening thrust. Shiro follows just a second behind, judging by the winded groan that falls from his lips and the liquid heat that spreads over Keith’s stomach, wetting the fabric of his shirt and plastering it to his skin.

The mess between them is strikingly apparent as they part, sticky strands of milky white stretching between them, connecting their softening shafts, between Shiro’s fingers as he flexes his hand.

Staggering where he stands, Keith shakily pulls off his own soiled shirt and uses it to wipe away the spent seed dripping between Shiro’s fingers and smeared across his bare stomach. It feels just as intimate as everything to come before, or perhaps even more so. After cleaning himself up as best he can, Keith tucks himself away and buttons up his breeches, while Shiro does the same for himself.

Shiro, still leaning heavily against the tree behind him, exhales a heavy, relaxed puff of air. “I yield, by the way.”

“Oh, good,” Keith pants out, although his mind has long since wandered a thousand miles from the outcome of their first spar in ages. He feels feverish and wobbly on his feet, like he’s overindulged in good drink. As utterly spent as if he’d swam three miles. Half-dazed from satisfaction, while somehow still nursing an appetite for more.

But as the exuberance of the moment fades and Keith’s spirits drifts back down from the perilous heights they had reached, a quiet, gentle awkwardness puts down shoots between them.

Keith is no stranger to lacking for suitable words, but after getting a taste of his wildest, most closely-held desires, he is at a total loss for anything to say. Or anything to do, other than more of that. Because even freshly spent, he is subject to vivid thoughts of kissing Shiro again, of touching him with abandon, of pinning him down as the sun sets and night falls over them.

So Shiro is the first to speak again, in some more collected manner.

“For as long as I have spent thinking of—of doing something of that nature, with you,” he says, his breath hitching as he slowly lowers himself to the ground, legs trembling under the strain, “I was so doubtful I would ever act on it. Or have the opportunity to, rather.”

There’s a faint astonishment in the way Shiro says it, a heady disbelief that echoes Keith’s own awe at what had just come to pass between them. To wait so long, to hold oneself in such tight restraint, and then be given release? There’s no relief quite like it. Keith’s heart quickens once more, captivated by the thought of Shiro yearning for him, dwelling on what he might like to do with Keith.

“I am acquainted with the feeling,” he says, slowly going down on his knees before settling into a loose, cross-legged pose beside Shiro. The shade of the tree is welcome, given the heat of the afternoon and all their exertions, and the near proximity to Shiro is even better.

Keith clears his throat. Almost idly, he adds, “But if it so frequently crossed your mind, you could always have come to me and said you wanted to—” he pauses, searching for a delicate term less likely to offend Shiro’s good upbringing, “—to have amorous congress. Or anything else at all, really.”

Shiro’s eyebrows shoot upward, his dreamy sort of exhaustion giving way to something almost playfully amused. “That simple, hm?” Then his teasing smile softens. More to himself than Keith, he murmurs, “I would have liked it to be that simple.”

Keith hums, low and mildly discontent. Not with Shiro, of course, but with the heavy reality of his words.

It wouldn’t have been easy, no. Romantic entanglements between officers and crew are grounds for all manner of disciplinary action in the navy, and secrets rarely last long within the cramped confines of a ship. A well-connected gentleman captain like Shiro being caught carrying on with a subordinate would be scandal enough, but Keith? A socially-inferior former pirate of terribly ill-repute? Both of their careers in the royal navy would be as good as dashed on the rocks. And while the public scorn wouldn’t have even scratched Keith’s thick hide, it would have easily rendered Shiro’s prospects unsalvageable.

“I would never have acted in any way I thought would jeopardize everything you had worked toward, least of all for my own gratification,” Shiro tells him, an endearing little furrow appearing in his brow. “Especially given how you came to trust me, in time. Made no secret of how absolutely little you cared for the opinion of anyone but me, really,” he almost laughs.

“Still true,” Keith chimes in, resting his cheek on his curled fist.

Shiro closes his eyes, those long lashes fanned against his rose-tinged skin, and smiles. The curve of his lips gradually softens, but never quite fades. “That was never something I took lightly, Keith. Never something I wanted to risk ruining,” Shiro says, and Keith knows that worry all too well. “And I was your captain.”

“You are my captain,” Keith quickly interjects. “And you will always be so.”

A wince briefly pinches Shiro’s fine features. Skeptical, he asks, “Even if I have no ship to my name and the navy considers me a ghost?”

“Even so. And you’ll have a ship of your own again, soon. A spry little cutter. It’ll be more yours than any commission from the navy ever was,” Keith promises.

Shiro huffs, deeply affected by the sentiment, and he is just as charming when overwhelmed and unsure of how to respond. The loose locks of white hair that frame his sweaty face sway as he dips his head and looks aside, shying from view.

And Keith can’t let him off so easily—can’t resist nudging this bashful Shiro a little further and wresting more compelling details from him.

“So… after so many months on the Kerberos and a number of weeks on this island, what made you finally choose a sparring match to make your stand? And in such a manner? ‘What if I refuse?’” he scoffs, all gentle teasing as he gently prods his elbow into Shiro’s side. “You’re lucky I didn’t drop you to the ground in a chokehold before you had a chance to make a move.”

Shiro sighs, a tinge overdramatic. When he braves another look at Keith, it is with a sheepish expression.

“Well. It was not my most thoroughly thought-out decision, no, but I do not regret getting swept up in the moment. Sword in hand, you looked every bit like a beautiful Fury who only had eyes for me, and it reminded me of first meeting you. Which made me a little desperate, I suppose.” As Keith’s ears go warm and his stomach flutters with keen, flattered excitement, Shiro adds, “And it is—I would not call myself well-versed in propositioning people, so...”

Shiro shrugs his shoulders in a vague gesture, as if that should make his meaning clear.

Keith nods. “Used to everyone else just throwing themselves at you instead, I’m sure.”

“You know full well that isn’t it,” Shiro argues, stern despite the blush creeping higher up his cheeks. “I am not as popular as you think, for one, and my attentions have always been set on the service rather than romantic pursuits. Until a certain pirate of notable fame, that is.”

Keith’s heart practically stumbles over itself in its desperation to beat harder, quicker.

“The Red Shrike?” he ventures. His smile fades at its corners as his gaze dips to the ugly mark peeking out from under the loose collar of Shiro’s undone shirt. Hesitantly, Keith raises a hand and brings its loosely curled fingers to hover near the rise and fall of Shiro’s chest. “Even though he gave you this?”

It’s the first time Keith has seen the scar he’d left this plainly, this close. On the infrequent occasions he had glimpsed Shiro in a state of undress—washing down above deck, in the sweltering heat of the doldrums, having new wounds stitched up after battle—Keith had never let his eye linger too long. It was, by that point, a less than sterling reminder of the way he had once treated someone who now meant the world to him.

Shiro glances down at that sharp line of raised, discolored tissue, so particular among the rest of the many old scars that cross his body up and down. And then he takes Keith’s hand and draws it closer, pressing Keith’s narrow palm right over the mark etched into his shoulder.

“I think of it as a little memento of our first meeting,” Shiro says, his voice low and rich in ways that make Keith’s insides melt. The warmth of his flesh bleeds into Keith’s calloused fingertips, strong and supple under his touch; his hand fully covers Keith’s, his palm warm and slightly damp where it presses against the back of Keith’s knuckles. “And a small price to pay for the prize of getting you. Of all the scars I have, this is the only one I like. The only one I would keep, if given the choice.”

Keith has no idea where to begin answering that. He watches the rise and fall of Shiro’s chest—feels it under his palm, comforted by the steadiness of it. Though his own gaze is downcast, Keith feels the quiet weight of Shiro’s stare on him like a down-stuffed blanket draped over his shoulders; it lingers as he slides his hand out from under Shiro’s and trails his fingers down the bare curves of Shiro’s chest, over the faintly tacky spots where missed seed had started to dry on Shiro’s belly, across the divots and raised scars left by hands other than Keith’s.

“You got this for my sake,” Shiro says in time, raising his hand to cup it gingerly over Keith’s scarred cheek.

Keith leans into the touch, eyes slipping shut. He did, and he would do it again for Shiro in a heartbeat. Then, now, at any moment to come. A hundred times over. It is indeed a small price to pay to find the man who carries for him all the meaning in the world. The flesh has long since shed its rust-colored scabs and given way to fresh, slightly darker scar tissue; like the scar that bridges Shiro’s nose, it will never be anything less than distinctly noticeable.

“I would say we are at least even,” Shiro whispers, his thumb tracing its way up the crest of Keith’s cheekbone.

Keith’s eyes flutter open. The first and only thing he sees is Shiro, his eyes like the grey of overcast seas and his expression all softhearted patience—waiting for Keith to say or do anything, if he wishes to.  

“I love you, you know,” Keith blurts before trepidation and self-doubt can cut him short once more. He feels no less vulnerable in baring himself so honestly, but with the nakedness comes a sweeping relief that leaves Keith feeling lighter than a sea breeze.

“I had started to suspect,” Shiro answers, although the sparkle of surprise in his widened eyes is unmistakable. He seems to forget himself for a moment, dazedly meeting Keith’s breathless stare, before startling back to himself. In a sudden hurry, his hand seeks one of Keith’s and clasps it tight. “My own feelings are no less profound, even left unspoken. I love you. I sometimes wondered if I had from the moment I first saw you, in some small part that grew and grew.”

“Love at first sight?” Keith questions, faintly incredulous. He leans in closer to Shiro, his eyebrows pointedly rising. “Shiro.”

“I have no defense except that you left quite an impression on me,” Shiro murmurs, laughing when Keith’s gaze inevitably drops to the scar buried in his shoulder once more.

“I’m not sure the navy should be sending such hopelessly romantic captains out to sea. Seems dangerous.” Keith draws his other hand down to fold over Shiro’s, soothing over his knuckles and strong, curled fingers. He smiles as Shiro’s laugh meets him once more, softer and lighter than air. 

Keith himself cannot pinpoint the exact moment his heart turned toward Shiro anymore than he could mark the line where one sea gives way to another. Captain Takashi Shirogane had been a loathed enemy, once, as foreign as the thought seems. Now, he is worth more to Keith than life itself, than the world itself. And the bond Keith has with him is too deep to plumb and return with clear, precise answers, at this point. They’re too intertwined, he thinks. His memories—even the early ones—are all colored with the love he holds for Shiro now, tinged with the affection he wishes he could have shown the man sooner.

“I came close to telling you when we were lost at sea,” Keith tells him, still squeezing Shiro’s hand between his own, “and I thought we’d both shortly be dead. And after Krolia brought us here, I was too grateful to have you back to risk estranging you right after.”

Shiro nods along, quietly understanding, but says nothing while Keith chews his lip and gathers more words.

“Then finding out that I am not all human… half-siren, I had a whole new host of worries,” Keith breathes out, reminded of how devastating and alienating the knowledge had felt at first blush, even if he has since settled into it with some comfort. “Namely, that you might fear that I had enchanted you somewhere along the way, as I feared that I had.”

Keith plays with Shiro’s fingers, as much because he can as out of nervous habit, seeking to console himself at the mere mention of something that had given him such anxiety. He winds his slimmer fingers up through Shiro’s and admires how much smoother the older man’s hands are—not entirely uncalloused, no, but spared from the years and years of hard labor that most seafarers regularly endure.

“If it comforts you to know, such a suspicion never even crossed my mind,” Shiro tells him, holding his ground when Keith shoots him a disbelieving little glare. “It didn’t. And it never would have. I would know if I had been under some sorcery to alter my opinion of you, and I most assuredly was not.”

“How would you know?” Keith asks, any lingering misgivings over the topic cast away in favor of consternation at Shiro’s unfounded certainty.

Shiro’s strong brows draw inward. He shrugs his shoulders, and mildly, confidently states, “I have my reasons.”

“Which are?”

“I did think about it,” Shiro immediately insists. “Quite a lot.”

Keith inclines his head, waiting, and Shiro pauses to shift closer to Keith, as if being nearer to him is a crucial component of the explanation.

“Well, one would imagine that a spell meant to bewitch someone into mindless ardor would by necessity cast a pall over many of their real memories and feelings. Something to gloss over any bits that could break the illusion, so to speak. Either by altering perception or causing one to forget…”  he reasons out loud. “But I have shared close quarters with you for two years, Keith. I know how you snore when you’re drunk. I have smelled you after two weeks in the doldrums with no rain. I have seen your temper in full swing on more than one occasion, and I still vividly recall what it felt like to be on the receiving end of your blade.”

Shiro lays it all out without a drop of malice or misgiving in his voice. Keith, however, almost reflexively shrinks in on himself at the mention of jabbing a dagger into Shiro’s still-healing shoulder—and the way the pain had twisted Shiro’s features, and how fiercely he’d had to fight back. 

“I know you, Keith, part and parcel,” Shiro continues, his low, velvety voice gently pulling Keith from the mire of that memory. “As you know me, faults and all. And long before you ever let me hear your voice, I had always… that is, my feelings for you are quite constant. Like the pole star. No magic trickery involved. None required, even. I am very comfortably assured of it.”

“Oh.” Heat races through Keith’s veins and scorches its way over his cheeks. Not knowing what to say to such a declaration, he instead softly teases, “I seem to recall that the doldrums left you smelling just as ripe.”

Keith softly teases, not knowing what else to say. He also remembers the silver lining of those weeks spent drifting near the equator, as windless and dismal as they’d been: watching his captain shed his navy coat jacket and undo the laces of his white, sweat-soaked shirt, handsomely disheveled as he fruitlessly attempted to mitigate the sweltering heat. 

“Exactly my point,” Shiro agrees. “How could we have put up with each other so well for that miserably humid, utterly rank fortnight if not for pure affection?”

“Fair enough,” Keith relents, still so warm that his hands begin to sweat around Shiro’s. “I suppose I would have to love you to volunteer to give myself hand cramps transcribing astronomical texts for you.”

“Really? You didn’t enjoy it? I find transcription very relaxing.”

“I found sitting with you in your cabin very relaxing,” Keith mumbles back. “Even in the doldrums. And especially in the icy north.”

“Mm. I am eternally grateful that you enjoy my company as much as I enjoy yours. It makes the deserted island living more than bearable. A holiday, almost,” Shiro sighs.

“Mm,” Keith agrees, half-distracted. He finally lets go of Shiro’s hand. “I find myself liking it better all the time.”

“Care to, uh, head back to the camp before we do anything else?” Shiro says, voice dropped to a whisper. Helplessly, he nods toward the not-so-distant surf. “I am suddenly very aware that we are within eyeshot of the ocean…”

“Oh.” Keith can’t help but give a little grimace and hope that Krolia is off in deeper waters rather than protectively patrolling the shallows around their island. He gathers up both of their blades. “That might be best.”

He stands first, groaning, and then clasps Shiro’s wrist to help pull him up to his feet.

It feels shockingly natural to plant his palms against Shiro’s front as he wobbles on weak knees and taxed thighs, steadying his heavier frame. More natural still to cling stickily close, his breath puffing against Shiro’s clavicle, practically embracing in the dappled shade.

“Maybe we ought to stop the spring on the way,” Shiro suggests, carefully peeling himself away from Keith and the still-damp, sticky front of his shirt. “Get ourselves cleaned up before we turn in.”

Keith glances back behind them, where the sun is already beginning to dip out of sight, and makes a little frown. Even if they make a direct trek back to their homely little cavern, it will likely be pushing dusk by the time they arrive. Any delay—even a highly tempting and understandable desire to wash up—will have them wandering their way back in the dark.

“I think it’s a bit too late for that,” Keith mumbles, a new tide of blush returning to his cheeks at the thought he dare not add: he hopes and intends to make just as much of a mess of Shiro tonight, in the privacy of their shelter, so why bother, really? “We can do it come morning, though.”

But when he takes Shiro’s hand and gives him a gentle tug, the other man stubbornly refuses to budge.

“Keith. I am your captain, you said? Always and forever?”

Keith arches a brow. “That is what I said, yes.”

“Well, I hate to pull rank,” Shiro says in a tone that does not sound the slightest bit remorseful or reluctant at all, “but I will be bathing. Tonight. I have been sweating all day long and I have sand in a few places I would rather it not be, in addition to the… obvious.”

Keith cannot help but glance down at a few spots where he hadn’t been so thorough in wiping up the mess staining Shiro, now cooled and half-dried.

“Fine. But you won’t be doing it alone,” he relents, sighing as Shiro happily falls into lockstep with him now that he’s gotten his way.

“Good. I would happily have your company anyway,” Shiro tells him, bumping his shoulder into Keith’s as they set off up the hilly, wildflower-lined path that cuts toward the other side of the island.

There are only fading traces of red-orange sunlight reaching across the sky by the time they reach the spring. The freshwater pool is backed by dark, craggy cliff faces of dark stone covered in ropey, waxy-leafed vines blooming with white flowers. The water itself is crystal clear and comfortably warm to the touch; through it, Keith can see the white sand and pale, moss-covered stone that line its bottom, even by the day’s dying light.

He stops by the hollow of a tree where they’ve been storing their shared bathing supplies: a meager supply of soap, oil, dried roots and herbs, and a coarse brush for scrubbing, all tucked away within an oiled leather bag. It’s a far cry from the relative luxury Shiro had known on board his ship, with a private washroom and costly, finely milled soaps, but out here it serves them well enough. Shiro has never complained, anyway, as far as Keith knows.

Keith rifles through the bag’s contents and lays out everything they’ll need on a flat, smooth rock along the spring’s edge. And when he glances up, the task finished, he is gifted with the sight of Shiro stripping off his shirt, hanging it on a nearby tree branch, and then shucking off his trousers right after.

Keith has never seen so much of him bare all at once—that broad, scar-laced torso, that impossibly lean waist, those powerfully thick thighs, the soft outline of his length under white-peppered curls of dark hair. It rouses something hungry in him, eager to pick up that thread they’d left on the beach and follow it to some deeper, more complete satisfaction.

“No time to waste,” Shiro reminds Keith as undoes the loosened bow of his hair ribbon and leaves it with the rest of his clothing.

He wades into the spring first, ducking underwater as soon as he stands chest-deep at its center. When he reemerges, it is with a silklike curtain of black and white slicked to his head and shoulders, water dripping from his lips and snaking down his chest.

Keith tugs off his own clothes in a hurry, leaving them carelessly piled on one of the mossy stones just a few steps from the water in his haste. He makes no effort to hide his enthusiasm—he can’t, really, with his own body laid so bare and this thing between the two of them already lit like the fuse of a long nine. He practically throws himself into the water after Shiro, sending out a sloshing wave as he lunges forward.

It’s not particularly graceful, but it is effective. Within a heartbeat, Keith is so close to Shiro that he thinks he can feel the beat of his heart through the water.

“It’s already getting dark,” he murmurs, only faintly complaining. It is hard to remain too mulish about being out about the island after nightfall when he has Shiro naked in front of him, a tall and sturdy wall of well-formed features and artfully-sculpted muscle.

“And isn’t it lovely?” Shiro asks, tipping his head back to look up at the deepening sky.

The first smattering of stars are already peering down on them, bright and twinkling as the last dregs of daylight vanish like candlesmoke. The night is clear and pleasantly warm, just a mild breeze coming in off of the sea. In the forest around them, a few birds still chitter and sing.

“It is,” Keith can’t help but agree, his gaze more fixed on Shiro than their lush, spectacular surroundings. “But don’t complain when we walk through a dozen spiderwebs on the way home.”

It’s a hollow threat, and maybe Shiro knows it. When they leave the spring, Keith fully intends to take the lead, sword drawn, and cut down anything and everything that would give Shiro even a slight inconvenience.

Shiro insists it will be faster if they help wash each other, and Keith is not fool enough to say a word against him.

He can’t remember ever having someone else’s fingers in his hair like this, tenderly rubbing up the back of his neck, under his hair, and over his scalp. It just about turns him to porridge-like goo, ready to lean into Shiro as he melts away, utterly content. 

It is just as pleasurable when Keith’s turn to wash Shiro’s hair comes around. He works their makeshift yucca-root soap into Shiro’s hair and combs his fingers through the wet sleekness of his locks, feeling privileged for the opportunity. And when he starts smoothing his hands down around Shiro’s shoulders, dragging the herbal-smelling suds with him as he scrubs at sandy, dirt-smudged skin, Keith can hear Shiro’s sigh even over the nighttime wind rustling the nearby trees.

The sky overhead is full dark, aside from the waning moon and brilliant rivers of stars. That is to be expected.

What neither of them expects, though, is the way the oft-visited spring changes at night.

“Look at that,” Shiro murmurs as the moss that coats the bottom of the spring and the nearby stone begins to glow, pale and diffuse, like distant starlight brought near.

Little motes of light even seem to drift through the water around them. Keith can cup his hands and catch a few glimmers of it, staring in awed surprise as he rolls them around in his palms. They’ve bathed here dozens of times already—though never after dark—and he supposes that if it did them no harm then, it should do them none now.  

“I have read a few naturalist journals that mention something like this,” Shiro says, swishing his hand through the water and grinning as the light shimmers brighter at the gentle agitation. Even the blooming, trumpet-shaped flowers on the nearby vines possess a faint glow by night. “I never thought I would witness it for myself, though.”

“Hm. It complements you,” Keith says, toying with the ends of Shiro’s hair, where the white strands hold an ethereal shimmer unlike anything Keith has ever seen.

“Looks better on you, probably,” Shiro counters, immediately dumping a fresh handful of water over Keith’s head and leaving a little cascade of glowy motes in his hair, too.

Keith sputters and immediately goes on the offensive, sweeping both hands across the surface of the spring to splash Shiro right back. And as Shiro laughs and raises his arm to shield himself, half-turned from the spray of water, Keith presses the attack. He grins and slaps a particularly fierce wave of water into Shiro, pausing only to admire the way the glow of it trails down the other man’s chest, and then he barrels forward.

He pushes bodily into Shiro, grasping for his arm and some purchase on his hip, ready to—to wrestle him? To hold him down? To pin him once more, like he did against that tree along the beach, only this time with clear purpose in mind? Once his hands settle on Shiro’s bare skin, it seems like anything less will never be enough.

Keith’s desire, intense as it is, still feels hazy. So he grapples playfully with Shiro just to touch him, glad for the way it helps sate that need for contact. He sends water splashing into Shiro’s face and ducks away when Shiro tries to do the same, pushing and pulling each other all around the spring.

“Should I be beating you this soundly in the water?” Shiro laughs as he hooks his foot behind Keith’s ankle and sends him flailing backward, stirring up the glowing moss at the pool’s bottom. “Seems like you ought to have some advantage over me.”

“I think it’s different if it isn’t the ocean,” Keith sputters out as he bobs back to the surface, wiping his face and shaking the wet hair from his face.

In retaliation, he swiftly dives back underwater and launches himself directly at Shiro’s middle, dragging the other man under with him. They kick aimlessly, their legs knocking and intertwining as they roll through the water. They slip in and out of each other’s grasp. They break to gasp for breath, laughing, before the unspoken little truce breaks and one of them lunges for the other, neither yet willing to throw their hands up and admit some kind of defeat.

And amid all the furious splashing and exertion, their tussling turns to something else.

The first time, Keith doesn’t even think before he wrests Shiro close and plants his mouth on the man’s shoulder, leaving a rough kiss above the scar he’d made a small lifetime ago. And the next, it is as if something entirely has possessed him; he lunges up, hands braced on the sloping muscle of Shiro’s shoulders, and claims him with a ravenous, toothy kiss on the lips.

In one natural, fluid movement, he draws his legs up and wraps them around Shiro’s waist, swallowing down the surprised noise that issues from the other man’s mouth. Keith nearly purrs when Shiro’s arm reaches under him, holding tight to his backside as he supports the unexpected weight thrown against his front.

Lost in his own hunger and desperation, clinging to Shiro and trying admirably to wolf him down, Keith doesn’t even register being carried—not until he is trapped against one of the smooth, moss-laced boulders that borders the glowing spring, pinned between it and Shiro’s broad front.

Keith half-gasps out a laugh. “Is this payback for how I pinned you earlier?”

“Maybe so.”

“Mm. I like it.” Keith coils his arms tighter around Shiro’s neck, easing him in closer until their foreheads meet and their noses brush and Shiro’s breath falls on his parted lips. “And I want you.”

“Oh?” The heavy, husky quality of that one word makes Keith’s skin shiver and his spine burn. Voice low and dripping with sultry amusement, Shiro asks, “How?”

Keith pulls his bottom lip in between his teeth and holds it there, torn between blatantly whining for exactly what he needs and meeting Shiro’s teasing in kind.

He opts for something that lies somewhere in the middle, meeting Shiro’s mischievously intent stare with one that matches it for intensity and exceeds it in heavy-lidded desire. “Every manner imaginable. All the ways I wouldn’t let myself dwell on as we slept aboard the same ship, barely ten feet apart, just a couple of walls between us. I’d like you over me, under me, around me, in me.”

For emphasis, Keith gives his hips a roll, letting Shiro feel just how hard and heated he is for him. And though the light given off by the freshwater spring is faint, he can tell it has the desired effect—Shiro’s cheeks and the tips of his ears darken, his skin flushes warm, and the whole of his body thrums against Keith’s, gently grinding him into the stone at his back. 

“We can certainly scratch a few things off of that list, here and now,” Shiro assures him, voice graveled in Keith’s ear.

Disappointingly, the pressure against Keith suddenly lessens as Shiro peels backward. A strong hand remains firm on his wrist, though, tugging him along toward the same stretch of shore where Keith had left all their bathing necessities.

“Shiro,” Keith murmurs, half a plea and half a question.

“Patience,” Shiro encourages as he angles Keith toward another pale stone along the spring’s shallow edge—smooth and fairly flat, though resting at a gentle, sloping angle—and pushes him against it, belly down, half out of the water like a beached shark.

Keith hisses at how cool it is against his wet skin, most of the day’s sundrenched heat already ebbed away. The nighttime breeze is warm and mild, at least. And Keith thinks nothing more of the temperature or the goose pimples rising along his arms once he feels Shiro’s hand slide up along the backs of his thighs and in between his legs, his fingers searing and perfectly slick.

He recognizes the scent as the same oil Shiro sparingly runs through his hair to keep it smooth and lustrous, a remnant from the supplies in the longboat; judging by the warm slickness dripping along Keith’s skin, coating it slippery, Shiro has been awfully liberal in its use this time.

Keith grips at the rock under him as Shiro’s fingers slide higher, venture deeper, an oil-coated fingertip sweeping a circle around his entrance. His breaths go harsh as a firm, pleasing pressure mounts against him, Shiro waiting patiently for Keith’s flesh to yield to his touch.

“At ease,” Shiro whispers from somewhere above and behind Keith, his thumb stroking tenderly along the curve of Keith’s backside.

Keith can’t even fix the pieces of a word together in his mind. He is unmoored in the best of ways, almost lost to his surroundings—except for Shiro’s proximity, his heat, and the grounding firmness of the wet, moss-coated rock under him. And all that slips even further from the forefront of his mind as Shiro’s finger slowly breaches him, opens him up.

Excitement buzzes all the way down to Keith’s toes, which curl within the springwater still lapping up above his knees. The purposeful prodding and curling of Shiro’s finger is enough to make his hips lift and his body twist; it only feels better when another finger joins in, easing him wider with torturously slow movements.

Keith drops his head to the stone he rests on, cheek cushioned on its water-polished surface, and bites his lip. When he finally musters the energy to speak, it is to moan out the only name that matters. “Shiro… haven’t I waited long enough already?”

Shiro’s low, need-roughened huff could almost pass for a laugh. His fingers give one last, deep push into Keith before they retreat.

And before Keith can miss their absence, he is overwhelmed by a new sensation—that of Shiro dragging his hips back, lifting them up to a sharper angle, and letting a significantly more substantial part of his anatomy poke and prod at Keith’s ass.

None of it is complaint-worthy. Keith thinks nothing of shame as he pushes back against the hard, heavy length rubbing against him, eager to have Shiro wholly. He clenches his jaw as the slick pressure against his entrance builds, anticipation working his insides into fisherman’s knots; he stops a whine just behind his teeth when the head of Shiro’s cock loses purchase and slips aside, Shiro cursing under his breath as he tries to steady it with a firm hand once more.

And for all the slow, gradual build up that makes Keith want to thrash and rake his nails through the mossy stone underneath him, the moment that things finally begin to move, they move quickly.

A surprising length of Shiro slips into him all at once, the sudden success taking them both by surprise. Shiro’s frustrated moan gives way to a breathy exclamation, while Keith stifles a cry against his forearm, teeth marking his own flesh, and curls his toes into the sandy, watery gravel under his feet. He loses what thin threads of control he retains as Shiro steadily inches deeper, his jaw going slack and a lengthy, half-muffled moan slipping out past all of Keith’s defenses.

“Good?” Shiro asks, somehow nudging even further in as he leans forward, his breath billowing steam-hot against Keith’s blush-burnt ears.

Keith’s mind and mouth alike feel overheated, sticky, incapable of forming even a single discernable word. With sweat beading along his brow and down the dips of his spine, all he can do is nod and move his lips in some soundless attempt at speech.

Lodged within Keith right up to the hilt, Shiro spares no time in bringing himself to cover him like a rutting animal. His hand falls over one of Keith’s, curling his fingers into the gaps between Keith’s to link them together. Resting much of his weight on one strong, bent arm, Shiro drapes himself over Keith’s slighter frame and settles in, careful of crushing him breathless against the mossy stone—not that Keith would mind terribly, regardless.

There is nary a gap left between them as Shiro’s hips at last begin to rock into him in earnest. That perfect feeling of fullness never leaves Keith, mercifully. The cock buried so deeply inside of him never withdraws even halfway before Shiro hurries to close that sliver of distance once more; its pleasing heft and curve grind incessantly at places in Keith that only ache more needily with every little thrust. And his own hard length, caught between his own slick belly and the polished surface of the stone, enjoys the wet friction it finds.

Trapped under Shiro’s strong, flexing body and pinned as he is ardently filled to the brim, Keith thinks he might just weep for the staggering pleasure of it—of being given over completely to the lone person he trusts with his life and his love and everything else, wanted just as fiercely as he wants.

He tosses his head, smiling though panting breaths as Shiro’s lips touch his brow and the tip of his nose buries itself in damp hair, nuzzling with affection. The hand clasped around Keith’s squeezes tighter. And he can feel it when Shiro’s head drops forward and his pace quickens; Shiro’s already-labored breaths turn harsh against Keith’s nape as he bucks harder, their wet skin noisy where it meets.

A particularly forceful thrust leaves Keith gasping for air and scrabbling at Shiro’s forearm, as desperate for more as he is for a quick and blessed release from the sheer overstimulation of it all. A few more strokes, and all he can do is close his eyes, rub his cheek against the stone to cool his feverish skin, and moan approvingly as Shiro vigorously chases the release he deserves just as dearly.

And it is the minute throb inside of him that gives way to surging, dripping warmth that makes Keith come again, too, for the second time in less than an hour.

Though Keith would happily remain like this for the rest of the night, falling asleep with the reassurance of Shiro’s weight cast over him, he is just as content to be drawn up in Shiro’s embrace, pulled against a broad chest, and leaned back to lazily float across the spring’s moonlit surface.

Eyes blissfully shut, Keith relaxes, boneless as a jellyfish as he drifts with Shiro. A hand dredges water up and splashes it over his stomach, washing him clean once more. And then those fingers find their way into the ends of his hair, combing and toying with their ends.

After a moment, Shiro murmurs, “Next time, I will try to be a little more courteous.” A pause. “I let my excitement get the better of me a few times, there.”

Keith can’t see Shiro’s face at the moment, but he can easily picture his faint blush and polite awkwardness. He smiles to himself and says, “I like your excitement getting the better of you. Please don’t try to be a gentleman with me, Shiro.”

At his back, Shiro moves with the rumble of low, pleasantly amused laughter. “That is easily managed. I have a good many ungentlemanly thoughts around you.”

Keith smirks and rolls over in Shiro’s loose, floating grasp, wanting to see his face, his expression, his all-too mesmerizing eyes. “Is that right? I’d like to hear more about that. Maybe get a firsthand demonstration or six. Is it too soon to go again?”

“Again?” Shiro asks, nearly sputtering as he straightens up lets his feet touch the bottom of the spring once more. “Are you not weary? Did I not take enough out of you already?”

“You did, you did,” Keith quickly assures, his hands rubbing soothingly on either side of Shiro’s trim waist. With a satisfied grin, he adds, “And you put plenty in me, I think—” 

“Don’t be crass,” Shiro chides, and it’s a good look coming from a man who still looks rather debauched himself—his hair loose and tangled, his torso marked with half-formed lovebites, his skin flushed with both embarrassment and some lingering arousal. “Let’s not overdo anything on our first night. We have nothing but time to ourselves here, do we not?”

They do, and Keith contents himself with the knowledge that they have mornings and afternoons and nights to make up for lost time and explore each other to their hearts’ content.

They do end up indulging in another round once they’re back within their shelter, though, because Keith cannot resist the siren call of Shiro’s lips and splayed thighs, and Shiro cannot deny him. And, once they both lie breathless and utterly, sleepily satiated atop the piled quilts and rushes, Keith recalls a gift he has been meaning to give Shiro for some time.

By the dwindling firelight, he rummages through his scant belongings and pulls out a tiny leather pouch. Inside are the pearls that Krolia gave him—waiting, as Keith has, for just the right moment. 

“Do you like pearls?” Keith questions as he rolls back toward Shiro, who lies there half-shrouded in darkness with a gleam on his skin and drowsy, drooping eyelids.

“Of course I do,” Shiro answers before immediately succumbing to a yawn. “Who doesn’t? When I was younger, I had a set of gloves with pearl buttons up the sides. Black deerskin. White pearls. Silk lining. Loved them, ‘til I outgrew them practically overnight. Damn growth spurt.”

Keith laughs softly as he empties the contents of the bag into his cupped hand, the pearls softly clicking against one another as they spill forth. With his thumb, he spreads them around. The more subtle aspects of their colorations may be lost under the firelight, but Keith can still plainly see which are black, blue-tinted, creamy ivory, or pure, lustrous white. One even holds a faintly reddish hue.

“Shiro,” he whispers, propping himself up on one elbow and holding the handful of pearls out before Shiro. “How about these?”

Shiro’s eyes sluggishly flutter open once more, his vision unfocused. His gaze drifts until it finds Keith’s hand practically under his nose, and then he blinks faster, brow scrunching as he realizes exactly what Keith is holding.

“Oh. These are lovely,” Shiro comments, picking pearls from Keith’s hand one at a time to curiously peer at their luster and color. “Better than what I have seen at any jeweller’s, honestly.”

“They’re for you.” Keith pours the pearls into Shiro’s hand before he can even think of refusing.

“For me?” Shiro asks, suddenly far more awake. “Keith, I—”

“I have no need of them,” Keith insists. He had never even had a taste for fine things until Shiro came along. “And I would rather see you wear them, anyway.” 

Shiro smiles, close-lipped, and sighs through his nose. The pearls piled in his palm are perfectly sized and shaped and pretty to look at. “Very well. Thank you, Keith.” And then, with a wry little twist to his smile, he asks, “What shall I do with them, though? If you want to see me wearing them so badly.”

Keith hums as he helps Shiro return all the pearls to their little pouch. “Once we’re back in the world with everyone else, we can commission some fine leatherworker to make you a pearled pair of gloves just like the ones you loved. Or maybe have them fashioned into a necklace? A bracelet? Anything you like, really.”

“All very good ideas. But I do think you should keep this one, at least,” Shiro says, carefully pinching a red-tinted pearl between his fingers. He places it in Keith’s hand and then curls Keith’s fingers closed around it. “It suits you.”

Keith smiles, the blush-colored pearl warm as an ashy little ember where it rests in his palm. “If you insist.”

“I do.”


Time passes in scorching, lethargic afternoons, in soaking downpours that hang over the island for days on end, in clear, temperate nights spent tangled together under the stars.

There is a war raging out there still, beyond the thin strip of ocean horizon that borders their island existence, and Keith is not eager to return to the fray. Not at the beck and call of the navy, at least. And to his mild surprise, neither is Shiro.

“They have managed this long without either of us,” Shiro says the first time Keith brings it up, shrugging. “If the mantle of captain still waits for me, I am not certain I want it. Not from them. And I don’t think Krolia would be very pleased with me if I were to lead you right back into battle,” he adds, tone dithering somewhere between joking and worriedly serious.

It takes them somewhere around four months to finish—in large part because Shiro and Keith often find themselves more preoccupied with each other than with carpentry—but finally, the Interloper stands ready to sail once more.

Over dozens of trips, they empty their caveside camp and load the ship’s hull with all manner of preserved food and their accumulated island treasures, which range from rare shells and quality timber to Krolia’s many fine gifts. It is strange, seeing the place they had come to call home suddenly barren once more, every sign of habitation stripped away. But the feeling only lingers for the length of an afternoon—home is found wherever Shiro goes, after all, and Keith knows they can make a life together here, on the sea, or anywhere else they so choose.

Keith arrives with one last, hefty bundle of green coconuts and dried squid just in time to see Shiro take a blade’s edge to a plank near the Interloper’s bow, delicately shaving off the name painted on its side.

“Bad luck to change the name of a ship,” Keith comments as he gets his baskets down and takes a seat in the sand beside Shiro, tired from another full day of making preparations.

Shiro turns to him and casts a frown over his shoulder. “Given that the Interloper and its crew met a less-than-fortunate end, I would say a rechristening is in order. Besides,” he adds, his slightly glum expression giving way to a warm, almost mischievous smile, “do I really need luck with you around?”

Keith laughs and stretches out atop the sand, absolutely content to let Shiro do anything he wishes. “No, you certainly don’t. I’ll make sure we have nothing but smooth sailing from here to Port Altea. I promise.”

“Oh, very confident, are we? I thought your mother said you still need to master the finer points of pulling tides around,” Shiro mutters as he turns back to the now-nameless ship.

Keith pouts and puts a finger to the damp sand, idly drawing out a figure of Shiro and a three-headed Cerberus, like the one that had once decorated the ship upon which they’d grown close. “I can capsize a bothersome ship if I need to, don’t you worry.”

“Not worried,” Shiro shrugs, now holding in his hand a brush dipped in the black paint they’d found tucked away below deck. “So, what should we name her?”

“You choose.” Keith has never fancied himself one for bestowing names on much of anything. Even the Songbird’s title was inherited. “No ‘Eurybia’s Star,’ though,” he immediately tacks on, knowing Shiro is just sentimental enough that he might.

“No, no. That’s for private, personal use only,” Shiro quickly agrees, a soft, ruddy pink warming his skin. He taps the wooden end of the brush against his cheek, thinking for a few long moments. “How about… Atlas?”

“The Atlas,” Keith muses, making a show of humming thoughtfully and mulling it over. “Mighty big name for an awfully small ship.”

Shiro shrugs, unable to argue that. Never one to give up easily, though, he quickly makes a case for his preference.

“This awfully small ship will carry so much that matters, though,” Shiro justifies, turning to give Keith a tender, sweetly coaxing look. “Its cargo is at least equal to the weight of the heavens, don’t you think?”

Ah. Keith opens his mouth, finds no words, and lets out a pointless, airy little laugh instead. Shiro means him, does he?

“Hm. It certainly is,” Keith murmurs in agreement, except it is Shiro that he considers the most precious passenger the Atlas will carry. The man is more important than the heavens, really; Keith could learn to live without the guiding map of the stars, but not without Shiro. “Alright. Atlas it is.”

Shiro grins and sets to painting each letter with painstaking attention to detail, cursing under his breath each time his hand wobbles. The end result, though, is near perfection.

They drag the bedding out from the Atlas’ cabin and sleep on the deck that night, under a waxy moon and a breathtaking spread of stars, with the steady sound of the ocean at their backs.

Morning brings the first day of their voyage.

Krolia arrives with the tide, greeting them both with a call to wake and the heavy slap of a fresh swordfish hitting the deck.

They wash up and dress and get way not long after dawn, eager to make the most of what looks to be a bright, clear day. Keith wraps his arms around Shiro’s middle, while Shiro in turn braces himself in the doorway that leads to the Atlas’ comfortably tiny cabin. All around them, the white, sandy beach vanishes under a sweeping tide, seawater burbling all the way up to the grassy treeline. The ship rocks as its keel is dislodged from the sandy bed on which it has rested for nearly half a year, buoyed up and gently carried out of the shallows on the receding tide.

And once the Atlas is ferried safely beyond the reach of any underwater sandbars or shoals, Krolia emerges from the sea with a gleaming smile, her handiwork finished.

“Are you certain you have everything you need?” she asks for the dozenth time, her nails scratching against the outer hull as she looks up at them from the splashing sea.

“Yes, we are all set, thank you!” Shiro calls out in the same breath that Keith sighs, “If you give us anything more, we might sink.”

“Very well, then. Enjoy your journey. And know that I will never be far,” Krolia assures them both, smiling as she trails her palm down the Atlas’ side and sinks right down into the waves, vanishing in a swirl of inky water, bubbles, and milky foam.

With his elbows resting on the railing, Keith smiles into the sea breeze that tosses his hair and tickles at his nose. Krolia had adamantly insisted on escorting them across the ocean on their ship’s maiden voyage, and he had gladly acquiesced—he and his mother still have many years of conversation to make up for, and there is no safer way to travel the sea than in the company of a powerful siren. 

And although Keith has come quite a way in his own right, now able to purposefully harness the power he had only unintentionally drawn on before, an extra pair of hands to keep Shiro safe is always welcome.

He turns from the rails and finds Shiro fussing with the ropes and the rigging, grunting as he unfurls the main sail on his own.

Keith runs his hand down Shiro’s back as he passes on his way to the helm. “Where to, Captain?”

Shiro scoffs and wrinkles his nose at the title. He follows right on Keith’s heels, his footfalls heavier, sturdier. “I think upon this ship, we’re both captains. Jointly.”

“Two captains, huh? Isn’t there a proverb about that?” Keith asks, feigning ignorance. He tips his head up to better meet Shiro’s stare. “‘Two captains sink the ship,’ maybe?”

His smile grows as Shiro, straight-faced and steadfastly determined to be unamused, leans in close enough for their noses to brush. “Fuck that proverb. Joint captains.”

With that, Shiro straightens up once more and resumes getting the surrounding deck shipshape, making sure every coil of rope is neatly secured and every repaired stretch of rail is still sturdy.

“Fine. We’ll both be captains, then. I’ll be deferring to your judgment nine times out of ten, anyway,” Keith remarks, refusing to let Shiro slip out of the role he’s best suited for.

Shiro tips his head back and sighs. Not without fondness, though, generously layered under his thin exasperation. He meanders close again, his hand settling naturally at Keith’s hip. “You don’t miss captaining your own ship? Calling the shots, as you did on the Songbird?”

Keith hums and eases into the weight of the palm against him. His hands dance over the spokes of the wheel, testing the steering of the small, flighty cutter in the water. Whether it is the ship itself or just Keith’s deepened connection to his siren nature, the Atlas responds to his every touch with easy, agile immediacy.

It is a deeply satisfying feeling.

“I don’t much long for the past, no. Besides, I enjoy taking your orders,” Keith points out, looking back over his shoulder at Shiro. “Be they maritime or personal.”

“Personal, hm?” Shiro echoes under his breath, intrigued. “I will keep that in mind.”

Manning a ship—even one as small as the Atlas—with just two people is an arduous undertaking. There is much to be done both above and below deck, especially as they first set out. He and Shiro had undertaken a number of necessary repairs, the integrity of which must be thoroughly tried and observed: making sure the bilge doesn’t flood, that their new mast can handle all the rigors of gusting wind, that the ropes and rigging all hold up in use.

There are other things to be tested, too.

Once out in the vast expanse, Keith lifts his hands from the helm and concentrates instead on the currents underneath the Atlas, on the water that grips against its hull and pulls at its rudder. Where he’d once only read the tides and subtly, unknowingly bent them in his favor, Keith can now manipulate them outright.

He folds his hands behind his back and paces away from the wheel, watching as its spokes barely waver from the course he’d set.

“Look at you, showing off,” Shiro calls from a spot closer to the bow, his hip leaned against the railing.

He looks right at home being back at sea, the wind playful with the silken strands of his moonlight-white hair and the faint sheen of seaspray on his skin catching the morning glow just right. Keith can’t help but mourn the loss of Shiro’s captain uniform—he had always cut such a striking, handsome figure in that ornate navy coat and the fitted white of his waistcoat and breeches—but there is a powerful appeal in seeing the man in civilian attire, too.

Keith has Krolia to thank for the fine, perfectly-suited pieces that he and Shiro both wear, brought back to their little island whenever she returned from the mysterious obligations of her calling as a siren of the deep. And he is grateful for her good taste, for Shiro is no less striking dressed in all blacks and warm greys, looking every bit the desirable nobleman he is.

Keith smirks as he wanders closer, pleased that Shiro had noticed. But Shiro had always noticed the way he sails, had always admired it, had always had faith in what he could do if given the trust to do it. “What do you think?”

Shiro’s eyes flit back to the stern, where the helm sits steady all on its own, the waves and the wind doing the lion’s share of the steering. “I think that if we hid below deck, the Atlas would look like a proper ghost ship. Especially with my spotty patchwork on the sails.”

“I think you did a fine job with them,” Keith insists over Shiro’s grumbling otherwise. “Fine enough to get us back to a friendly port, certainly. And from there…”

Keith doesn’t know where, precisely, they will go from there. Queen Allura will surely want Shiro to call on her, once she knows he is alive and well and free of the enemy’s clutches. The Kerberos’ former crew will no doubt want to see and hear from their much-loved captain as well. And Shiro will of course wish to visit his mother and brother again, to reassure them after the news of his presumed death; that his father will also be present, a dismal cloud over what should be a happy affair, is a damn shame.

Whether or not Shiro will want Keith’s company on this obligatory visit to his family’s ancestral home is still a matter of question, though. Shiro is understandably vague when it comes to talk of his parents, and Keith has no desire to force himself into an already awkward arrangement and cause his love an even greater inconvenience. It would last only a week or two, probably. No more than a month.

Keith fiddles with his gloves—the same ones Shiro had gotten him, painstakingly restored after suffering ugly salt stains and waterlogged lining—and nibbles his lower lip.

“From there, we will decide where we go and what we do next,” Shiro finishes for him, tenderly tucking a loose lock of hair back behind Keith’s ear. Then he winks. “Together. Every step of the way.”

“Mm. Together,” Keith agrees, forever enamored with the sound of that word coming off of Shiro’s lips.

Or any word, really. There isn’t much Shiro says that does not further endear him to Keith. The love of his life may not possess any siren blood of his own, but his voice is more than captivating enough without it. And this close, bubbled in the comforting reassurance Shiro always offers, Keith feels spellbound.

He shuffles closer, his boots nudging into the toes of Shiro’s larger ones, both pairs cut of a similar sable leather. Keith curls his gloved hand and runs the backs of his knuckles up the silvery brocade of the waistcoat Shiro wears, admiring the feel of it—and the firm muscle resting just behind it, flexing under his touch. 

With a sigh, Keith grips the front of Shiro’s knee-length coat and wrenches him a little closer. The material is a lush, grey velvet that stretches just right across Shiro’s shoulders and complements his eyes. Keith thumbs at one of the intricately carved ivory buttons that studs the coat as he tips his chin up and finds Shiro staring intently down at him, both affection and sultry want gathering in the wells of his eyes.

“Captain?” Keith curls his fingers deeper into the lapels of Shiro’s coat jacket, quietly encouraging him to lean down and in.

The corners of Shiro’s mouth curl upward, and it is clear that he is trying very hard not to outright grin as he answers with, “Yes, Captain?”

“Permission to kiss you?”

“Granted,” Shiro says, already given over to a winsome, toothy smile. “Consider it standing permission, honestly.” 

There, leaned against the Atlas’ narrow bow, he slides his fingers under Keith’s jaw and lays an ardent kiss on his lips—lips that immediately give way and invite more, which Shiro is only too happy to give.

And as Keith winds his arms up over Shiro’s shoulders, drapes them around his neck, and blindly undoes the neatly tied ribbon that fastens the pretty length of Shiro’s hair, he is exceedingly and eternally grateful that they finally have a ship all to themselves.



Notes:

Is it practical for them to be dressed so nice while they’re sailing home? No. But they deserve to look stylish and extra hot for each other.

You can find me here on twitter! There are some thoughts that didn’t make it into the story itself that I’ll try to add here, too, and answer any questions about things I’ve forgotten to mention:

At the very end, Shiro was lingering by the bow and letting himself feel the tiniest bit sad that the Atlas doesn’t have a figurehead like the Kerberos or Calypso did. He eventually mentions it offhandedly to Keith, who takes it upon himself to design one, have it carved, and get it mounted. (Regular brain: typical bearded titan Atlas to match the ship. Big brain: a dog, to remind them of the Kerberos. Keith Galaxy Brain: what if Atlas… but sexy and very much resembling Shiro?)

Shiro does explicitly find out that it was his very long and abiding love for Keith that made him immune to being lust-stricken by Keith’s singing. During one of his convos with Krolia, Shiro mentioned being curious about hearing her sing. Krolia, without wanting to reveal more than Keith had seen fit to, very much wanted to make it clear to Shiro that he is not immune to all siren song, but one siren’s song. For reasons. On his own, Shiro pondered those reasons and why Keith might keep them from him, when he’s always been so forthright—even with a great and terrible secret like being half-siren, which he couldn’t even keep from Shiro more than a few days. And based on what he’d gathered from dozens of little conversations here and there (Keith’s father was unaffected by Keith and Krolia’s singing, while Shiro is unaffected by Keith’s) Shiro quietly surmised that feelings of the heart might have something to do with it, and that Keith might have been reluctant to say as much… because it would be tantamount to admitting that he had feelings for Shiro.
He is amused to find that he was semi-right, except the whole thing hinged on him instead. Whoops haha.

After receiving a hero’s welcome from a very pleased Allura and paying a tense visit to Shiro’s family, they are left to decide where to go and what to do next. Ultimately, neither Shiro nor Keith goes back into the navy. They have their own ship now, small as it is, and decide to try charting their own course for a while. With a privateer’s commission from the queen, they’re free to sail and to fight at their own discretion—and between Krolia’s frequent visits to the Atlas and Keith’s growing command of the sea, their ship is both well-protected and shockingly effective in a fight.
From time to time, their friends from the navy spend time with them in port or join for short voyages. No one can stand how overtly amorous they are for long, though.

Lotor and the Sincline were victorious! But between the Purification’s parting shots and the storm, they took considerable damage and lost sight of Keith, to Lotor’s considerable frustration. For the next seven months, he believed Keith and Shirogane were drowned amid the conflict and resigned himself to informing Allura of as much, through some very indirect channels.
So when he first hears rumors of the Red Shrike returning from the dead, he doesn’t believe it. But the talk never stops, and it sounds like Takashi Shirogane also survived—somehow?—and the two castaways managed to sail back to port after months lost at sea. He is understandably dumbfounded the first time they cross paths in a lawless port town and sure enough, they’re both alive and well—and Keith somehow seems even more mysterious and dangerous than he was before.
Lotor is intrigued! Deeply! But not enough to risk running afoul of the warning glint in Keith’s eyes as he walks the market with an arm looped possessively around Shiro’s waist.