Common

The call was strangely soft, strangely intimate, and Varanduil stopped as if by instinct, craning his narrow head on a snakelike golden neck to peer through the brightening gloom for a familiar face, already knowing he wouldn't find one. Instead, his wet black eyes landed on a stranger, approaching him with all the confidence of an old friend- no, perhaps not just confidence but pridefulness, the set of his neck high and his step fearless. Though he was not so very much taller than Varanduil, he seemed larger through sheer force of will than the compact curving shapes of him truly were.


Varanduil gave no response to that initial, velvety greeting the marble-and-gold stranger had offered out to him, but neither did he twitch away when the stallion slid smoothly so close to him that their body heat was growing humidly acquainted between them, instead holding very still as he laid his flat ivory teeth along the swell of Varanduil's shoulder and scraped the sea spray from his damp fur with them, his unknown pale eyes boring into the shining black of Varanduil's the entire time with no less of that same self-assured gleam. When his hot mouth withdrew from the smaller stallion's nape, his shining body shifted itself in Varanduil's path, as if to cage him back against the sea, and here, finally, the younger rebelled- but rather than backing away, he pressed stubbornly closer, as if to say he would sooner drive his narrow body through that gilt-ivory flesh than be driven back.


Cullen, he said, and clansman. In some distant back corner of his brain, Varanduil found himself surprised that the same mouth that had so eagerly set into his live, unknown flesh would also say 'May I..?' with the same unexpected softness of that first summons of his attention. Blowing out a hot, abrupt breath over the line of Cullen's spine, he considered refusing to say, just to see what this beast would do, and how it would shift the casual confidence of that elegant face. -But there would be time to press and prod for soft spots and bruises behind those silvering blue eyes later, it would seem. (Clansman. He did rather like that.) With a gentleness that could've passed for contrition if a kinder beast had done it, he eased back from where his quivering breast pressed heatedly into the hills and valleys of Cullen's glimmering ribs, his wet hair slithering over his face as he tilted his head politely away, though his dark stare remained shamelessly- wolfishly- trained upon Cullen's oceanic eyes.


"I came here looking for... Company, but to think the bachelor leader himself would provide it-" he bronze mouth slithered into a facsimile of a friendly smile, his eyes too bright and too intent to match- "I'm honoured... Cullen." He laid his name down the length of his tongue as if dripping jewels down a velvet cushion, dark and soft and sparkling with a greedy interest. "Varanduil, at your disposal, it would seem."