18. Aegir
Chapter eighteen
Aegir
IN WHICH UNEXPECTED NEWS SERVES AS THE CATALYST FOR CHANGE
“ W hat?” Aegir barked, sitting up in bed. He ran his hand through his hair, slicking it back. He elongated his ears and bled his orca coloring back into his skin. Damn, he’d reverted in his sleep, again. Only Jokith would dare knock on his door, and not without good reason, so he squared his shoulders, grabbed a robe, and walked over to rip the door open as soon as he heard Elspeth don her pelt. “What is it?”
Outside, Jokith stood, looking… small. For all of his seven feet, and his propensity to retain his sharpened teeth when humanoid, he looked like the young boy Aegir had met so many years ago instead of the man he had become.
“Sorry to disturb you, Cap, but I’ve news… from Calida. Can I come in? ”
Aegir frowned, confused as to why he would need to do such a thing. “Can this wait until I’m dressed?”
Jokith, who had already started to move into the room, blinked and backed up. “I—uh—suppose.”
“Good, I’ll be with you in a moment.” He shut the door and turned back to the room, breathing deep and trying to soften himself again. Elspeth was still here, with him, and he didn’t want his brusqueness as Captain to affect his relationship with her.
“What was that?” she asked, her face screwed up in disgust.
“What do you mean? It’s not appropriate for him to expect to come into my cabin with you here. We’ll all need to make changes, now.”
“Aegir, I don’t give a fuck. Something was obviously wrong! You open that door right now!”
What had gotten into her? First Jokith and now Elspeth? When Jokith knocked, he’d removed some of his fat, but now that they were alone he could feel it melting away, his Aegir in love looks asserting themselves in attempts to calm her.
“I’ll open it when we’re dressed. He needs his Captain, and I don’t want him confused. ”
Elspeth squinted at him, tilting her head. “No, Aegir. He doesn’t. He needs you.”
Aegir scoffed, the idea so preposterous as to be marginally funny. “Yes, and I am his Captain, that’s who he’ll get.”
“Stop it!” She threw the covers back and spun her legs to hang over the side of the bed. “Something is wrong , he doesn’t need his hard-ass Captain, he needs his friend. You can be that for Cat and Torsten but not for him?”
“Well, yes, because I’m not their commanding officer.”
She closed her eyes. “I understand that you have different relationships with different people, but Aegir, sometimes those people need—and deserve— you , not whoever you are being right then.” Her eyes began glistening and her voice thickened. “Jokith deserves you. I deserve you .”
She hopped off the bed and crossed to him. She reached up to tousle his hair and poked his stomach. “I’m going to let him in, and when I do, I expect these abs to be fluffier and for you to have dropped the Captain.”
Aegir was reeling. Sure, he had his personas, and each had a different look, but he didn’t realize that they were quite so recognizable. Fat started bleeding to cover his abs, and he relaxed his stance. He didn’t want to drop the Captain, he felt naked without him, but he couldn’t help but follow her instructions. As much as he needed to keep the lines clear, another part of him screamed that he needed her to see him more.
The door creaked open and Aegir shook his shoulders. He could do this. He could find a way to be who they both needed, in one persona. After all, this likely wouldn’t be the last time he needed to be someone for both of them. Perhaps who he was with Cat and Torsten was the right tack. He sat on the edge of the bed, propping a foot on the wooden frame and affected a self-deprecating smile.
“Sorry,” he said, ensuring his voice was steady and lacked the bite he usually had as the Captain. “The mating bond… is new, you know.”
It was a plausible excuse, Jokith was from Sanctuary too and knew that new bonds often made folks testy as well as he did. 1
“It’s—uhm—fine.”
Elspeth grasped Jokith’s arm and steered him to sit in Aegir’s chair. His first mate’s shoulders tensed, clearly reluctant to sit in the chair. Aegir waved a hand, indicating his permission, but then held it out to Elspeth, an invitation to join him.
She stood between his legs, not as close as he’d have liked her, but it would do.
“What’s wrong, Jokith?” she asked.
Jokith looked between the two of them, as if trying to decide if it was safe to answer. Shit. He didn’t want Jokith to feel like he couldn’t share what was bothering him. Part of being a good leader was being someone those you led could trust.
“Please, tell us.” Perhaps that would be enough to make Jokith feel safe. Speaking to Jokith, without the bravado of the Captain made him feel… itchy, but perhaps Elspeth was right.
Jokith coughed and nodded. “Uh, so Calida brought us the location of the flotilla, so… we can go, but she was also able to share some other information… Seelie’s brother is there… her real one.”
Aegir gaped. “Is she certain? How does she know?”
Jokith rubbed the back of his neck. “Seelie’s been asking, lately, about her birth family. She’s really not old enough to know the full of it, but I asked ‘Lida to look into it—see if we could find anything that was safe for her to know. Seelie’s my little sister, adopted, she’s an elf,” he said for Elspeth’s benefit. He left out the part where her parents, Empire soldiers, had been killed in an attempt to infiltrate Sanctuary.
“And now she’s found something? A brother?”
“Yeah,” Jokith leaned over to rest his arms on his knees and hung his head. “We’ve been tracking him for a bit, actually, trying to see if there was anything we could share with her that might be safe, you know? Seems like he’s a squire of some sort, so he might not be a dick. Yet.”
“How old is he?” If the boy was young enough, even if he’d been partially indoctrinated in Pathian culture, it might not be too late to save him.
“Best we can tell, he’s around ten.”
“Borderline.”
“Borderline?” Elspeth gasped. “What do you mean?”
“Most elves have killed by then, most are quite indoctrinated, but we might have caught him in time,” Jokith said. “What do we do?” His voice was strained thin in a way that Aegir had rarely heard outside of difficult training sessions.
Seelie had always been a soft spot for Jokith, he doted on the girl, and Aegir had always imagined that his animosity toward elves was in part caused by his anger over who they would have made his sister become. Aegir opened his mouth, unsure what he might say, but as Captain, Jokith needed decisiveness.
Elspeth laid a hand on his arm, stalling him, and spoke instead. “What do you want to do?”
“I—I think I might want to find him. I want to try… for Seelie. If she could have him back it would probably mean a lot to her.”
Elspeth nodded, looking over at Aegir and squeezing his arm. It was a risk, but one they could likely afford to take. “Alright,” his own voice was gruff from emotion. “We’ll find him. Observe. Make sure he lives and then we can regroup after and see if we can save him. Do you have a description? Boat?”
“Yeah, we think he’s on a different boat than Elspeth’s brother, so I’d probably need to split off and find him at some point.”
“Of course.” Elspeth answered before Aegir could. She was made to be a captain’s mate, it seemed.
Jokith looked to Aegir and he nodded. “Of course, we’ll take that into account.” He squared his shoulders, he couldn’t imagine giving an order when not the Captain, after all. “Get us underway then, Mr. Anderssen. There’s not a moment to lose. We’ve got brothers to find.”
The smile on Jokith’s face was so wide, especially since he often kept his shark teeth when humanoid, that Aegir could imagine it consuming his entire face. He stood, bumping into Aegir’s desk in his hurry, and moved toward the door. “Thank you, Cap, Elspeth, I’ll do that.”
When the door was closed Elspeth turned to him. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Harder than you’d think,” he grumped.
“New things are always hard. I’m proud of you.” She bit her lip. “Aegir… who are you with me? Sometimes, when we are training, I know for sure you’re the Captain, but other times… I think you’re just you… but are you? Ever just you? Or are you who you think I need?”
Panic, fluttering as if trying to escape his body, rose in Aegir’s chest. Everything in him rebelled at the question. If she was asking, it meant he’d slipped up.
“Well, you see…” What could he even say? He certainly didn’t want to say the words “Aegir in love” aloud, but that was the only name he had for who he was with her. It was the first character he’d had in a long time that didn’t feel like a mask. Did that mean that it wasn’t? Was “Aegir in love” just…him?
He hadn’t allowed anyone to see him for so long, he almost didn’ t know who plain old Aegir actually was. For years, he’d carefully crafted himself to what was needed or what each person might want from him. He’d never felt comfortable running the risk of being not enough.
If someone didn’t care about a character, what did it matter? It wasn’t him. It wasn’t his core. Instead, it was a carefully crafted outer shell, and it simply meant that he needed more edits. But so far, Elspeth seemed to like the snippets of him she'd seen, the pieces he’d allowed to peek through the mask. And if she had to, that didn’t stop it from feeling real, and if she would like him one way or another—love him, one way or another, even if it was only for this brief time, wasn’t it better to know what that felt like?
Wasn’t it better, for once, to bring his whole self and nothing else and to be accepted, be loved?
"You've been... hard for me at times. You've made me confront a great deal about my life and what I was doing, who I was being. I’m not sure who I am with you a lot of the time. I can’t seem to settle into a persona, really. You keep shaking me out, and that scares me. I’m not sure what it says about me, and that’s not very flattering…”
He trailed off, feeling adrift. Who was he if he didn’t even know who he was? He sifted through the personas he usually wore, discarding them all. None of them felt right, not with Elspeth. And if he was honest with himself, he didn’t know that he wanted to be any of them around her, even in mixed company, and where did that leave him?
“Aegir… it’s not wrong for you to act differently with different people. It’s normal, but you shouldn’t need to change everything. At least not with those closest to you. If we are going to do this, you and me, I need all of you, not only what you feel comfortable sharing with me.” She bit her lip. “What we were talking about before. I would want something real with you, and I think that means figuring out a way to be who we really are and… honest about what we want.”
She held out her hand. “So, hello. I’m Elspeth. I have control issues, I like drawing, I have some touch-related things I am working through, and I have no idea what I am doing most of the time.”
With a deep breath, he placed his hand in hers. “Hello, I’m Aegir. I’m… finding who I am, again. I like reading, and goofing off, and my mate. I’m a recovering rake, which I think scared you.”
“It might, all things considered. It seems like sex is something you’d value in a relationship. ”
“I think I am still a person who values sex in a relationship. And it's something that I want with you. But that’s something that we have already done. What we’ve shared is sex. Hell, have I indicated to you, at any point, that I am disappointed with what we have done? That I wasn’t satisfied?"
She shook her head, but didn’t look convinced.
He reached over and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her a bit with every word. "I came on the sheets, Elspeth. I came on the sheets ."
Elspeth giggled, and Aegir switched to holding her instead.
"I have so many ideas of fun things we can do to explore your aversion to touch, and every single one of them sounds delicious."
"Like what?" Elspeth still didn't entirely believe that it was possible, but she was certainly willing to listen.
"Like, for example, that we are on a boat... with a lot of rope. And I am a man who knows ridiculous amounts about tying rope. If you were to say, tie me up, especially my hands, I am not about to go touching you. Then, you can feel comfortable exploring whatever feels right."
If he could have suggested it again, Aegir would have, if only to see the way Elspeth's face lit up like he'd invented art just for her.
"That... might actually work,” she said. She blushed, and that might have been even better than her smile. Honestly, it was shocking that she didn't understand what a blessing it was that their bond did so little. It was a revelation. Instead of something forcing them together, it was Aegir feeling something real for the first time in his life. No longer would he need to search high and low, churning through people to find a connection. Instead, he had the deepest, most intimate connection already. It was sincerely more intimate than he could have imagined, and parts of it still scared him, but he also knew that it was better than anything else he'd ever had, so he wasn't about to mess it up by questioning it.
"So how do we, uh, go about doing that?" she asked. Her smile lifted her cheeks until her eyes crinkled, creasing the freckles and faint circles of her pelt that graced her skin.
"There, uh, honestly, isn't much here to tie me to," he mused. "A problem we will probably need to rectify. Until then, though, there's plenty of rope in the hold and support columns you can tie me to. That might be just the thing."
Elspeth stood, entirely heedless of the fact that she was nude. She bounced on her feet, her mood entirely shifted at the prospect. It was amazing how giving someone agency over their own situation perked them right up.
"Well, first off, love, you might want to put this on. Jokith is around here somewhere, you know." He wrapped her in his robe, his cock pressing against the fall of his trousers seeing her wrapped like the perfect present in his clothing. Someday, he hoped, he'd be able to allow her to sit back and let him spoil her, but for today, she needed him to let her decide what happened, she needed him entirely at her mercy, and he was man enough to make that happen for her.
Taking her hand, he led her out of the cabin, both of them covering their giggles like teenagers as they passed the bunk cabin and down the stairs to the cargo hold. Once they were down there, he lit several lanterns and fetched a suitable length of rope. He held it out for her and barred the door.
Elspeth took it from his hands, looking at it like it was a riddle to unravel.
"I can talk you through how to do it."
"Oh, right, of course."
"Shall I take off my trousers or should I keep them on?" he asked.
"On, I think. I'll remove them if we get there, but take off your shirt. I imagine that will be harder."
He doffed his shirt, flinging it on to a large wooden box that would be filled with over 200 bottles of wine and their latest batch of munitions stolen from the Empire. They seemed to be experimenting with new technology lately and the more they could learn about it, the better.
Elspeth waved him over to a column, suddenly awkward as if she hadn't any idea what to do next. That was just fine, he was happy to ask.
"Would you like me sitting or standing?"
She seemed to consider it, a wicked smile breaking across her face like the sun through the clouds. That smile lit him up and made him shiver.
"Sitting I think," she said. "I don't want you to fall if your knees buckle."
"Oh, she's a saucy minx!" he said, sauntering over to a column and sitting on the ground.
"I can have a good time sometimes," she said, putting her hands on her hips.
"I have to say," he said, lowering himself to the ground in front of the column. "I am quite fond of this Elspeth who is in charge of her own pleasure. "
"Thank you," she said. " I have to say, this feels good so far."
Aegir set his back against the column, the smooth wood cool against his heated skin. Elspeth made him want to combust, sauntering around in his robe, wielding a rope at him. It wasn't even so much that she seemed powerful, because she did, and that was stunning, but it was more that she was taking control of her destiny. For the first time, apprehension did not taint her desire, and he wanted to crow with how much it pleased him.
Once he was settled, Elspeth approached and looked at him questioningly. "What do I do now?" she asked.
He talked her through tying the knots, explaining how she could anchor them on the column and the hook for the lantern and how she could loop them around his skin to make sure they didn't chafe. It was all he could do to keep his mind from picturing her with the rope crisscrossing her gorgeous breasts, denting into her stomach, and dimpling her thighs. She had a lovely amount of squish that he could imagine how the rope would displace in ways that made him shiver.
Once she was done, Aegir shivered at the sight of her. He was so exposed, so vulnerable. She could do whatever she wanted to him, and he was desperate for it. Not only did he want her to take control of her own pleasure, but his cock was leaking, wetting the front of his trousers thinking about what she would do to him. She'd yet to touch his cock, and he could nearly come just from the thought.
He blinked and shook his head. No—he wouldn't go down that path. Next thing he knew, he would be coming in his pants and then he'd have to muster his lunula to make a good show of it for her.
Elspeth closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. With a shrug and a tug, she dropped his robe, letting it flutter to the ground around her feet. She wore only a sheer chemise, and was truly perfection incarnate. He couldn't have created a more perfect specimen of sensuality if he had tried. Her breasts were ripe for tasting, their nipples erect and begging for his tongue. That he would not be allowed to sample them before she decreed only stoked the fire of his want. His mouth watered at the sight of her, wondering what parts of her he would get to taste. It wasn't often he was restrained or not in control, but he salivated at the thought of doing it for her.
Please let me taste her exquisite cunt , he thought. He hadn't aimed the thought directly at the Lady. It seemed blasphemous to ask for sexual things specifically, but he had read Sirin's latest discovery on the matter, and he thought she might be amenable, anyway. 2
When Elspeth stepped closer, he couldn't help but focus on her slick lower lips and how they slid over one another. Was she wet already? Did she like the idea of being in control? He couldn't ask. Elspeth knelt down, and there was nothing submissive about the way she looked at him. She ran her hands up his legs, the light touches skittering along his nerves like lightning. His skin was alive, poised for her touch, hyper sensitized to any attention she deemed him worthy to receive. Because that was the real victory here. Anything she did, she did because she wanted to . After what all she'd endured, she deserved to seek her pleasure, to reclaim it, and he was lucky to be the medium she used to do so.
How could she not see? If he played even the smallest part in helping her heal, he was lucky for it. She made him better by letting him help her. All of his work, his spying, the information he gathered. It was nothing compared to helping her regain whatever it was the Empire had taken from her.
The lantern light flickered, playing across her skin and taunting him with how it licked across her breasts. Elspeth crawled toward him on her knees, and sweet Lady, she had to know what she was doing to him, didn't she? Surely she must know how the very sight of her tortured him. A strand of hair fell over her shoulder, and Aegir instantly remembered the spot of slightly stiff carpet that had held drops of saltwater from her hair.
Perhaps someday she would let him suck on her hair, to lave the salt from it, to chase it as it dried on her skin, to indulge in the way it flavored her nipples and mixed with the scent of her. As embarrassing as it was, he groaned, just imagining how the taste of the ocean would mix with the sweet tanginess of her cunt to form a bouquet of flavors.
Aegir was breathing rapidly by the time Elspeth approached him, her hands burning a brand across his chest where she touched him. Surely he should not be this enamored, this pathetic, simply waiting for her touch. But the second she did, his cock jumped into his trousers, begging for her. Hopefully, she didn't notice it.
Or hopefully, she did.
Maybe she would and she'd unbutton his fall front and take him in hand .
Fuck, how perfect her tiny hand will look around my cock. The image was almost too much to bear.
He had thought little about it, he realized, the shape of his cock. He'd not prepared anything interesting. In fact, in his sleep, it seemed he'd reverted to his human form. In taking stock, even his ears were boring, rounded human ears, not even the elongated ones he'd grown used to. Briefly, he considered some sort of enhancement, but another part, a more vulnerable part, wanted her to see him. The things he could come up with were wonderful, and he was rightfully proud of them. Vibrating ridges, his cock pocket, a knot, of course were all wonderful. But also, he wanted her to want him . Not just the things he could do. And his cock, his regular, ole human cock, was weeping for her, begging for her attention. If she could want this, want him , with no other enhancements, that would be perhaps the best moment of his life.
Steeling himself, he prepared to do... nothing. It shouldn't have been brave to leave it alone, but he had promised her something interesting the next time. But maybe the "something interesting" was of her own devising.
1. Anecdotally, it seems that shifters who shift into a predator form are especially wont to this behavior.
2. We’ve recently located a journal belonging to our Lady, and learned, in her own words, that she is quite the student of the sensual arts.