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I’m also accepting requests for my Ocs, if you guys wanna request them too:
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Summary: In which someone makes a bet that they wouldn't catch you if you ran towards them at full speed while their hands are full. So, you decided to test it out.
Characters: Illuga, Lohen, Xiao, Kinich
Illuga
Absolutely, 100%
Would drop everything in his hands just to catch you even if he was holding something precious or fragile. The only time he wouldn't catch you would be if he was holding something sharp or dangerous, anything that could potentially harm you if he accidentally dropped you.
“!? W-Wait! I'm still holding onto Sir Flins’ supplies!! If you fall—”
Despite his increasingly panicked attempts at persuasion, his body moved quicker than his mind. In less than a second, his hands had already dropped everything onto the floor and his feet were planted firmly into the ground, arms spread widely to catch you just in the nick of time
Uses his entire body to cushion the impact and slow you down, making sure that even if the two of you were to fall, he would be the one hitting the ground first. Luckily, his feet were planted firmly enough into the ground that none of you ended up tumbling onto the ground, with yourself landing safely into his arms.
After double (maybe triple) checking that you weren't hurt, he proceeds to chew your ear off for the next hour or so, reprimanding you for your reckless and irresponsible actions. That was far too dangerous! What if he slipped before he could catch you!?
“Don't ever do something so reckless again. If you do, don't expect me to catch you again (｀ヘ´)”
He absolutely would. But he would also prefer if you were to greet him normally next time instead of giving him a heart attack
… At least the feeling of carrying you in his arms more than makes up for it
(More below the cut)
Lohen
“Oh?”
He watched as you hurled yourself towards his direction, intrigue and a hint of puzzlement sketched onto his face
Depending on the time of day, there's a 50% chance Lohen would open his arms and catch you so that the two of you would fall together, as well as another 50% chance that he'll wait right up until the moment you're almost in front of him, step aside and then catch you just as you were about to fall face first into the ground. What can he say? An eye for an eye, a surprise for a surprise.
Honestly, he finds your trust in him rather endearing. Even though you know that he has a million tricks up his sleeves, you still chose to run towards him at full speed with your arms wide open, not caring if he was in the mood to catch you or not. It made his heart sing with pride, knowing that you had such blind trust in him.
Fortunately for you, he decided to play nice today and catch you immediately. The moment he tosses everything away and your body hits his, one of his hands curls around the back of your head while his other arm slyly snakes around your waist, keeping you pressed as closely to him as possible even when his back hits the gravel below.
“Too bad. Such tricks just aren’t enough to catch me off guard, darling.”
He doesn't try to fight back the wolfish grin surfacing on his face, nor say a word back when you start complaining. Only when you start trying to lift yourself off of him does he make his move. In the blink of an eye, he rolls over and pins you down into the same patch of gravel he was once lying on top, trailing his hand slowly from the back of your head down the back of your neck, all the way to your collarbones.
“Next time, don't announce yourself before you start running— not like that would stop me from sensing your presence beforehand anyways~”
Xiao
“Absolutely, 100%” the sequel
Wouldn't even think before dropping everything to catch up to you. He would even take a few steps forward to lessen the amount of time it would take for you to reach him before patiently waiting for your arrival with his arms wide open, counting down the seconds until you found your way home
Just like the first time he caught you back at the Jade Chamber, his arms are firmly wrapped around yours. Only this time, instead of them being over your shoulders, they are pressed closely yet warmly against your back, gently pushing you to fall deeper into his arms until your head hits his chest
“Did you need me?”
He asks in a calm, steady voice, thinking that any matter that required you to run to his side with such urgency without calling his name was one of utmost importance. If you had called, he would've undoubtedly reached your side in a moment's notice, perhaps even before his name had fully even left your lips. Too quickly? Nonsense. In his eyes, that was the least he should do.
When you told him that you simply wanted to see if he would drop everything just to catch you, he would blink in surprise before letting out a scoff so soft that it couldn't be called anything but fondness.
“If you think our bond was that weak, you needn't test me. I wouldn’t have appeared before you if you didn't mean anything to me.”
After a flicker of hesitation passed his face, he lowered his face and awkwardly nuzzled his forehead against yours, suppressing the urge to look away in order to whisper against your lips.
“... Since you're here now, can you stay a little longer? There’s a plate of almond tofu here that I would like you to try… Who made it?... I… cannot say.”
Kinich
“Ajaw”
“???”
“Catch”
“！？！？ KINICH YOU @%£@%@£@%£@@%@%£@££@%@%%@£@”
Tosses everything to Ajaw and forces him to catch it all before opening his arms as wide as possible, readily bracing for your impact
Honestly, if he had more time to prepare, he would’ve preferred putting everything aside to make better preparations on how to catch you. However, since the things he was holding onto were needn't to complete a commission, he had no choice but to rely his closest companion (which unfortunately had to be Ajaw) and improvise on the spot
Luckily, all that time he spent carrying you around his house before had taught him all he needed to know. Before you had even reached him, he took a few steps forward and waited for you to skid to a stop. Once you did, he ceremoniously placed one arm behind your knee, one arm behind your back and BAM— a princess carry.
“... Should I ask?”
He raises a questioning brow, waiting for you to speak. Once you finish your explanation, he simply sighs before pressing a tender kiss to the top of your head, looking down at you with a mix of exasperation and affection.
“The price for scaring me doesn't come cheap. I hope you're ready to pay for that stunt you just pulled tonight.”
in which, you're stuck between your daughter and husband's argument, and the only bridge between your daughter's emotions and lohen's paranoia is you.
contents. lohen x gn!reader, dad!lohen, bad parenting (possibly physical abuse? like forced training), angst, happy ending, lohen story quest spoilers, descriptions/mentions of child trafficking/kidnapping + abuse, trauma, reader hinted to have neglectful/abusive parents, lohen kind of immature, daughter is unnamed (you can name her however you want !!), no beta i lowkey pulled whatever out my arse
Your daughter and husband refuse to talk to each other.
Only you received greetings whenever Lohen left or arrived home; your daughter went as far as avoiding the front door like the plague. Dinner times were draped in thick silence with Lohen's gaze fixated on his daughter, while hers avoided his at all costs. Cutlery spoke more than they did.
Today, she finally felt like talking again, just not to him. "How was your day?" She said to you, with stew on her face.
You wiped it off with a serviette, relieved she was comfortable enough to speak again. "It was nice. What about you, darling?"
She mumbled her gratitude before excitement gushed out her words. "I went to Millhaven! They have so many pretty flowers. I made a flower crown, can I show you after dinner?"
"Of course!" You beamed back, enamoured by her wonder. "I'd love to see it."
She resumed lapping up her stew, bringing the bowl to her mouth.
"Millhaven?" Lohen asked, the first time he uttered a word at dinner for a while. "You were in Millhaven?"
Something was off about his tone.
Your daughter was undeterred by this, or simply did not care. "Yeah? So what."
Lohen scoffed, tossing his spoon on the table. "Who were you with?"
"By myself."
"And you didn't think to tell either of us?"
Now, your daughter was alarmed, her eyes were wide with fear, and she clenched onto her spoon. "'m a big girl now."
"You're six. And why are you being so calm?" He snapped at you, standing up and toppling his chair over, the hands trembling from the sheer force. "God, this is so—"
Your daughter did the same, pushing off her chair to run to you. "Stop being mean."
Lohen retaliated before you could intervene. "First you slack off on training and now you run off wherever. What a daughter you are."
With a final scoff, he walked away, ignoring the chair on the floor and his unfinished dinner.
The venomous words left her crying, and she bolted away to her room.
Your heart sank, as you cleaned up the mess and worried endlessly about her, and their relationship.
It all started a few days ago, a few weeks after your daughter's sixth birthday.
Lohen had immediately organised a training plan for her, an immaculate system for learning combat skills. It was toned down for her age, yet accounted for pretty much every possible survival scenario.
But of course, no kid wants to train martial arts, maybe learn a little bit, try out a move or two, but it's not fun when the Vice Captain of the Fifth Company himself aims to make you invincible. It only took a few days for her to argue back, and never attend his training again, with you as her approval.
As you gave her time to calm down, you picked out some apples from the fruit basket, the ripest ones, before cutting them up.
Her door creaked open, with the apple slices in your hand as an offering. "Are you alright...?"
She was curled up in bed, cuddling a bunny plushie, one that Lohen himself won at a Windblume event. Her whimpering bled through despite burying her face, until she peeled it away to look at you.
Her eyes were throbbing with pink, the tip of her nose matching. She pounced on the apple slices after you offered them, munching away contently.
You sat there waiting, giving her reign of the conversation.
After downing an apple, she mumbled while chewing. "Why is daddy being so mean to me? Training isn't even fun. Everything hurts and playing dolls with him is better."
You sighed, wiping away a trickle of juice from the corner of her mouth. "Dunno. 'll figure it out for you soon, okay?"
She clung onto your shirt, snuggling closer. "You need to fix him. I miss when he was nice to me."
"I will. I promise." You fingers ran through her hair and drifted downwards to stroke her back. "I'll sort this out f'you, alright? You can take all the time you need before you talk to him again."
You left the apples on her bedside table, before checking up on her one last time, and heading for your shared bedroom with Lohen.
(There was an inkling as to why Lohen was behaving this way. You let it wait at the back of your mind before jumping to conclusions.)
The door pushed open, and you didn't bother knocking. Much like your daughter, Lohen was in bed too, only sprawled out like a starfish.
No words were exchanged, as you walked to the bed and sat on your side. He shuffled over, before rolling on his side, away from you.
"What's going on with you? First training and now this."
Lohen didn't respond.
"You can't force her to do things she doesn't want to do. You out of all people know that."
His childhood was composed of demands and expectations, without a sliver of freedom. Commands to pray every morning and a life long order to inherit a family business he did not care for. Lohen hated being controlled, and any attempts to do so.
He still didn't respond, grunting half heartedly.
You didn't want to resort to this. Though it was true, it was far too personal of a truth to weaponise.
Nausea bubbled in your stomach, and you knew the aftermath of your words wouldn't be pretty. "You're acting just like your parents."
It hit him hard. Lohen shot up straight and turned to you, hollow eyes livid, hurt, and scared, all at once.
"That's different—you know that's different."
"Lohen. It's not. You can't contr—"
"Fucking hell, what else do you want me to do? You want your own kid to be defenceless?"
You flinched. He's never raised his voice this much. Regret, fear, inadequacy harrassed you all at once, leaving you unable to find anything right to say.
Off the bed you went, until his hand clasped over your wrist, pulling you back in.
"Fuck–'m sorry. I didn't, I didn't mean to. Something's wrong with me, I–I can't." The angry man from before was nowhere to be seen. Lohen whimpered, apologies deteriorating into incoherency. "L–listen, you have to listen to me—"
Worried and willing, you climbed back into bed, holding him close as he explained his side of the story.
"She needs this, okay? She'll appreciate it in the future. Y–you will too—help me convince her, 'll make the training a bit easier for her, then I can make it harder over time."
Emotion, and every irrational part of you wanted to agree, hug him even tighter and comfort him until he was back to normal again. But you knew you couldn't do that. Not for the sake of your daughter. "Lohen. I can't do that. You need to accept that she doesn't want to learn how to fight."
Silence seized your bedroom, and under your palms you could feel Lohen tremble, ever so slightly. Your heart beat wildly, stressed at his current state.
"Peroneal nerve."
"Pardon...?"
He didn't cry, but his eyes tethered on tears, frantically blinking. "It paralyses the limb. The Fatui, they liked pressing onto it and watching us freak out. A–and threatened to cut out our vocal cords so we'd stop crying."
Your mouth went dry. You knew about his past and the experiments, but he's never explained it in this depth.
Lohen choked on memory and sorrow. "I don't want my baby to go through that. I survived it once, I can't do it again."
You gulped, rubbing his back as he caught his breath. "It's okay now, everything's okay. She's safe. No one's coming after her." You waited, the muffled clock in the living room ticking away.
His heartbeat began to calm down, thumping gently against his chest. You murmured. "I want her to be safe too, but I want her to be happy too."
"Is she mad at me...?" He whispered.
"Not exactly. She just misses how you were before. And wants you to be nice again."
He ran his fingers through his hair. "I'm the worst..."
"You will be. If you don't apologise."
Lohen grasped the roots of his hair. "I know—I know I'm acting like my parents but this is for her sake."
"I'm pretty sure they thought the same." You stared at the roof instead of him. "Different type of safety. They probably wanted you to inherit the family business for your stability. And because it's been instilled into them to pass it on."
Lohen groaned, unable to argue.
"I still think your parents love you a lot. They just weren't good at being parents."
It's a common phenomenon. A parent loving their child comes as naturally as breathing. But parenthood took more than love, it demanded immense amounts of empathy, maturity and intelligence. It wasn't something emotion only could compensate for.
Love alone could exist, it couldn't be felt without understanding and care.
It was a grand question that floated around in your head before you started a family together. You heard of parents that adored their children, who couldn't reciprocate, both from friends and personal experience. There was a looming fear of hurting your child, whilst making them grow up in a house that didn't believe in tears or refusal.
Lohen finally spoke again. "Who knows. Don't care. I want to make sure she feels loved though. I'll apologise. And I won't make her train."
Relief hugged you, warm and tight. "That's good. Wanna go now?"
He nodded, though he still seemed lost. "How do parents even apologise? Mine never did." He mumbled, as you walked through the kitchen to your daughter's room.
You shrugged. "Treat it like a normal apology."
With a deep breath, you knocked on the door.
"Can we come in? Daddy wants to speak to you."
You waited patiently, until it creaked open. With an arm wrapped around her bunny, your daughter peaked through it.
"Do you want to talk now? Or later?"
She shook her head. "Now please." You stepped out the way of Lohen.
He gulped. "I'm really sorry. I won't make you train anymore. Never. Let's go back to normal. I want to."
She beamed. "Really?" She turned to you, as if she needed someone else to confirm the truth.
You nodded. "Daddy just got scared you wouldn't be able to fight off any bad guys if you met them. That's why he wanted you to be strong as soon as possible."
Your daughter blinked. "But why would I need that?"
You glanced at Lohen, who took a deep breath to compose himself. Before he could explain why, your daughter piped up.
"Daddy's strong, he can do it for me! He'll always protect me, right? Even boars don't scare him."
Lohen didn't move. His eyes widened, and you swear he stopped breathing.
"Right?" She clinged on his legs and looked up at him. "You'll protect me forever!"
"O–Of course." She held up her arms to get carried, squealing as Lohen picked her up. "Always."
It's been a while since you've seen her this happy.
She pressed a loud kiss on his cheek and squeezed her bunny. "I love you!"
Lohen held her tighter. "I love you too. Do you wanna go to the cake store? It'll be my treat."
"Even though it's night time?"
Right. Going out late was rare in your household. Even when you were all together, Lohen was constantly stressed and on watch. He refused to admit it, but you knew better.
But he nodded. "Even though it's night time. Go put your shoes on."
He placed her down and she raced to the front door. You swear you saw a tear.
"You're allowed to cry."
"Shut up. 'm not."
You sighed, affectionately, watching him curl up into a ball. Your daughter passed out cold, after downing a chocolate pastry and having a sugar crash. The entire time, she clung onto Lohen, rambling about how much she missed him.
"You see why she has no sense of danger? Nothing scares her because her daddy's always there."
"That's stupid." Lohen mumbled, with no hostility. "What's she going to do when I'm too old for fighting?"
You inched closer to wrap an arm around him, it snaked around his waist and pulled him closer. "She'll be an adult by then. And she can learn how to fight however she wants. Whatever martial art she picks, I'm sure you'll help her."
He scoffed. "'Course I will. 'm her father."
"Good." You murmured into his neck, pressing a kiss there and watching him squirm.
"'m sorry for being so difficult."
"You're not."
"I am. Being a dad is way harder than I thought."
You shrugged. "I think you're doing alright."
He scoffed. "I made my daughter cry. And I yelled at her. I feel like shit." He grabbed a spare pillow and buried his face.
"Awww, c'mon, you're still doing great." You pried the pillow away and he wrestled for it. "I'm happy you had that argument."
Lohen whipped around. "You drunk?"
You shook your head. "I'm happy she felt safe enough to speak out. Neither of us would've had our parents listen to us like you did." His gaze softened, and his scepticism faded away. "I know you feel bad, but isn't it a relief she was comfortable enough to say no?"
He sighed. "I guess that's true."
"So stop beating yourself up already. You apologised, she forgave you, and you've learnt. You've done everything most people don't." You pressed another kiss, this time on his head. "You're a great father, Lohen. Far better than your own.'
The praise inflated his ego and he pulled his blanket up. "Low standard, but whatever."
"Just take the compliment." You smacked him gently. "I'm gonna sleep now, alright?"
Lohen nodded, kissing you on the shoulder. "Me too. Good night."
"Sleep well."
Though you heard a sniffle or two, you kept to yourself for his sake, remaining still and quiet.
The one of the reknowned bowmakers of Dornman Port stared at Lohen.
He stared back, the script he had drafted in his head nowhere to be seen, replaced by only unease and clammy palms. Unsure of what else to do, he walked up the hill to where they stood, and greeted them as normally as he could.
"Hello, Father."
He froze, dropping the watering can.
Lohen took a deep breath.
"I have a daughter now."
The man gasped.
"And I'm starting to understand why you guys behave the way you do. I don't think it was right, and I quite frankly don't forgive you." It was petty, but Lohen didn't care. He hated the monotony he was forced into, the daily ritualistic praying, and the predetermined destiny laid out for him. All became worse after his kidnapping.
You understood him fine, and so did Adorno. He doesn't think it's out of the picture to expect his parents to do the same.
"But. I'd want you two to be apart of her life—my daughter's."
He's not sure why he wanted to do this. His daughter only asked once about his parents, and never asked again after he spewed out an improvised lie about them.
Maybe deep down, he hoped his parents would've learnt from him. Or he craved for his parents to finally change. Perhaps he wished for his father to regret his pacifist ways? Whatever it was, it was strong enough to drag him all the way to their place
The man said nothing. Lohen wondered if that was his queue to go home.
But it wasn't, the man picked up the watering can and put it aside, beckoning Lohen to come closer.
"...you'll have some tea with your parents, won't you?" He said, his voice far more wizened than Lohen remembered. "We owe you an apology."
Lohen hesistated, but nodded soon after, as he followed his father.
Basically kazuha x gn freaky bold reader who voices her thoughts aloud like not an established relationship btw so practically reader is traveller's friend and joined them during the whole adventure where they meet up with kazuha and reader immediately has a big crush on him so she flirts w him and all GET IY SEE THE VISION PLEASE IM BAD W WORDS 💔💔
MMM KAZUHA UGHH I HAVENT SEEN HIM IN FOREVER
Anyway I shall try my best to make this oneshot come to life and whatnot! Forgive me if it’s totally bad, it’s been so long since I made a one shot and equally too long away from Genshin that some characters might sound weird and out of place lmao.
╰┈☆ Shameless flirting ☆┈╯
Kazuha x fem reader
Words: 1122
Cw: Suggestive comments/flirting
Not beta read. Some spelling or grammar errors might be seen
If there was one thing Aether had learned after months of traveling together, it was that you had absolutely no filter.
Most people thought before they spoke.
You spoke before you realized you'd been thinking.
It had gotten the two of you banned from one restaurant, chased out of another, and forced Paimon to apologize to more strangers than she could count.
So when the three of you met and became friends with Captain Beidou who had laughed at the fun trio she found, she thought of the lovely idea to introduce a wandering swordsman named Kaedehara Kazuha, and Aether noticed the exact moment your eyes widened.
"...Oh no.” You had muttered under your breath.
"What?"
"...He's gorgeous."
And this started the endless flirting of you with Kazuha who, bless his soul, would smile at you and chuckle. Whether he understood what you were aiming for or not, didn’t really matter. He was mostly pleased that you were so comfortable to be like this around him.
However don’t get it twisted, Kazuha has absolutely blushed and became shy over the past couple days of your flirtatious comments.
“Damn you’re really good at blowing on a leaf to make music. You should try that skill on me—“
“Kazuha? More like I got to have ya!”
“The Anemo archon cooked while giving you a vision. May the wind bless me alright.”
And many more shameless words sprawled out of your mouth that had everyone—Aether and Paimon—groaning in embarrassment.
.
.
.
It had long been a few days out on sea, the crew were noisy as ever and one can always find a drunkard or two hanging around playing cards or talking rather loudly.
You had left Aether and Paimon earlier so that they could speak with Captain Beidou about their next destination, which was Inazuma to find and meet the Electro Archon.
You knew that joining this long journey ahead was going to be full of adventure and meeting all kinds of people. After all you did meet both archons of geo and anemo not long ago, and even crossed paths with the Harbingers. Sometimes your blabbering would get yourselves into trouble, especially when it came to enemies, you just had to speak what was on your mind and most of the time…it was insults. It definitely had La Signora annoyed when you first met her in Mondstat.
Oh the memories.
You leaned against the ship railing, taking in the ocean air as the sun shined brightly down upon you. Inazuma surely wasn’t far now. Perhaps two or so days away at this speed.
You wondered what the nation was like. From what you’ve been told it was closed off and rarely lets people in now. But it was also quite beautiful and full of tradition. While admiring the ocean view and thinking to yourself of the next journey, your eyes couldn’t help but glance upwards.
Kazuha stood gracefully as he looked over the ocean, silent, pondering. Then he must’ve sensed you staring as he gently fixed his gaze over to you and offered a polite smile before he walked down to the deck level.
Making his way over to you and idly standing by to keep you company.
“Are you enjoying the breeze?”
“I’m definitely enjoying it now. Since you're here.” You blurted out, Kazuha by now though was a little used to your blurting, making him softly chuckle as he turned his gaze to the horizon.
"Did you know…the wind carries many voices." He said softly. "Sometimes, if you listen closely enough, they'll answer."
He closed his eyes for a brief moment before speaking.
"Autumn's gentle breeze—"
"Even wandering hearts pause"
"Where the maples sigh."
Silence settled over the two of you. Your mouth agape a little and staring shamelessly at him. .
Your brain supplied a thought.
That was the most attractive thing anyone has ever said.
Unfortunately...
"So... are you always this attractive, or was that haiku specifically written to make people fall in love with you?"
...
A gull squawked somewhere overhead.
Kazuha blinked once.
Then twice.
A faint pink dusted the tips of his ears as he let a small, surprised cough that also sounded like a light laugh.
"I...I wasn't aware my poetry had such...effects."
"It absolutely does."
The words left your mouth before your brain had the chance to tackle them.
"I think if you recited another one, I'd actually jump you."
"..."
"..."
"..."
Then a sigh was heard behind you both, making the two of you turn to see Paimon and Aether walking over, the two sharing a knowing look as they overheard the conversation between you two.
The long braided traveler stopped on the other side of you and he longingly looked toward the sea.
"I wonder if swimming back to Liyue is an option."
Paimon nodded solemnly.
"Paimon supports this decision."
You gave an almost offended scoff, before pouting. "What’s with that comment? I'm complimenting him."
"You're declaring your love after one poem!"
"I am not!"
You paused.
"...Yet."
Aether made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan. Placing his hand over his face in secondhand embarrassment for you.
Kazuha however just listened to your antics and most of all, observed you, and he couldn't quite hide the smile tugging at his lips.
"Your honesty is...refreshing."
You blinked and turned to him, grinning happily, "Oh, good. Because I was also thinking your voice is really pretty."
The blush on Kazuha's face deepened. He wasn’t quite expecting that sort of compliment out of the blue.
"And your hair looks incredibly soft."
"..."
"And your eyes are—"
Paimon flew over and slapped a hand over your mouth.
"That's enough compliments for one evening!"
You mumbled something unintelligible behind her hand. Before you slapped her, not hard, but firmly away from you with a brief look of annoyance. Kazuha chuckled quietly, the sound almost carried away by the wind.
"It seems the breeze truly does carry honest words."
His gaze lingered on you for a moment longer than necessary.
"...I don't believe I've ever met anyone quite like you."
You tilted your head at him, blushing a bit as you tried your best to not make a fool of yourself. "Is that a good thing?"
A warm smile crossed Kazuha's face.
"I think..."
He looked back toward the sea before meeting your eyes again.
"...I'd like the opportunity to find out."
You felt your face heat up as you giggled and looked away rather comically, your hands on both sides of your face, “Gah, you're so hot! How are you single?! You’re going to make me actually jump overboard at this rate.”
Kazuha widened his eyes a little at the comment, smiling a little concernedly. “Please don’t do that.”
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I did yes! @rikissmrki and I were chatting in discord DMs and she suggested a peak idea of changing up our tumblr themes to match! And since we both like Genshin, both like the character Lohen, we just said fuck it and changed our themes to suit a Lohen aesthetic
Lohen X Fem.Reader
Read: Part 2
Summary: In which, Lohen returns home after three long years expecting rejection or forgiveness. Instead, he finds something far more violent waiting for him.
His wife stabbing him should not have been as captivating as it was.
Warning: Blood, violence, slight gore
Lohen knew there was no version of this story where he deserved to walk through that door and be forgiven.
Three years.
That number had stopped meaning time a long while ago. Three years of war, of smoke-stained skies and blood that never quite washed out from under his nails. He hadn't expected his mission to go on for so long.
Even when he cut down his enemies, or tortured the poor souls who were unfortunate enough to be caught by him... all he could think of was your face.
His darling, precious wife.
And the worst part was not missing you. It was how vividly he remembered you while doing everything else. The way your voice used to sound in quiet rooms. The way your hands used to linger when you fixed his collar. The way you looked at him with love that bordered on devotion.
He was a knight, yes, and a knight had his duties. But before that he wanted to be your husband. To him, you came above everything else.
And yet here he was, standing awkwardly in front of your house. It was the one he had bought for you, back when he still believed absence would be temporary. Back when he thought love could be preserved through promises and distance.
... That plan failed.
Now the house just looked like another promise he was so close to breaking.
His hand hovered near the door.
For a moment, absurdly, he wondered if you would even recognize him.
Sighing, he knocked on the door. "(Y/N)? Darling I'm home." his voice came out lower than intended, roughened by travel and hesitation.
He didn't wait for long. Without hesitation he twisted the doorknob and pushed open the door.
Surprisingly, it was unlocked.
That alone should have been suspicious. You never left things unlocked. But his desire to see you quickly clouded his judgement.
The wooden floor creaked when he entered. The room was bathed in darkness even when it was still morning outside. The curtains were drawn shut, yet the house looked maintained, dustless and suffocating in its stillness.
He immediately knew something was wrong.
Instinctively, he gripped the dagger on his waist, looking around for any sign of your presence.
And then—
"Oh? You're home." a gentle voice stopped him in his tracks.
You stepped out from the kitchen and into his vision. An apron was tied neatly around your waist. Your hand held a cooking knife, dripping with a substance he didn't recognize.
The light from the partially open door behind him framed you in fractured brightness, and for a second, all the tension in his body collapsed into something else entirely.
It had been so long.
Terribly long since the last time he laid eyes on you.
Before he could think better of it, he crossed the distance between you in a few long strides and pulled you into his arms.
The impact of you against him was immediate, almost devastating in its familiarity. Your warmth, your weight, the subtle scent that hadn’t changed no matter how far he had gone.
His fingers traced the dip of your spine before settling on your waist. His face pressed into the side of your neck. Inhaling and wanting nothing more than to stay like this forever.
For a brief, fragile moment, everything felt normal.
Like nothing had changed. Like he hadn’t been gone at all.
But then he noticed it.
You weren’t holding him back. Not even slightly.
Your arms remained loose on your sides.
And when he finally pulled back just enough to see your face, he faltered.
You were looking at him. But not the way you used to.
There was no softness there. No relief. No disbelief. Not even anger that he had expected.
His brows furrowed slightly.
"Darling," he started—
But the word never finished. Pain cut through him so suddenly it stole the rest of his sentence.
He looked down slowly.
The knife you had previously held, was now lodged deep into his stomach. "Huh....?" a single broken syllable escaped his lips.
For a moment, Lohen simply stared at it, almost curious, as if trying to understand when it had gotten there.
Then he looked at you.
His darling, precious wife.
He waited for your rage, your hatred and your confession of deception. But all he found was your broken expression. And the desperate mania in your eyes.
Your breathing was uneven. Your shoulders tense like a drawn string. Your grip on the knife unsteady, not with hesitation in intent—but with strain, like you were forcing yourself to stay grounded through the act.
"I thought…" You swallowed, eyes flickering briefly like you were afraid to say it out loud. "…if you were hurt, you couldn’t leave me again."
The house went silent. Only the ticking of the clock resounded in the room.
'Ah.'
'So that's what it was.'
At first Lohen thought you hated him. Detested him for leaving and wanted him dead.
But instead you had tried to anchor him to yourself. The twisted reason sounded like a sweet melody to his ears.
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it. Gently, he wrapped his hand around yours which held the knife.
You flinched.
"If you wanted to stab me so badly..." he muttered, leaning carelessly against the metal as a wet, unsettling sound echoed through the house. Drops of red hit the clean floor, his clothes ripped and stained with the act of his wife's beautiful, horrible love.
"You should have told me earlier darling." His face tilted until it was just inches from yours.
Lohen was no saint. He had always chased the sharp, intoxicating edge pain gave him—always searching for new ways to feel it, to own it again and again.
And when that same pain came from the person he loved the most...
God. It made him feel like dropping to his knees right there and never getting back up.
"Shit, I'm so sorry-!" you snapped from your trance when you saw your husband bleeding. Panic immediately flooded in as you tried to draw out the knife.
But Lohen held you there, pulling you closer by the waist and pressing his lips sloppily on your neck. The sudden movement caused the knife to shift uncomfortably in his flesh, but at this point he did not care.
He felt feverish like this, hot and constrained in his clothes and blood. Something in him ached for release, for an escape from the burning sensation that was consuming him too quickly to think.
"(Y/N)," he whispered, trailing his lips up till it reached your ear. His tongue escaped his mouth, finding respite in tracing the shell of your ear. "You gave me such a delightful homecoming gift, don't take it away from me so soon."
He watched you shudder and hesitate, a quiet thrill tightening in his chest. Wanting to push you more and more until you forgot all about the blood and only looked at him.
He caught your ear between his teeth in a teasing gesture, then guided your hand down to the knife’s handle. With a slow, deliberate motion, he helped you draw it free.
It clattered nosily to the floor, your fingers trembling as you looked at his blood tainting your skin.
To Lohen though, you looked absolutely mesmerizing. The sight of you coated in something uniquely him was like an aphrodisiac coursing through his veins.
"I won't ever leave you alone again (Y/N)," he confessed, bringing your hand to his lips and pressing a sweet kiss on your bloody knuckles.
"In return, won't you try hurting me again?"
Fin
Part 2
Art: mucithy on X
Lowkey got inspired by a pin on Pinterest which I lost. BUT ANYWAY, HOPE YOU LIKED IT??? Love me a man who gets turned on by stabbing.
Let me know your thoughts, thnk you for reading!
Character(s): (in this order –>) Flins, Lohen, Durin, Layla Albedo, Kazuha, Wanderer, Scaramouche, Kabukimono, Chiori, Heizou, Illuga, Freminet, Shenhe, Mavuika.
Warning(s): Segguestive, Praise, Orgasm Denial, Lohen's existence in itself is a warning, Dacryphilia, That's all I hope.
"She puts lingerie on you and uses the fabric shears to pin you to the bed so you can't escape her." <– I am here to say that I shamelessly stole that line word by word from my dear mootie @yurunivo
Flins:
Yes.
Would love to see you try.
I just know he has that "gentlemanly" shit smile on his face the ENTIRE time.
He is ultimately unaffected (Because let's be fair. He is a FREAKING lantern fire thing dawg what do you expect)
Thinks it's so so cute that you are trying<3
Would take such great care of you after, though. Isn't he just so thoughtful<3 (Lil shit)
Despite all the playfull teasing he, is very gentle when it's his turn to take care of you<3
Turns out he can take things seriously when needed— your pleasure is always priority to him.
Can and will "offhandedly" comment on your pathetic performance after everything is said and done (Fucker)
He gets on your nerves so freaking much ughh.
Enjoys your reactions a bit too much. Freaking ragebaiter.
He's such an annoying tease I wanna put his neck on a leash and bend him over—
Lohen:
HECK YEAH
Let's be fr rn. This masochistic psychicopath twink is into being put in his place.
He desperately wants to be stepped on.
Metaphorically and physically.
Be rough. Be mean. Be merciless. Give him colorful bruises. He adores it when you are unforgiving.
Would look at you with literally hearts in those dead dead eyes of his if you cause painful injuries<33
They don't have to be necessarily dangerous. Just something that gets his blood hot and running<3 (But then again, as long as he got a good fight out of it, he won't mind bleeding to his death by your hands<3 or taking his last breath in your arms knowing that you were the one to steal it from him—).
Sorry this is so unromantic and way too freaky BUT THIS MAN CANNOT BE NORMAL ABOUT IT.
You cannot convince me that he doesn't get off to getting beaten to a pulp by his partner.
This twink is getting destroyed, alright.
Literally.
Durin:
YES
Just look me in the eye and tell me he is not a switch.
You can't. Because he is one.
He gets SO subby whenever he bottoms for whatever reason though... always becoming such a drooling sobbing mess... eager to please like the obedient little thing he is.
It's just that you make him feel so so good he just can't help himself but be messy with it :(
He is usually more of the growly type, but take advantage of his sensitive parts and you'll get him to make the sweetest whines for you<33
Just make sure that he feels loved and cared for, and you'll be rewarded with unshakable his eternal devotion<3
Sorry he is just so cutehzgvjhdshjdg my sweet baby I want all the good things for him<3
Layla:
PLSPLSPLS
Do you really think she even has the energy to top?
No. The right answer is no.
I think she's generally very quiet, but she makes up for it by how easily flustered she is<3
Can barely handle much in her natural habitat (bottoming), so please don't try to make her top :(
She is so overwhelmed and too flustered by everything that is happening.
Will still do her best despite everything, because she is just that sweet<3
Until she realizes that she may have bitten more than she can chew.
Starts begging you to please please please switch over she really can't do this.
She is just so mhmdhlklf<3 I think she deserves a reward for being so good to you<33
I love her sm omg is this too obvious.
Albedo:
Yes.
Agrees way too fast when you ask, actually.
Not necessarily because he is a bottom but I think he loves expirementing— Also kinda saw it coming. It just so happens that you asked earlier than he anticipated you would.
I like to believe that the star mark on his neck is sensitive, so show it some love, would you<3
Not gonna lie, I think he'll be so into it.
Like he'll realize how much more reactive he is when you are topping and start asking you to top more often (For science!)
Prolly asks you to write your observations down for him to check on later (💀)
Come on he obviously can't do it himself with the state you leave him in (HECK YEAH DESTROY THAT TWINK—)
Anyways it is time to bring out the smut writer in you.
Sorry if this is ooc he's such a pretty princess in my head I want to bbg him so bad (😖)
— but I also wanna ruin him and that smart mouth of his untill he can't spew any scientific nonsense at me anymore<3
Kazuha:
No.
Just hear me out on this one.
The service dom in him cannot, in any way, let the love of his life do all the work when he is right there.
Unlike a lot of people in this list, however, he is just human, so you can always fight him for that position...
Gets caught so off guard when you manage to flip him down and start toying with him.
(Thinks it's kinda hot—)
Find that sensitive spot and suddenly, his words are not as flowery nor as eloquent anymore<3
Just make sure it stays that way for as long as possible, would you<3
Especially since he will always be on guard from now on, you'll have to be more clever with your tactics if you want him writhing under you<3
Wanderer:
Yes (HEAR ME OUT I HAVE CONVINCING ARGUMENTS TRUST)
Here's the thing. Sex for Wanderer is unnecessary; he doesn't need it and doesn't crave it. However, he will help his partner out if they want it.
I think it is a very intimate affair to him. As far as he understands it; it is a process of stripping himself bare of everything he ever used to hide in and serving what remains of his wretched soul to you on a silver platter for you to judge and see.
And he can't just do that with anyone now, can he?
It's kind of an all-in deal to him. If you are going to do this, then he won't do it unless he feels safe enough around you to trust you with EVERYTHING.
Would genuinely cry if you treat his body with care, ignoring all his encouragement to go all out and his "I can handle it" talk in favor of treating him like the precious thing he thinks he's not.
He is shaking the entire time, feeling so vulnerable and so so loved.
I love him so much sorry if the special boy treatment is showing.
Scaramouche:
Absolutely NOT.
He can take care of you just fine— in fact, I think he is so much more gentler with his beloved than one would assume him to be.
He's just... not ready to be as vulnerable yet. He wants to, he really does, but the thought of actually doing that makes his synthetic skin crawl.
He's also seen firsthand how fragile humans can be, and he's way too paranoid to let you do any physically exerting tasks on his watch. Especially if you were a non-combatant.
I think your only chance at catching him at his most vulnerable would be after an agonizingly long expedition in the Abyss. Where time flows much faster and days turn into weeks and weeks into months.
He's ways extremely clingy (more than he already is, anyways) after such ventures and weirdly pliant to all sorts of requests that he would've otherwise instantly dismissed.
Fights it at first. Then, let's it happen. You just need to use the right words (and actions)
And suddenly he just looks so soft and so gentle and so so unlike himself ughh.
You could almost see the Kabukimono in him, if not for the fact that he keeps hiding his face
Probably cries. Definitely cries. Soft Scara the things I'll do for you—
God he makes me sick (/affec)
Do not even DARE mentioning it to him later, though. Whatever happens in those moments STAYS in those moments.
Please for his sake just... Don't.
(He's growing on me and I HATE IT)
Kabukimono:
YES
VERY eager to please. Can take whatever position you want him to!
Just... make sure to show how him how first.
Extremely vocal; moaning, begging, gasping. Will cling to you desperately while doing it all.
Doesn't know how much it affects you, but archon knows it does and it affects you bad.
No wonder he always ends up being such a pretty mess after<3
Definitely insists on returning the favor at some point. He is such a sweetheart<3
A fast learner, would use all the techniques you used on him before and carefully watch how much you are affected by them.
Takes your noises as approval. Whenever he is being loud it means he likes it. Surely it is the same for you, right<3
Despite that, he is still a bit unsure sometimes
He is being such a sweet thing to you. Please assure him that he is doing good :(
Just the fact that he can see you getting physically affected by him is enough, really! But a bit of praise can go a long way with him<3
Just think of it as motivation! The same way his vocal nature encourages you to ruin him<3
Chiori:
No.
That's her position the fuck (🤨) She ain't bottoming to nobody.
Also she knows damn well you ain't lasting (💀)
I think she is very gentle, but ask for a chance to be the top and she'll give you the bIGGEST side eye.
If you try to undermine her during the act she can and WILL immediately destroy any attempt at that.
She is so sassy, brat taming is in her nature.
Puts lingerie on you and uses the fabric shears to pin you to the bed so you can't escape her.
Is very patient when it comes to her partner, and has no qualms about teasing you all day<3
Won't let you get that relief until you are begging and sobbing pretty for her<33
Can always be a tad bit kinder to you, though. Just be good and listen to her well next time. You can do that, right<3
Heizou:
Yes. But omg he will he give you hELL.
Lays on his back, his arms behind his head as a pillow and the most arrogant looking uwu face you can imagine.
Smug fuck (I will peg that twink)
Wind is strong. ANYWAYS.
Loud on purpose at first. Then ACTUALLY loud when you start learning more about his dos and don'ts.
If you are the type to give commands then be assured that he will not be following any<3
Even when completely ruined he still finds the energy to be such a brat.
Nothing that cannot be fixed by being a bit rougher though<3
Put him on a leash. Maybe add a pretty rope too. And see how fast his confident facade drops when he is so desperate for that sweet release :(
He is such a whore (/affec) I love him
Illuga:
No.
Another twink who refuses to let his partner do any of the heavy lifting.
This one, however, is much more easier to fluster than the other.
A hot breath behind his reddening ear, a teasing finger under his sleeveless turtleneck, and the once dependable captain is no longer capable of the most basic functions anymore<3
Bonus points if you put a possesive hand on that small waist of his as you guide him somewhere more... private.
It's for a super secret important thing, you swear! (He knows damn well that you are lying)
It's almost pathetic, really. The way he is so determined to pretend have any sort of control yet gives in the moment you take the lead.
Feels so guilty that he is "making" you pleasure him. But he also can't get himself to tell you to stop because you are just so good at what you do he loses all words<3
Becomes so clingy and emotional during times like these. Please give him the praise he deserves :(
Freminet:
I think we all already know the answer to this one (💀)
He is the bottomest bottom to ever bottom.
This is like one of three things the genshin fandom universally agrees on.
That twink is already getting destroyed.
I genuinely think he'll cry if you try to make him top you.
Combust on the spot, even.
He'll still try, of course, but the poor thing's hands would be shaking so hard he can barely unbutton your shirt or unbuckle your bottoms.
Stutters out multiple sorrys for each time his fingers slip as he fumbles with your clothes.
He's just so hard but he's also too freaking flustered to do anything about it (my shayla :( )
Will look at you with the saddest, most guilty and teary-eyed expression when he realizes that he has been unconciously humping your thigh the entire time
(He's so pathetic I love him)
Please stop bullying him, he really can't take it anymore :(
Shenhe:
Yes.
Let's be for real; you already top her most of the time.
Something something the red rope is there to keep her in check something something sexual intimacy is a very emotional affair that may or may not trigger her.
Although she is faring better now, Shenhe still fears having any sort of power over you, so she would rather just let you have any advantage she can give.
Not that it would matter much if she actually went on a rampage. But it's the thought that counts<3
I think she's a breather. No loud moans, no grunts or growling. Just soft, quiet breaths.
Would not mind if you are loud, though. The entire point from this is that everyone is at their most vulnerable, right?
If you ever made her top you then she'll be so sweet and attentive<3
Quietly asking for consent before touching anything and constantly checking if you are comfortable.
She is just trying her best, and god is she good.
Mavuika:
Yes.
Thinks you can't handle her (Smug Fuck x2)
You can't, but still—
Is very chill in general, but oh archons can she be such a tease when she wants to be.
Would go out of her way to hold her own reactions in. She just wants you to go all out on her<3
.. and maybe tire yourself out to the point you cannot continue anymore.
Can and will taunt you. Again, she is just encouraging you to reach your limits<3
Won't do it for much though because she knows when you are too exhausted and it's her duty now to take good care of you too<3
Can be very gentle when she wants to be.
You were doing your best just now. It's her turn to return the favor now<3
As always, this is written just for fun. Feel free to pile up your own thoughts on it :>
Do you do requests sorry for asking can you draw my oc alyssa skyheart pink ninja master of air she very shy and kindhearted can you do her and Lloyd first Meeting each other Alyssa blushing because she very shy when Lloyd near her
Sorry I don’t take drawing requests
But im sure someone out there will be willing to draw her, or you can commission others, draw her yourself, etc etc.
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in which, after years of inhabiting lohen's lonely dreams, you finally return to mondstadt. he finds himself overflowing with joy and relief—until he realises you brought a friend, one you were very close with; one he now deemed his greatest rival.
part two to paper dandelion! but this works as standalone too (i think?)
contents. lohen x gn!reader, childhood friends + reunion, happy ending, fluff, crack (kinda), angst, 12k words, lohen story quest spoilers, (possibly) suggestive, thoma's your close friend, lots and lotssss of jealousy and he's kinda pathetic but it's ok, jokes about killing people/kys, mentions of gore (? offering seppuku as an apology but not actually doing it), swearing, alcohol and getting drunk, mentions of poisoning, lohen jumping to conclusions, doesn't follow genshin timeline/events, no beta we die like adorno
thank you for everyone's patience! much love to you all :)
tags: @swivi, @pjselee, @danielapuppy41, @sksjdkksjsjsh
Despite a considerable amount of time passing since the treacherous Nod Krai expedition, Lohen found himself unable to adapt to the amiable streets of Mondstadt again.
Mondstadt City was dreadfully uncomfortable. It lacked the Favonius Keep's prerequisite of strength and constant vigilance, and the thrill which accompanied. Mondstadt was pathetic in comparison to the perils of the Nod Krai and its beasts. The expectation to be alert was no longer, now earning Lohen absentminded comments to 'relax' and resurfacing rumours of his insanity.
His colleagues earnt shrivelled up expressions of disgust, a violent shudder would pounce on his spine whenever he saw how relaxed they were, drinking their hearts out 'til midnight and puking out on the streets.
(If getting wasted was so necessary, at least remain somewhat competent—Lohen counted twelve opportunities for Gunther to get killed as he stumbled away from the Angel's Share the other night; he should've been grateful it was Lohen judging him, and not a member of the Fatui.)
Human life was fragile, it expired early and death pounced on the nearest person without mercy, and never took breaks, thus, neither should humans.
Today, was no exception to Lohen's discomfort.
He arrived to work late—as always, greeting Mika on his way to the Grandmaster's Office with a lazy wave before slouching into his seat, where an obscene stack of paperwork awaited him. The quill between his fingers was abnormally heavy, and Varka's gaze wouldn't leave him.
"Y'know. You don't have to stare me down that hard."
He scoffed, crossing his arms. "Brat. Who's the one who shortened your confinement?"
For once, Lohen kept his mouth shut, deciding the Grandmaster deserved his best behaviour. It was the least he could do
Solitary confinement, you managed to make tolerable. He wrote of everything to you, from details of his Nod Krai expedition to Adorno's passing and his punishment, scrawling away to process what happened, and to pass the time. Though his solitude remained true, writing to you was essentially the same as company. Day melted into night when he thought of you. He had to regularly call for more paper, only when his words to you reached a length rivaling the novellas of the Favonius Library, Varka convinced Jean to mitigate his punishment. On the basis of his good behaviour, he argued that he deserved the privacy to mourn Adorno, and mail his letter to you. Lohen was free to return home and live normally, at the expense of strict supervision and paperwork during his hours.
(You remained to be a blessing. First, giving Lohen the best childhood and teenage years, and now you were bailing him out of punishment, without even being in the nation.)
Lohen missed you, a lot. Absurdly so. Mountains and oceans apart, you were in Inazuma, where he hoped you felt the same.
Six years was too long. In the first year, he went strong, told himself that you'd be back in no time and that letters were sufficient. By the second, he was going even more insane than he already was, actively searching out ruin guards to bully at Stormbearer Mountains in the dead of night as stress relief.
He wanted to touch you, feel your skin against his and to listen to you rant and laugh—a melody that no choir could ever recreate. He wanted to pinch your cheeks again and watch them redden. He missed how you'd cling onto him whenever you got scared, and he wished he was there for every adversity you were facing over there. He wished he could watch how much happier you were becoming with his open two eyes, instead of reading it with months delayed.
Lohen wanted you. Not your letters. Those wouldn't come sleep over when the nightmares became too much, nor bandage his injuries when they were placed so awkwardly. They capture only your handwriting and nothing else. He would’ve forgotten your voice long ago, had he not thought about you constantly, reciting memories like prayer.
Confinement to letters wouldn't be so bad if he didn't have to wait months for mail to arrive. Letters only satiated so much. And they were volatile—who knows if the mailman would drop either one of your letters, or if storm strikes down the ship it sails on. Only Barbatos himself would know of what happens to them.
(With every victory, you came to mind first. Varka and Jean read of it first through paperwork, then word of mouth would inform the rest of the knights. Sometimes it reached the citizens of Mondstadt.
The best Lohen could do was write it for you first, and pretend it was the same as finding you in your favourite spot at the library, or knocking on your window to demand your attention. In his head, you were the first to know because he wanted you to be. It was far better than agreeing with reality.)
After hearing of his complaints, you opted to mailing him a diary, a collection of thoughts and stories you wanted to share with him, organised by date. Inside, you sandwiched a response to the letter he'd send, alongside folded papercraft (known as 'origami', you said). Lohen built a small bookshelf for these, adorning his empty bedroom with your days.
His gaze wandered to the window, surely he could keep his mind preoccupied. There should've been something remotely interesting to watch—the statue of Barbatos stood proud, as always, welcoming all to the open arms of Mondstadt. Towards the bottom was Barbara, serenading a group of people. That stupid, green bard was nearby, and Lohen rolled his eyes and decided it was time to stop looking outside.
His quill hauled itself across the page, leaving the mere date in its trail.
You can do it, I'll wait for you!
Lohen sculpted every drifting thought into an illusion of you, imagining you were there with him, seated on the couch across the room, waiting for him to finish so the two of you could go skip rocks at Cider Lake.
(Back in the day, Adorno would give you guys 'homework', insisting that puzzles were good for your brain. Your logic flowed as seamlessly as your hands, finishing his tasks with ease; Lohen couldn't say the same for himself. Adorno had to give you guys separate worksheets, since you'd simply give the answers to Lohen.)
The room was drained of its sunlight, fading into a soft pink. Every scratch of his quill against the parchment whittled time away. Varka didn't need to snap at him, and
He finds himself connecting his letters. You wrote in cursive ever since you were little, and still did—
Fuck, his concentration was breaking. What he haphazardly glued together were falling apart, shattering into even smaller bits and pieces.
He tried to fall back on his initial tactic, but all he could think of was how different you must've looked by now. You mentioned getting much more exercise. Did you bulk up, or were you the kind to slim down? Maybe you managed to grow a few centimetres, or perhaps you had a tan now? He had no idea what the weather was like over there.
He was unable to conjure an image of you, only wonder and curiosity, and a desperation to see you once more. Questions blurred his vision and hypotheticals presented possibilities without rest. His energy and attention slipped away, leaving him to soak in his pathetic longing.
"Fuuuuuck offff." Lohen slouched onto the table, cheek resting against the cold, polished wood. He entertained the thought of smashing his head into the table until he was out cold, that way, he wouldn't have to do paperwork, nor be forced to cope with the fact that he couldn't see you.
The stupid pile of paperwork was just as prominent, and infuriating, as his inability to focus. Why couldn't you leave him alone?
(Stupid fucking Barbatos. If the god of freedom out of all beings out there couldn't bring you back, he could've at least freed him of this constant craving of you. This was exactly why Lohen hated gods and refused to partake in anything religious)
Then there was the Sakoku Decree too. You insisted the Vision Hunt Decree only targeted Vision wielders, that you were safe and he had nothing to worry about, but Lohen did the exact opposite. A dictator was never honest, a leader that would approve of such policy would not be one fit to protect its people. Those stuck in Inazuma, including you, requested the help of the Knights to return home, though they were fruitless.
Any resemblance of concentration was long gone. It abandoned him the moment he thought of you again, leaving him to spiral.
Varka's heavy footsteps approached him, his large hands sifting through the paperwork Lohen had (somehow) managed to complete successfully. "...not bad. I've never seen you do so much. And your handwriting's neat." Lohen peeled himself off the desk with disheveled hair, and hollow eyes begging Varka for freedom. "You've done enough, I don't like paperwork too. Good improvement."
For a brute that drank like a fish, he was surprisingly thoughtful.
"I'm gonna kill myself."
The Grandmaster chuckled, ruffling the Vice Captain's hair and patting him on the shoulder. "Paperwork does that, kid."
Dusk stained Mondstadt pink. Remains of day bled everywhere, as Lohen walked across stone pavement alongside Varka, watching over children that chased each other by the fountain. The Good Hunter kept many company, its patrons howling with laughter and cheersing obscenely large tankards. His fingers twitched at his sides, missing their skinship with his dagger and lance, while the wind caressed his face.
Doing paperwork was so awful, that Lohen considered getting drunk, calculating whether the vulnerability would be worth the mindless bliss of being wasted—there had to be a reason why everyone in Mondstadt loved beer, and why even the Grandmaster himself had no problem with drinking to his very limits.
"So." He drawled, itching to leave the city and head to Wolvendom to fight something. "Why am I here again?"
"Because you're under supervision. And I need a beer." The man groaned, stretching an arm and scratching his back. "You look like you need a drink."
"A fight, you mean."
Varka slapped him on the back, enough force to almost make him fall over. "Be grateful I didn't make you do my paperwork too, hm? Maybe it's a good thing you didn't become captain. You wouldn't last a day." Before Lohen could retort, something else grabbed Varka's attention. "Be right back—someone looks lost." A finger pointed forwards, Lohen's halflidded eyes didn't bother tracking them as he let out a wordless grunt.
Maybe now was a good chance to run off. And if Varka tried to get him into trouble again, he'd snitch on Varka to Jean for drinking.
He took an analytical glance at Varka, only for his heart to freeze on the spot.
The sun had already set, yet you managed to glow in its absence.
Lohen's feet didn't move, they couldn't—all that went through his head was relief, leaving him in a stupor.
The world went silent, all that was nonessential melted into nothingness. What remained was you, with wide eyes marveled by your home city again.
You. Here. In Mondstadt. Where Lohen was.
You didn't look so different, contrary to all the different theories he had conjured in his curious boredom. You must've lost a bit of weight from travelling so much, but you looked stronger overall. Your smile was bright, as always, only this time it made Lohen choke on his own spit, and question if he had really lost it.
The Vice Captain of the Fifth Company does not cry. However, he'd make an exception for you.
His body finally awoke, and he took a step towards you. And another. Until he could hear you.
You were looking up at Varka, a bit unsettled by the height difference, but friendly nonetheless. "Oh—I'm from here, it's just been a long time. I haven't spoken the language in a while too. I might be lost..."
Lohen didn't even get to say hi, before you pounced on him.
"Oh my god—" Your voice hitched, on the brink of crumbling into tears. "I missed you so much."
Your arms wrapped tightly around his waist and he squirmed—the closest to hugging he ever did was wrestling new recruits, who could never lay a hand on him.
(But his arms reciprocated, carefully feeling your back as he held onto you. It felt harder than before, your working out must've paid off. The muscle was warm, even through your clothes and his gloves.)
He still couldn't speak. No words would come out, immobilised by his shock. All he did was nuzzle his chin into your shoulder and rediscover your warmth.
"Ahem." Varka cleared his throat, immediately pulling you out of your hug. You scrambled to stand straight, glowing a furious red while muttering out apologies. Varka mirrored your words, saying that he hates to ruin your moment.
(Stupid old man. Lohen wasn't nearly as big as enough to throw him into the fountain, unfortunately. He was going to up his dosage of poison next time. He'll spit in his next beer while he's at it, too.)
As if he wasn't going through every emotion he yearned for, Lohen deadpanned, droning at his boss. "Yeah?"
"You guys...friends?"
You answered first. "Yup! I haven't seen him since before I left."
Lohen thought that was sufficient for his question. "You're back...how—? The decree—you never said anything about returning."
Joy scrunched your face. "It ended a while back. I wanted to surprise you, so I didn't write about it."
(Lohen was young, and very much in great shape, but he thought shock was going to force his heartbeat to a halt. He now owes Barbatos for every time he cussed him out bitterly in his head.)
"You're back..." He repeated.
"I am!"
Besides you, Varka cocked a brow. "Decree? You mean Inazuma?"
You nodded. And Varka went pale. He took a step closer to you.
"You must've been scared. Being trapped in the country. I heard about everything that happened over there." Varka was solemn, regret clouded his face and his voice went dry.
You shook your head. "Things have gotten better over there. It feels normal again." There wasn't a sign of dishonesty, but Varka sank down to a knee regardless, hand over his chest.
"I'm sorry we couldn't do anything. Even though it's our role as knights to protect the people of Mondstadt, we couldn't save you guys. As Grandmaster, I failed you all."
He must've been referring to all the letters that were sent, from merchants to separated family members, asking for help and some sort of intervention.
(Lohen used to press his ear against Varka’s door, picking up bits and pieces of his discussions with Jean on what to do, though now wasn't the time to admit that.)
You were flustered at the chivalrous act, frantically glancing around at the stares you were receiving. "It's not your fault—the shogun and her people aren't fond of foreigners. Please don't kneel—"
Lohen rolled his eyes and tapped Varka's calf, bordering on a kick. "You heard 'em. You're embarrassing us."
Now flustered, Varka stood, rubbing the back of his head. "I still feel bad. Adorno was upset when he found out what happened. He even considered sailing all the way there to negotiate on our behalf."
(Lohen remembers that. When he came running to Adorno to lament about the news, the man was equally as heartbroken. While Lohen panicked, Adorno was already planning to use his retirement funds for an expedition there.)
Your eyes lit up. "Speaking of Adorno—how has he been?"
Lohen's throat closed up, before glancing at Varka.
Adorno's grave was still clean from last time he stopped by. That was good.
The cecilia was beginning to wilt, a light brown began permeating its white petals. He's surprised the wind hadn't blown it away—maybe Barbatos was good for something after all.
The two of you were behind the Cathedral, Adorno's final resting place where many lay peacefully. Daylight was no more, and the cold bit at his face.
His gaze trailed over to you, where you were frozen in the evening, staring at the stone cross. "I wrote about it to you. You just got here before it could arrive."
You said nothing in response, blinking slower than usual.
He sucked in a sharp breath of air. "Do not stand by my grave and cry. My life, I gave to wipe tears dry." Lohen recited Adorno's final words, the last wish he made before his passing. He took a step closer, too apprehensive to dare touch you yet. "There's no need to be sad. It was painless, and peaceful. He was gettin' old, too."
Adorno, in bed, life and colour long gone from his face. Despite tethering on the borders of life and death, his wrinkled hands were abnormally warm, far more than the campsites of their expedition. Lohen's eyes burnt and his nose felt funny, but he subsided it for the sake of his last wish.
"But. If you need to cry, go ahead. I won't tell him." Lohen's hand rested on the small of your back. "We can go around the corner for a bit. And come back. O–Or I can give you some time alone if you need—?"
"—no. I'll stay." You scrunched your nose and blinked hard, but you didn't cry. "It's been too long."
So you sat down, and Lohen joined you.
"It was his health, wasn't it? You said he was getting worse a while back. 'm surprised he lived for that long." You murmured, squinting at the date of birth and death. "He only passed recently."
Lohen prepared himself to tell the whole story. His gloves felt uncomfortably stuffy before he told you everything.
By the end of it, your eyes were wide as saucers, bewildered at it all.
"Yeah." He wasn't proud of it, but it felt worse admitting it to you, out of all people. Had you been there at the time, you would've told someone immediately, out of pure concern for everyone's wellbeing. "I wrote it all down for you during my solitary confinement. Haven't even seen Theodore since then. He probably got longer than me."
(He should pay a visit, he thought to himself. Though Theodore was the main instigator, without Lohen, he wouldn't have made it that far. He wonders how he's been doing.)
You, were still processing everything. "So you and Theodore...injected Adorno with Ursa's flesh...the same stuff that we were supposed to be experimented on for?”
Lohen nodded.
"And you were the test subject?"
"Yeah."
"Are you stupid? Why would you willingly do that to yourself?"
You hit him in the shoulder, with a new kind of strength you didn't have last time he met you. "I know—I don't feel good about it either. I was desperate, and y'know, I thought it'd make me stronger, since Ursa's a dragon and all, and whatever. But yeah. It was stupid. I don't really regret it, though. Got to talk to Adorno for a bit longer, and the whole thing helped me accept I was weak.”
He stared at his outstretched palm, where he had pierced with his dagger. Ursa's screams echoed in his skull, and he squeezed his eyelids tight to ignore it. She was dormant, but his fears weren't. At the end of the day, he was nothing more than a mortal.
You nudged him. "I don't think you're weak. Acknowledging it makes you stronger than most people. And I don't think you were wrong for wanting Adorno to live longer."
Lohen shrugged. "I'm only strong among the weak. I'm nothing compared to the people I've met." Racher of Solnari. The Honorary Knight. Even Varka, the Grandmaster—those who belonged in fairytales and legends to be passed down from generation to generation. They all existed in a realm separate to Lohen's, a random boy who almost fell victim to a harbinger. "I'll get there. Someday. Just not today. I won't do anything like that again, old man."
(Of course, the grave did not respond. But he imagines Adorno ruffling his hair and telling him he was proud of Lohen.)
As long as he didn't lose sight of his goals, nor himself. Lohen had no need for power he couldn't control, for it wouldn't be known as power anymore—only poison.
You agreed with a hum. "You better not. You can't get stronger if you're dead."
Lohen let out a dry chuckle, then silence spoke next.
The wind got colder, though gentle, the grass danced alongside it. Fireflies paid a visit, some fascinated by the gravestones that stood tall, others preferred the flowers gifted to them. Day was no longer, aside from the dainty lights of streetlamps standing guard and the lantern sitting nearby, there was no light.
"Your turn." Lohen nudged you.
"What?"
"Tell him all about Inazuma. He wants to know how you've been doing. This time from you, and not the letters you sent over."
(Lohen never shut up about you, Adorno was the closest thing to a father for him, so naturally, he endured the most of his rambling. You'd write him something as simple as "I love sashimi" and Lohen managed to turn it into an essay's worth of conversation, pondering to Adorno on how he could prepare some as a gift to your return, or marveling at how the people of Inazuma ate fish raw, commending their bravery and immune systems.
Adorno often joked that you wouldn't be able to tell him anything about your time away, since he'd have already heard it from Lohen too.)
"You don't have to say it out loud. I just say it in my head if I don't want someone else to hear." He clarified. "Or you can pay another visit next time, if y'know, you need time to process?"
You shook your head. "I'm alright—I just don't know where to start."
"Wherever you want."
You took a deep breath, Lohen noticed the ever so slight tremble. "Hi Adorno. Long time no see." He leaned back on his palms, watching you tell your story. "I've gotten a lot better. Like really better, the psychologist I was seeing was actually a youkai. It's a kind of spirit from Inazuma and..."
...you told Adorno of Yumemizuki Mizuki, the dream eating tapir, and your psychologist, whom you held a world of gratitude for. You shared your progress, from learning to open up about your past to no longer having nightmares.
The story trailed to your job. It started as Mizuki providing you work at her bathhouse, a role where you prepared their snacks and meals for her clients. It was life-changing, as you described it. You let Adorno know that he didn't have to worry for your future, the job had given you the confidence to pursue culinary school, and you'd been financially stable by yourself ever since. Your career had given you a sense of direction, and you finally felt you belonged in the world.
"Having money's a lot of fun, to be honest. I'm glad I could finally do something for my parents with it."
Your words were soft, yet it strangled Lohen violently.
It was a long time ago, but there was a time where you cried more often than you smiled. Regrettably, you had argued over it. Multiple times.
I hate being so useless. I wish I wasn't a burden to everyone.
The fuck are you talking about? Lohen usually snapped, a tone he wished remained foreign to you. If you need money I'll give it to you. Stop beating yourself up over a stupid job. It wasn't worth your time if everyone there picked on you, was it? Your boss was a piece of shit anyways.
Nausea hit him in a violent wave. He always apologised without fail and you talked things out properly, but he knows he shouldn't lose control. Not towards the people he loves.
"...now that the Sakoku Decree's lifted, I'm back here." You concluded, look back at Adorno with a smile. "I'm probably going to...Lohen? Are you crying?"
Only then, did Lohen notice the wetness on his cheeks.
"No—" He lifted his half cape to conceal his face, recompose himself, and blame it on his dandelion allergy that he'd killed off years ago, but you were faster, prying his wrists away.
Your eyelids fluttered, as if you were the one crying instead. "Is it Adorno...?" You let his wrists go and crawled closer, soft thumbs wiping his tears away.
He shook his head, vision blurring with more tears. "It's yo—you, you're so happy now. And I dunno—I just feel relieved." His sinuses began to clog. "I thought of every time you cried and talked badly about yourself. And then I thought about whenever I lost my temper at you. And now I feel like shit. " His voice crumbled to nothing but weak sobbing. Lohen aggressively rubbed his eyes, as if he could rid of his tears that way.
Your last night in Mondstadt, six years ago, flashed in his head. Your posture was slumped, a contrast to how you stood tall today. He didn’t have to work for a full smile from you, it replaced the half-assed one you donned to cover up your feelings.
(Lohen wasn't sure what was fluttering in his stomach. Pride? Relief? A hybrid of both? He knew you were far more capable than you deemed yourself to be, so he wasn't sure why he was getting so emotional.)
His tears died down, and you wiped each and every one of them, until they were no more. Your hands remained on his cheeks, holding them, before giving them a gentle pinch.
"Nmmph?"
"Your skin's so soft!" You pinched again, this time tugging on his cheeks. "You really haven't changed. You're just a bigger version of your little self."
(Lohen would've smited anyone else who tried to touch him like this, or made such a patronising comment about him. And although you were the sole exception, he'd also never admit he likes being coddled like this.)
"You're sooo cute." You let go of his cheeks, leaving him feeling bare. Your skin was no longer on his, but his face remained warm. "It's okay though. I told you, I'd be back as a happier person."
He nodded, sick of how he sounded when he spoke. The quiver in his voice was nothing short of embarrassing and pathetic. He watched you shiver, hugging your knees tighter for any sort of comfort.
Lohen sniffled. "You're cold. Sorry, not tryna change the topic or anything. But you're shaking."
The moment you became aware of it, it seemed to intensify. "A bit. It rained a lot on the way here."
He sighed, huddling closer to wrap his cloak around you. "You should've rested first then, before doing anything."
"Probably." You coughed a couple times, pressing closer to him. "I got too excited though. I'll just eat a bunch of ginger."
Lohen huffed, guiding you to stand up. "I'm not going anywhere, neither is Adorno. Let's get you home."
You didn't resist, dusting off your knees. "Alright, alright—see you Adorno." You gave the grave one last stare. "And thank you for everything. Without you, today wouldn't have existed for me. For us."
A solemn nod from Lohen, and he silently agreed.
As you walked into the night, you gasped, peering down at the city before walking down the cobblestone stairs. “It’s so pretty. Look at all the lights from everyone’s house—oooh, and the stars!”
Lohen watched you smile. “Yeah. It’s beautiful. Very.”
“I missed Mondstadt.” You declared, jumping down each step one at a time.
(And Lohen missed you. Dearly so.)
“Mondstadt missed you too.” He murmured, a gloved hand reaching out for you, just in case you tripped or hurt yourself.
Together, you walked down the empty streets of Mondstadt City. The working week hadn't ended yet, leaving the city quiet and desolate, Lohen preferred this over seeing drunk men cheer and trip over their own feet.
"Where are you staying?"
(Though he appreciates your surprise return, he wishes you would've told him. Not only he thought he was having a heart attack, but he wanted to let you stay at his place—show off the fruits of his efforts and be the best host he could.
His shock died down, and now all he could think of was his confession to you. The moment he sends you back to your place, he was going to launch into frenzied brainstorming.)
"I'm renting a place at the moment."
His paranoia flared, questioning whose property it was. Shady landlords always targeted foreigners. Obviously, you weren’t one, but anyone could easily treat you as one after how long you were gone for.
But he didn't want to intrude. You’re smart enough to be cautious of scammers. "You could've stayed in my place. I moved into a bigger house since you left." He says, as if he hadn't told you this over parchment and ink already.
You chuckled, a tune he was addicted to. "I know, but I told you, I wanted this to be a surprise. The rent isn't too bad."
Maybe it was better that you weren't staying at his place. It gave Lohen better opportunity to figure out how he wanted to declare his love. It'd be awful if you walked into his preparations.
"Whatever you say."
Past the Good Hunter you turned, and there it was. You pointed to a building, it wasn't anything grand, but felt excessive for only one person to live in.
"We're here. Thanks again for walking me home." You grinned before sneezing, immediately covering your nose with your palm. The other hand fumbled through a pocket for a tissue.
"Geez—I thought you said your cold wasn't that bad?"
Before Lohen could speak, another voice reached for you.
The door to your house was open, and out came a man. He was tall, short, blond hair propped up by a black hairband. He donned a red jacket, over a tight, black shirt decorated by a silver dog tag.
Down the stairs he hurried, to check up on you and nag about your health.
Who the fuck is this?
After blowing your nose properly, you recomposed yourself, standing straight. "Sorry—I didn't think I'd be out this late." You looked back at Lohen. "Right. Lohen, this is Thoma." You gestured to the man besides you, who waved politely at Lohen, resembling a carefree dog. "Thoma, this is Lohen."
What the fuck is Thoma?
Despite being a man of quick decisions and logic, Lohen had little coherency in his thoughts.
"Nice to meet you, Lohen!" Thoma reached a hand out, and Lohen took far too long to reciprocate with his own. "Thanks for walking y/n home."
Were you seeing someone? This guy?
"Uh—yeah, no worries. Anytime."
No, he's jumping to conclusions. Friends travel and live together—
An aggressive shade of red dusted over your cheeks, reaching even your ears. "I'll see you soon. Thanks again." You quickly turned away from Lohen, ushering Thoma inside, muttering something about being cold.
With a final wave, you were inside. Through the window, he could see your blurry figures talk, and muffled laughter slipped out.
Lohen's expertise was vast, but was not applicable to romance in the slightest. However, everyone knows that a blush that deep had to indicate something, a crush, possibly even love, considering how far you had traveled together.
Paralysed and cold, he stood there, a storm of frantic thought brewing in his head. There's no way you guys were dating, right? You would've told him if someone had asked you out, or if you had a crush in the works. But what if this was another surprise?
For a brief moment, he pictured you guys on a date, and was met with immediate nausea.
(He was going to kill "Thoma", or whatever his name was, if it was the last thing he'd do.)
Since then, he was oddly provoked by Thoma, despite his polite demeanour and warmth.
When he returned home, he laid in bed and tried to rationalise the situation.
You. "Thoma". Dating?
Oh my god—what if you were married? Lohen didn't notice any rings on you, but you guys were reaching that age. You could've been intending on it, or maybe you packed your engagement ring away, all that’s valuable doesn’t belong in the open.
He buried his face into a nearby pillow,
It's not like you've ever loved him back that way, nor did you vow to remain single forever (not that it'd even matter—you're allowed to change your mind whenever), but he felt a sliver of betrayal. If he was going to get rejected, he at least wanted to stand a good chance, rather than being nations away.
Lohen dismissed the thought, reminding himself to simply ask next time he saw you before preparing to go to sleep.
The next morning at work, he earned nothing short of concern and judgement.
"What even happened to you?" Eula commented, poking Lohen's head. His cheek was pressed up against the wooden table, neglected paperwork somewhere off to the side and his quill laid just as dead.
He heard Amber come over, too. "Dunno. He looked awful when he got here, then he kinda just gave up after the Grandmaster went out for lunch. Lohennn, are you alright?"
"Is traveling from nation to nation and living with each other a couple's thing to do?"
The two women paused. Amber spoke first. "I guess so...?"
Lohen's fist pounded the table. "I'm gonna kill that bastard."
With a worried, 'let's give him some time', Eula guided Amber away.
He finally sat up, eyelids fighting for their life to remain open. All he did was spiral instead of sleep, conjuring up all sorts of wacky possibilities. It tortured him until morning, and skipping work wasn't a luxury either, considering how he was already in trouble.
He slouched again, this time his chin resting on his forearms. He closed his eyes, hoping for a quick power nap before Varka could yell at him.
Eula came into the room again, heavy boots stomping and interrupting his attempted nap. He didn't react, until she knocked aggressively on the table.
"Fuck…I was trying to slee—"
From behind Eula you peered at him, an awkward smile plastered on your face.
'You have a visitor.' She said, then she turned to you. "Sorry about him. He hates paperwork."
He was tempted to interject, insisting that he wasn't that bad with paperwork, it was stupid Thoma's fault. All he did was tiredly squint, and burn with shame.
"Should I...come back another time? Work seems hectic."
He shook his head, excessively, leaving his bangs in his face. "No—what's up?" Frantic, he adjusted them,
"I just...wanted to see you. And I have something I need to show you."
(It wasn't an engagement ring, was it?)
Lohen's gaze flitted around before returning to you. If he concentrated hard enough and made the most of his desperation, he'd get all this paperwork done. Hopefully soon. "Okay. Yeah that's fine. Just give me a bit more time, I'll be done soon."
The throbbing in his temples disagreed with him.
"Your library's so nice, I had a fun time talking to Lisa."
Lohen himself was impressed with his own performance. He powered through paperwork, a perfect balance of speed, and care, as to avoid being scolded and ordered to redo it all from scratch.
The fresh air helped out a bit, it woke him up and forced his eyes to stay alert. Being so openly weak was stressing him out, even with the confines of Mondstadt City and its walls, he couldn't help but worry about whether he'd be able to defend the two of you if anything happened.
"Lisa? Yeah she's alright..." He rubbed his eye, fervently.
Your hand clasped around his wrist. "You'll hurt your eye if you do that...did you not sleep enough?"
Not at all, actually. "Somethin' like that." His eye begged to be scratched again, but he held back for your sake. "Had...things on my mind."
You released him and nodded slowly. "Is being a knight that hard?"
(Being a knight was fine. Possibly having an unrequited love was far worse and nothing in comparison.)
He made an incoherent noise, before changing the topic. "Where are we going?"
"Back to mine." You smiled, and the exhaustion clinging onto his eyelid was beginning to fade. "I have stuff for you."
Lohen's face soured. Not at the thought of you, nor whatever you wanted to show him, but at Thoma. Lohen thinks he's going to throw up if he has to think about you two again.
"Wouldn't...Thoma be upset? Isn't he staying there as well? Don’t wanna intrude on you guys."
You shook your head. "He's visiting his mother today. Plus, he's a really sweet person, I'm sure you'd like him too.”
Lohen thinks not. "Are you guys like...friends?"
A pause filled the air. "I guess you could call it that. We met at culinary school."
(So are you dating or not? What kind of answer was that?)
Lohen nodded. He decided to take what he could get, and appreciate that he wouldn't have to see you and Thoma together, whatever your relationship was. He can worry about Thoma when he’s not sleep deprived and barely holding himself up. As you walked the familiar route from yesterday together, he found himself wincing whenever sunlight came too close for his liking, another predicament, alongside his brooding.
‘Oh yeah. I forgot to ask, but how are your parents doing?”
Lohen shrugged.
“Still not talking to them?”
“Yup.” He had no need for them or their ways. The most he did was pay a visit on their birthdays, dropping off a gift and a letter. He popped by on holidays, too, limiting conversation to basic greetings. You questioned it no further, just the way Lohen liked it—it was refreshing for someone to accept the way he lived, rather than yapping on about the importance of family and blood. “Yours?”
“They’re good. Turns out they prefer Inazuma far more than here.”
Lohen liked your parents, it was a shame they didn’t come with you. You inherited your kindness from your mother, who’d always encourage Lohen to come over for a meal whenever, and you had the same understanding as your father. Lohen never confided to him with his familial issues, yet he provided more insight on his situations than anyone else. He wished he could say hi again.
“What about you?” You haven’t told him exactly what you were doing here. “Are you just visiting?”
“Kind of? I’m planning to stay here for a bit. I don’t have a concrete plan.” You hummed, as the wind fluffed up your hair. “Might travel around, now that I’m not in the middle of nowhere.”
Good. That granted him a decent amount of time to confess to you.
“Well, let me know when you figure it out. I want to hear all about it.”
The house you were staying in came into view, but the sound of crying snapped your neck towards it. “What happened?”
Lohen scanned the vicinity, nearby was a child, a young boy, wailing and clutching at his bloodied knee. You wasted no time, rushing to his side.
“Are you okay?”
The kid cried some more.
Lohen joined you two. “Can you walk, kid?”
His tears didn’t stop, but he planted his small hands against your shoulders and pushed himself with a heave, biting his lip and gluing his eyes shut.
The kid turned to Lohen and nodded.
You inspected the graze. It appeared fine, with no visible dirt, and it was relatively shallow. “Well done. That must’ve hurt a lot, hm?”
He nodded. “It still does…”
With a subtle frown, you dug through your pockets, bringing out a small bag. “Want some candy? It’ll make you feel better.”
(Lohen wanted to ask for one too, but he refrained.)
As you tugged the pouch open, the kid deadpanned. “Mummy said I shouldn’t accept candy from strangers.”
Lohen couldn’t help but snicker, turning his face away to hide his amusement. “Smart kid—” He placed a hand on his back. “Mummy and Daddy are raising you right, hm?”
The kid stared back with judgement. Now it was your turn to laugh.
(Who knew kids were so unfiltered? Lohen knew kids were difficult, but looking back, he must’ve been a nightmare for every adult in the vicinity.)
“Sage—I told you not to run.”
The woman’s voice almost echoed across the city, frantic and booming. The boy reacted immediately, hobbling into her arms and resuming his crying. You both stood up as well.
“C’mon, what do you say to the nice couple?” She urged him to say thank you, and the boy reluctantly turned around, hands still clinging onto her clothes. “Thank you for looking out for him…oh, you must be a knight?”
She looked Lohen up and down, he saluted in response. “Yes. Your son should be fine, as long as you clean and bandage it. It doesn’t appear to be serious.” It felt wrong, performing his formalities in front of you. He reserved this tone for diplomatic meetings, where pissing off an official could ruin an entire agreement, not the gentle streets of Mondstadt City, where you could speak to anyone as if they were close friends.
The woman sighed, and thanked you as well. “You guys would make wonderful parents.”
Your eyes grew wide. “P–parents?”
“Yeah.” She repeated, as if it were common sense. “Aren’t you a couple?”
(See? Even the citizens of Mondstadt knew you two would be a great pair. Fuck you, Thoma.)
You corrected her with a stutter and flustered cheeks. “N–no ma’am.”
She was unbothered by it, and seemingly unconvinced as well. “Oh. What a shame, you seem to be close to each other.” With a final goodbye, she walked away with her son, excusing herself with needing to prepare dinner early tonight.
Together, you watched them return home. “Aw. I wanted him to taste test my candy.” The pouch laid in your hands and you frowned. “I didn’t know kids were so…sassy, nowadays.”
Giddy from the woman’s assumption, Lohen leaned closer. “I’m always here. I’ll eat anything and everything.” A random kid wouldn’t appreciate it as much as him, anyways. Those would eat anything as long as there’s enough colour and sugar.
You smiled. “Of course you will. You can try some after I show you what I planned out for you.”
A grin crept onto his lips. With anticipation akin to a child’s, Lohen followed you into your house like a puppy, overflowing with joy.
When he reached your living room, you stopped him, slipping behind the knight before encasing his eyes with your hands. They were soft, and warm, nothing in comparison to the calluses that inhabited his palms. “You’ll keep it a surprise, right?”
He despised the unpredictable and unknown, but he nodded and his eyelids shut willingly. “Of course.”
By his hand, you led him through the place, until coming to a stop.
“Open.” You requested. Then he obeyed.
Lohen blinked. It was just a living room. A bit bare, but it was a normal living room. There were crates stacked in a corner, presumably the belongings you and Thoma brought to Mondstadt.
He began sweating, wondering if he was just being incredibly dense. “Am I…?
You pointed to the corner, scurrying towards it and grabbing the closest one. “Souvenirs. For you. I probably should’ve considered how you were going to bring it home…”
Souvenirs? Those crates could probably carry every possession to his name.
“Come here—” You ushered him closer, placing the crate on the floor and prying off the lid.
He crouched beside you. “A crate is a lot for souvenirs, isn’t it?”
“Is it too much? These are all for you.”
(Lohen has infiltrated illegal auctions. Embarked on trecherous journey to the lawless nation of Nod Krai. Even went face to face with a sinner of Khaenri’ah. But he’s never felt more lost than right now, at this moment.)
“W—How’s there so much? I thought these were all your things.”
You blinked. “Nope. They’re for you.” You shrugged, beckoning him to look through his gifts by himself. “If something made me think of you, I bought it.”
Inside were an assortment of weapons, alongside bottles of what he assumed to be poison.
“Ah—this stuff’s for work and your training.” You beamed. “A friend of mine, his family specialised in bladesmithing. You said the more weapons you have, the safer you feel.”
“Y–yeah I did but—” He gestured to the stack of crates nearby. “But this is insane—this would’ve cost a fortune.” He remembered your family being middle class, neither struggling nor subjugating financially, but this was an absurd amount for anything.
“It’s over six years! I promise I’ve been working hard, I stayed with family majority of the time anyways.” Your eyes sparkled with promise. “Plus, I wanted to do something nice for you. You never buy yourself anything. I bet you still hardly treat yourself.”
(You were right. Unless it was a necessity or gift for another person, Lohen seldom spent money. It was a waste, considering the Knights funded all equipment, which included most of Lohen’s collection, and he preferred to have a great sum saved up, just in case something ever happened to him.)
“I guess not?” He scratched at his nape. Protecting himself and guaranteeing safety was a good enough “treat” for him. “Dunno what I’m supposed to get for myself, anyways.” He craved the things money couldn’t purchase. Getting Varka off his back, never running out of stamina, you—
“Then let me do it for you. You’ve always worked hard, Mr Captain.”
The title made him stutter and blush. “Vice. I told you, I didn’t get the promotion after what happened.”
But you didn’t care. “Well, Adorno and I think you’re worthy of it. And it’s basically yours since it’s vacant, no?”
(God, he’s getting way too far ahead of himself, but Lohen really wants to propose to you on the spot.)
“I—” For a moment, Lohen thinks to hug you, thank you in his own special way, with affection and his entire being—
“y/n! Do you have someone over?”
Great.
“Yeah—it’s Lohen.”
Thoma’s head popped into the doorway, and he grinned from ear to ear. “Hey. Hi again.” He greeted Lohen, who responded curtly. “What are you guys up to? I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
(Yes, yes you are Thoma. Read the fucking room.)
You patted the crate. “Souvenirs.”
Despite his irritation, Lohen wore a smile as he got up. “Hello again. How’s your mother doing?”
Thoma was caught off guard, glancing towards you. “She’s good, it’s been forever since I got to see her. Thanks for asking.”
“I didn’t expect you to remember that.” You mumbled, pushing off the crate to stand up. “He’s really attentive, isn’t he?”
His smile grew into something genuine in the praise. Thoma nodded along, hardly meeting Lohen’s gaze. “Yeah. Do you have any dinner plans?”
(Fuck. Lohen should’ve asked you to dinner before Thoma could.)
You shook your head, turning to Lohen. “Do you?”
He shook his head back, and internally, he was brimming with pride, celebrating the fact that you immediately turned to him.
Thoma readjusted his jacket. “Then since we’re all together, wanna go for a drink? It’ll be on me. I’ve hardly spoken to your friend yet.”
You immediately shook your head. “Lohen doesn’t dri—”
He lied, insisting otherwise. “It's alright. I couldn't possibly decline the kind offer."
And so, Lohen was seated in the Tavern besides you. Conversation of its patrons blended into one big mess, the noise infuriated Lohen, not nearly as much as his drink did.
Alcohol was fucking disgusting, Lohen thought, as he gulped down another ungodly mouthful. He glued his eyelids shut and swallowed, careful not to choke and spill any.
On the way to the Tavern, he watched you two carefully. So far, his theory of you two dating appeared false. There was hardly any physical contact between you two, nor did Thoma seem protective of you (and if Lohen’s assumption was correct, then Thoma was an awful boyfriend—who knows what could happen at night, near a bar where many drunk people were).
Logically, Lohen still stood a chance. However, getting you to like someone like him back, was an entirely new challenge he had to tackle.
Unlike Lohen, you and Thoma were fine, casually sipping without even a flinch. Conversation bounced between you with ease.
“I forgot how different Mondstadt’s beer was.”
“I wasn’t even old enough to drink, last time I was here.” Thoma finished the last of his drink, peering into the glass with an eye. “To be honest, I still prefer sake.”
With your glass to your lips, you chuckled. “Me too. This isn’t too bad, though.”
Lohen picked up his pace, you were finishing up too, he couldn’t fall behind. To find drinking alcohol enjoyable was weird, Varka, or anyone of the knights, had no right to call him insane when they could drink beer as if it were water, and derived pleasure from it.
(His stomach complained and groaned for help, but he kept going. He’ll make himself puke it out his system if needed. Lohen refused to appear weak in front of Thoma, out of all people.)
Another round of beers paid a visit, and Lohen already felt sick at the sight of a full glass.
“So Lohen, I had no idea you were Vice Captain! That’s really impressive.”
(What was that supposed to mean? That he didn’t appear worthy of his position?)
He played it off with a chuckle, thankful that speaking meant he didn’t have to drink. “It was nothing. Just took a few years of work.”
You butted in, protesting. “Liar—what do you mean Vice Captain isn’t a big deal?”
Lohen shrugged. “It’s not like I had to fight for my life for it.”
You huffed, taking another swig. “You still deserve credit.”
“You’re doing much better than me. If anything, hard work should be rewarded.” You were a cook because you dedicated your blood, sweat, and tears to it. Lohen was vice captain because he liked killing shit.
A smirk creased his lips, high off your praise, as he leaned forward to speak to Thoma. ‘What about you, Thoma? What do you do for a living?”
His face was hot and the insides of his mouth didn’t feel like his anymore, but he had to check what sort of guy you were possibly with. He took another large gulp, concealing his disgust with a sigh.
Despite it all, Thoma was unbothered by him. “I’m the housekeeper and Chief Retainer of the Yashiro Commission.” He clarified, proud and bright. “Nothin’ special.”
Damn right. But that was too impolite to say. Lohen kept to himself and nodded. “I see. Any good in a fight?”
You answered before Thoma could. “He actually is—he faced the shogun.”
Lohen choked on his own spit. “What?”
Thoma aggressively shook his head, pink blooming on his cheekbones. “All I did was throw a spear.”
“Oh shut up—you threw it at her and somehow survived.”
“Stop bringing it up already.” But he laughed alongside you, the two of you happily bickered and drank beer.
Lohen doesn’t get what you see in this guy. He took another swig, already adapting to the ugly taste.
Sure, Thoma did have a vision. And he was decently built, his muscles peeked out a bit from his tight top. And he was tall, really tall, but not in the same obnoxious, oversized way as Varka. He had blond, well kept hair and bright, green eyes that resembled green apples and ripe limes sold in the markets of Dornman Po—
Fuck. Now he was just listing all the good things about him. And there were plenty. Lohen himself couldn’t account for all the memories and feelings only you two shared and knew of. Thoma got to be there for you. Lohen was in a completely different continent.
Being blond wasn’t that important, was it? Varka’s blond and he wasn’t even close to marriage, neither was Jean. And it’s not like being short was a bad thing—a super tall partner would be unsettling anyways, wouldn’t it? Lohen had a vision too, and he’d say his physique wasn’t too shabby as well—
“...en? Lohen? Are you okay?”
(Just like how Lohen had to come to terms with his own mortality, he had to come to terms that maybe you weren’t meant to be. He should appreciate he gets to see you, and be within your presence, much like how he needs to acknowledge his human limits.
There was no point in brooding and complaining about Thoma, he’ll probably remain a bit bitter for the rest of time, but he should at least accept that you wanted someone else.)
It hurt, so Lohen drank some more.
His head spun and his face was warm and fuzzy. He rubbed his cheek with his own hand, despite the glove in the way. Even though it acted as a barrier, it felt abnormally warm.
“Lohen?”
He blinked. “I’m fine. I can handle my liquor juuuust fine.” He slurred a bit, but he knew what he was doing, and where he was. He took another gulp. He’ll just get tipsy enough to forget about you and Thoma for a bit. This is why people drank, right? “Something happen? Need me to fight anything?”
Through half lidded eyes, he watched you shake your head. “You seem a bit…drunk?”
He gulped down some more to compensate. “I’m not. You have nothing to worry about.”
You acknowledged it with a hum, and went back to staring at your drink. Lohen wondered why you stopped talking to Thoma—maybe he went to the washroom, or something.
“You never told me you started drinking. I could’ve brought you back some sake.”
Thoma’s absence tempted him. He slouched over, resting his cheek on your shoulder. It was wrong, to snuggle so close with someone else’s lover, but he wanted to do it one last time.
“It’s fine. It tastes like shit, anyways.” He reached for his drink, but you pushed it out of his grasp, and he gave you an indignant look, pale cheeks pouting, round and soft.
“I’m pretty sure you’re very drunk. Drink water first. You need to flush it out your system.” You turned around, finding someone to call for water, but Lohen refused. With an immature whine, his arms wrapped around you, chin nestled into your shoulder.
He could easily kiss you. All he had to do was move forward.
You smelled nice. A scent he couldn’t name, but it was far more pleasant than the colognes and perfumes he’s ever encountered. Something that didn’t fit into existing definition. His eyelids relaxed, and he embraced your proximity.
“Y–you’re drunk—”
“And you’re pretty.”
Lohen pressed even closer, his nose brushing against his neck. He wanted to press a kiss on the flesh, bite a bit, even. He thought to himself, about how badly he wanted to kiss you all over, spoil you with all the affection he could possibly conjure. Maybe leave even a mark or two, bruising you with his love for the rest of the world to see.
(But he held back. It was audacious enough to cling onto someone taken. He needs to pull himself together and apologise before Thoma returns.)
Despite his effrontery, your hand made its way to his head, caressing his hair before patting his back. “Are you alright?”
(He wanted to throw up. Not because of the alcohol.)
“It’s not fair.” Lohen slurred, now burying his face into your shoulder. “You were gone for so long, how was I meant to stand a chance?”
He should’ve scraped up the money and joined you on that boat, and travelled across treacherous seas while by your side. That way, he wouldn’t have to swim in all his desire. Now, he found himself drowning, with no way of reaching the surface again. Lohen’s love filled him up to the brink, from his heart to his lungs, dragging him down to the depths of nothingness.
(Lohen charged at any sort of peril of ease, even back then with six years less of experience. A simple love confession may appear pathetic in comparison to the dangers he faced, but wounds heal and flesh grows back, while a rejection would leave a scar uglier than the ones his skin donned.)
His hand squeezed you even tighter. “I love you—I should’ve told you before you left. Maybe then I would’ve stood a chance against…Thoma.” His words were punctuated by a violent hiccup, it tasted of beer and misery at the back of his throat. “And got to be there for you. All I could do was write letters.” Lohen’s voice broke, almost crumbling into tears. “Do you know how scared I was? What if I somehow forgot your voice, or how you looked…”
Lohen’s face peeled off your shoulder, and his lips daringly inched closer to your ear, though he didn’t go any further. "I know I can't make you love me—” He whined, a pathetic noise, one that not even children could make. “—but I should've found a real dandelion."
He shouldn't have torn his letter apart. "Maybe fate wouldn’t have taken you away from me.”
(Pull away, do it now, Lohen told himself. It grew into insistent commands, echoing in his skull. You’re not his. What he was doing was wrong and was only going to make things harder for everyone, especially you. He could barely excuse himself spewing his emotions like this, now was the time to let go. And throw up.)
You weren’t replying. Of course you weren’t. He’ll have to apologise tomorrow, when his head wasn’t spinning and bile wasn’t growing at the back of his throat.
The world faded to black.
For the first time in his entire life, Lohen was mortified at himself.
He carried not an ounce of shame when poisoning Varka’s oversized beers, nor when hunting down and blackmailing Kaeya for a forged signature. Rumours did nothing to him, he did not care for the opinions of others, only freedom reigned his actions and philosophy.
His eyes hadn’t even opened yet, and behind the darkness of his eyelids, all he saw was disgrace. He’d be impressed by how self conscious he was, if it weren’t for the fact that it was you he embarrassed himself in front of—he probably tarnished your reputation too, the one you barely got to rebuild after your return.
But he was remorseful as he was humiliated. You deserved an apology, and so did Thoma, even if he was envious of him. He’d let you beat him to a pulp if needed, if that was what it took to earn a chance of redemption.
“Fuck…” He groaned, pushing himself up. “Everything hurts.”
The sunlight oozing into the windows was blinding, despite being gentle and soft, all it did was make his head throb uncontrollably. His muscles screeched for help, soreness seized his body hostage. Lohen’s head felt too heavy, as if he could collapse at any moment.
He thought about last night, and everything beyond his body began to hurt.
It really wasn't a nightmare. You being in love with someone else.
Lohen cackled to himself, all alone in his bed. He's a fucking idiot, and loser, and should never be in the proximity of alcohol again.
Why was he even surprised? You were perfection and sunlight personified, it was no wonder whenever someone asked you out. If anything, it was Lohen’s fault not considering that during his last goodbye.
But instead, he tore his confession into pieces, for a wish that came true far too late.
“I'm an idiot, aren't I…?” Lohen whispered, to no one in particular.
“I don't think so.”
“What the fuck—?”
You had just walked in with a glass of water. “Sorry. I heard you laughing and realised you were awake.” You approached his bed with a glass of water. “Feeling okay?”
Lohen accepted wordlessly. He wasn't sure what to be embarrassed for, from his unrequited feelings to whatever the hell he was doing earlier, it felt as though he’d done everything possible to make a fool of himself.
‘Good job.” You praised, taking the glass from his hands.
(You were attractive, even when talking to him like a child. Being praised for drinking water seemed absurd, but he wasn't allowed to say that when he was relishing every word.)
Now wasn't the time—he watched you place the glass on his bedside table, as you settled onto his bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. That makes sense.”
Come to think of it, he hardly had any recollection of last night, aside from his shameless antics. It felt worse, not knowing the full extent of his predicament.
He glanced around his house. “How did I get back home?”
“I carried you.”
Lohen didn't remember that.
“Th–thanks. You didn't have to.”
“I didn't have a choice. You were clinging onto me and saying I had to come over.”
He didn't remember that either.
“It was pretty cute, actually. You were really excited to show me your new place. For good reason, too—”
‘I’m so sorry. I–I–I can slit my stomach open for you—that's how they do it in Inazuma, isn’t it?”
(He enjoyed being called cute far too much. Now was not the time for it.)
“No—I mean yes, they do—that's not the point.” Your hand held his, reassuring him with the rhythmic stroke of your thumb. “No one’s mad at you, Lohen. I’m definitely not.”
God, even now, you managed to be kind. Lohen would go insane if someone behaved as ridiculously as he did.
“Yeah but I bet Thoma is—”
“Why would Thoma be mad at you?”
He waved his hands around frantically. “I was hitting on you—I’d be pissed if a guy was all over my lover like that.”
You blinked once. Then twice.
“Thoma and I aren't dating.”
He was so shocked, that relief didn't even pay him a visit. In fact, nothing went through his head.
“Did you think we were together?”
“Y–yeah?”
You were stunned too, mouth hanging open as you processed his words. “Is that why you were one-upping him?”
“I was doing what?” A sharp pang throbs in his head for speaking too loud.
“While you were drunk—you were rambling about how Thoma. You said stuff about tall men being difficult to date and blond people being insanely overrated—”
Lohen snapped, unintentionally. “Stop. I'm gonna die if I hear the rest of that.”
First, his one and only love didn't want him back, then he got wasted over a conclusion he jumped too, and now he was hungover in front of you.
He swallowed. “I still owe you two.” If anything, he’d prefer you to slit his stomach open, or beat him ‘til you were satisfied. Anything over how calm and understanding you were being. “You must’ve been embarrassed.”
You shrugged. “I told you, it was cute. I've never seen you so clingy.”
Another hot, uncomfortable wave of embarrassment washed over him.
He should bring up his feelings now, shouldn't he? Apologise for confessing in such an inappropriate, dramatic way in a public setting. Then he should walk you home and apologise to Thoma while he was at it.
Where should Lohen start? He drafted an apology in his head; about last night, sorry for—
“—I love you too, by the way.”
“The fuck?”
A hand clasped over his mouth and he felt another urge to profusely apologise.
“Last night. You said you loved me.”
He watched you inch closer, his heart racing even more when he felt your warmth in his proximity. “I did say that.”
“Why are you so surprised then?” Your hand holds onto his, abnormally warm compared to his body temperature. “I'm giving you an answer.”
“Wh—are you sure?” Since when were you this ballsy? You used to be so timid and shy, now you were essentially climbing onto him. “I must be going insane.”
“I had six years to think about you while I was gone. Yes, I’m very sure.” You pinched his cheek, gently tugging at the flesh. “See? You're not dreaming.”
Lohen’s mouth hung open, yet no sound came out. He stared at you, and at your thighs that were on top of his, and the pink permeating the apples of your cheek.
(Words were never his thing. Paperwork was pointless when all the information was in his head and made perfect sense to him. He even had a hard time adapting to writing letters, it didn’t sound nearly as nice when it was in ink instead of speech.)
So Lohen pulled you closer. You landed on his chest, his arms clamped around you like a vice.
You yelped, peering back up at him. “Lohen?”
His fingertips played with the back of your shirt. “May I?”
“Sure but what are you—” A shaky gasp interrupted your question, and the noise drove Lohen insane. “Cold—your hands are so cold—what are you doing?”
"Need to feel you more—" His hands massaged the soft flesh, he was right, you’d gained quite a bit of muscle since you left. His hands paused and his hollow eyes held something akin to sorrow. “Fuck. Do you know how upset I was? I–I–I was worried you were engaged.
You snorted, pinching his cheek again. “Engaged? Why would I be engaged with Thoma, when all I wanted was here in Mondstadt?”
Lohen’s gaze drifted away. “You were blushing.”
“Hm?”
“You were blushing around him. When I dropped you off. So I thought you had a thing going on.”
This time, you burst into laughter. Normally, he’d enjoy how it sounds, but right now, all it did was fuel his embarrassment. He withdrew his hands from your back and rubbed his eyes as you composed yourself. “Sorry—that was mean. Did it not occur to you that I was flustered because of you?”
Lohen frowned and scoffed. “You didn’t even look at me when I dropped you off.”
You rolled over, settling next to him. “Really? I probably got embarrassed. I told Thoma all about you, y’know? Since like...the beginning of our friendship? He kept telling me to confess to you during the trip here. He even made a whole gameplan for me. Y’know he only invited us to dinner to try to get us alone. He slipped away after you got tipsy.”
(Huh. Maybe Thoma was a good guy, after all. Not only does he owe him an apology, but a massive thank you, as well.)
“So. There’s no doubt that you’re the one I want, okay? It was like that long before I left Mondstadt.”
Weakly, he nodded, finally able to feel relief. “Okay.”
You liked him back, no, loved him back. For over six years, too.
Lohen's heartbeat raced, to the point he began to worry about it bursting out of his chest. Unable to cope with all the emotions eating away at it and his pounding headache, he flopped back into bed. He’ll deal with it when he’s not hungover. For now, knowing of your feelings was the only thing keeping him alive at the moment.
He turned away from you, burying his face into his hands, wincing at the aftermath of his drinking. "Ugh. My head fucking hurts...'m gonna die for a bit. Wake me if it's an emergency."
You sat up instead, already heading to the kitchen. "Oh. I just started preparing a hangover soup but—"
Lohen shot up, posture pin straight. "I'll eat."
“You just said your head was hurting. You should rest first.”
But he stood up, throwing his blanket somewhere on the floor. “Soup. I want soup.”
Your mouth opened to protest, but you gave up. “Sure. Whatever you want. Let’s go to the kitchen, then.”
“I love you.” Lohen said, a plea for you to say that you loved him again. Even with evidence, everything still felt like a dream. He wondered if this was another pleasant dream, and he’d wake up, forehead to the desk in Varka’s office with groggy eyes, accompanied by paperwork instead of you.
He begged for it not to.
You took his hand, pulling him along. “I love you too, Lohen.”
“So. Now we’re together.”
Lohen’s quill was nowhere to be seen, and his feet were propped up onto the table, as Varka groaned, arms crossed at his own desk.
“I get that young love is beautiful and whatnot. But might I remind you, that you’re still under strict supervision and you didn’t come in at all yesterday.”
Lohen rolled his eyes, his cheery mood undeterred by Varka’s disappointment. He had spent the entire morning rambling about you, celebrating your new status as lovers and verbally brainstorming his plans for the future. He told Varka of all the souvenirs you brought him (if it could even be called that—there were crates upon crates) and boasted about how lucky he was to be in love. He even went as far as mocking Varka, boasting about how you made him a special hangover soup, all from scratch, while Varka had to tough out his hangovers.
(He even ventured towards the topic of marriage, debating where to get an engagement ring commissioned someday and reminding himself to figure out your favourite gemstone. Varka scoffed when Lohen asked where he got his, rubbing in the fact that the Grandmaster was very much single. The closest thing Varka was married to was duty and responsibility—maybe even alcohol, too.)
A gloved hand rested over his chest. “To be fair, you did pull me out of solitary confinement for them.” He stared at the roof, unbothered by the chandelier’s glare as he swooned. He’ll pick up a nice bouquet of lovers on his way home for you. “Six years have never been more worth it. Barbatos, I'm sorry for cussing you out. You're not so bad.” He said to no one in particular.
The Grandmaster stood up, approaching the young man. He grabbed his quill and tossed it in front of him. “Was your lover worth getting wasted in front of everyone?”
Lohen’s heart sank to his stomach. His neck snapped straight and he looked Varka dead in the eye.
“Oh hey. You’re turning red now. You’re starting to remind me of Diluc’s hair.”
“How’d you even know about that?” Suddenly, his feet were off the table, heels planted to the floor and his body tensed up, as if preparing to escape or attack Varka at any moment.
“I was there? Had a drink with Kaeya and caught up with Thoma. His mother and I go way back” A slight smirk creased his lips. “You don’t seem very fond of him.”
You failed to mention that, all you told him was that he was being clingy and confessed, before begging you to come over. How much did you leave out? You were the type to omit details for the sake of another’s dignity, and the only things Lohen could recall by himself was his slurred speech and whining.
Varka didn’t relent in his teasing. “Huh. You don’t seem so bad when you’re shy. I can see why you’ve finally found yourself a lover. Well done, by the way. Good thing Thoma wasn’t interested in them.”
“I’ll do the paperwork, okay?” He snatched the quill, grip tightening to the point his knuckles faded to white. At this rate, he was going to do things worse than poisoning his beer. He’ll rush through this paperwork before running off to go see you again.
But apparently, his current state wasn’t amusing enough. “I can see why you don’t drink. You’re worse than me. You even threw mora at Thoma to prove you were richer. Kind of cute seeing you jump to conclusions and get all whiny—”
“Shut up.” He really will up his dose of poison. And throw out the antidote while he’s at it.
My current pinned post guys btw, isn’t gonna be looking like that the whole time. I’ll add the other stuff to it on another day (definitely not when it’s 2:13am rn)
But yeah, I’ll pretty it up when I can!
Everything though is still the same tag wise and whatever else I had. The old pinned post is still available, you just gotta scroll unfortunately, but once again, I’ll fix up the current/new pinned post later on
Doing a thing where I’m now accepting requests for fandoms.
Current fandoms I’ll write for at the moment:
- Ninjago
- LMK
- Genshin Impact
I will also accept HCs requests, oneshots, and NSFW requests.
Please be patient with me as I am just getting back into writing after a year or so of hiatus, so I’ll be rusty and going at my own pace. As always, be kind, don’t take the HCs or requests too seriously, they are just for fun, and any hateful comments will be deleted and the accounts could possibly be blocked.
Also, I might not do all requests, as it depends if I know the character well enough or even like the character. So please don’t be discouraged if I don’t write your request.
I will also be writing for only the male characters as I’m not confident writing female characters.
I’m also accepting requests for my Ocs, if you guys wanna request them too:
- Soren (Ninjago)
- Zach (Ninjago)
- Wuzhiqi (LMK)
- Rin (Genshin Impact)
- Judas (Genshin Impact)
Rules
- Can request HCs, oneshots and NSFW content. But please state in your request what you want
- I will write for female readers, male readers and gender neutral readers. Once again, just let me know what you want and if you didn’t put in your request, I’ll decide randomly.
- No requesting harmful/hateful content. This is a safe place for everyone.
- Don’t be rude or harass if I don’t do your request.
- Do not pressure me to rush it to finish. You can ask for updates but be polite with it ya know
- Have fun with your requests. I promise I’m very open to many things and don’t judge. I’ve seen all kinds of things, so it will not bother me one bit.
You are walking home through a snowstorm when you find a dying flame trapped in an iron lantern, and against every warning your grandmother ever gave you about the Fae, you breathe it back to life. It vanishes. So, it seems, does the ordinary shape of your life.
Now the wind goes soft when you're cold. The wood never runs low. Someone is watching from the treeline, and it keeps showing up right when you need saving most.
You're starting to think all he's ever wanted is you. And what you offer him in return is the one thing you have always had plenty of: yourself.
Featuring. Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins
Word Count. 20k (please, I promise it's worth it)
Trigger Warning(s). SMUT (18+) ♦ fucking in the woods ♦ slightly horror-adjacent? but extremely tame, dw
Notes. I have tried to incorporate accurate Russian culture into this work, but keep in mind that I'm not Russian, so beware of any inaccuracies, esp in terminology! Feminine terms/pronouns used for reader throughout the work.
By the time you were ten, you had buried your mother in the ground so hard the priest cracked two shovels trying to dig her a grave deep enough for God to find her.
You remember thinking, even then, that this was the trouble with Nod-Krai. The dead were always closer to the surface than they ought to be. Frost kept them honest. It pushed coffins up through the soil come the spring thaw, the way a sin pushes its way up through a confession, and the men would go out with their hooks and their crosses and put the bodies back where they belonged, muttering prayers with the particular tiredness of men who did not quite believe them anymore.
You think of this now, several winters later, because you are walking through a storm that wants very badly to make you one of the dead it puts back.
The wind does not blow so much as it arrives, all at once, from every direction, as if the forest itself has exhaled. It finds the seam where your shawl meets your collar and works its fingers in. Snow has filled the road past your knees, and the birches on either side have become something else entirely in this light, white bones standing sentry, their black eyes watching you pass with the patient indifference your Babulya always warned you trees like that could feel. They remember who walks past them in the dark, she used to say, crossing herself, then crossing you, two fingers pressed hard to your collarbone like she could pin the blessing into your skin so it would not slip off. And they tell.
You are walking to her now. Babulya Marfa, who has not left her izba on the far side of the wood in nine years, who sends word twice a season to whoever is fool enough to make the crossing. Who is, as of three days ago, very possibly dying. Your uncle wrote it in a hand so unsteady you had to read the letter twice to be certain the words were asking for you and not something crueler. You left before the ink on your reply had dried. You did not think, until you were already an hour into the trees, to ask why a storm like this had chosen tonight, of all nights, to come down off the mountains and bury the only road that led to her door.
Your father would call this foolishness. He would say a woman with sense waits out the weather in town, drinks her tea, says her prayers to the Tsaritsa by the stove, where the only thing she has to fear is whether the samovar needs more coals. But your father is three days behind you, and you are not, despite what people say about you, entirely without sense. You are simply the kind of fool who has always believed that love is owed in person, paid in full, while there is still time to pay it.
So you walk. Your valenki are soaked through to felt that no longer remembers what dry feels like. The lantern you carried from town gave up its flame an hour ago, smothered by wind that seemed almost deliberate in the way it found the glass, and you have not had the courage to stop and relight it, certain that if you stood still even a moment, the cold would decide you had made its decision easier and simply keep you.
.
It is in this dark, this particular shade of black that swallows the difference between shut eyes and open ones, that you see it.
A flame.
Blue, and so small you mistake it at first for the storm playing tricks on your sight.. It hangs low among the birches, perhaps thirty paces off the road, no taller than a candle's flame and twice as faint, guttering as though some unseen hand keeps pinching it nearly to death and then, at the last possible moment, relenting.
Your whole body goes still with the particular stillness of a hare that has just understood the shape in the grass is not grass.
Bolotnik fires, Babulya's voice says, clear as if she stood beside you, clearer than she has sounded in any letter these nine years. You were seven the first time she told you, the two of you wrapped under the same wool blanket while the stove ticked and settled, her hands smelling of tallow and dried dill as she traced the story into your palm like she was teaching you to read by touch alone.
The wisps. The Fae's own lanterns, lit from a coal they stole out of the first fire that ever burned, before God made the sun to make fires honest. They do not burn for warmth, devushka. They burn for hunger. You see one in the marsh, in the wood, anywhere the dark pools like water, and you do not go to it. You let it call you sweetheart in your mother's voice if it likes. You let it weep. You keep walking, and you do not look back, because the moment you go to comfort it, it has already won.
You know this. You have known it since before you knew the shape of your own name in your own handwriting.
And still, fool you are, your feet have already turned off the road.
You tell yourself it is only that the flame is so weak, so clearly wretched in the way it strains and dims and strains again like something genuinely about to gutter out, that some animal part of you, the same part that once spent a whole spring nursing a crow with a broken wing back into the sky, simply cannot leave it to die. You tell yourself a great many things, in fact, in the time it takes you to cross those thirty paces, snow past your knees, breath turned to frost-lace at your lips, and every one of those things is a lie you are telling so that the truer, stupider reason, it looked so alone out there, the way you feel most nights, and you have never once in your life been able to leave a lonely thing alone, does not have to be looked at directly.
You should know better. Babulya spent half your childhood making certain that you did.
But you have never been able to walk past a thing that is suffering, not a crow, not a dog, not the old beggar woman outside the church whom the other girls crossed the street to avoid, and some buried, stubborn part of you has already decided, before your mind has caught up to agree, that whatever this flame is, it is hurting, and that this, more than any warning whispered over a childhood blanket, is the only fact that matters.
The snow grows strange beneath your feet as you near it, packed too smooth, untouched by wind in a perfect ring no wider than a grave, and the flame does not flicker the way fire flickers when it is fed by wind. It flickers the way breath does when it is being held back on purpose.
You stop within arm's reach and understand, all at once, two things.
The first is that there is no marsh-light hovering free in the air the way Babulya's stories always told it. It is caught, contained, burning low and blue and dying inside the soot-fogged glass of a small iron lantern, the kind a traveler might once have carried. Its handle hangs from nothing, from no hand, from no branch, suspended at the exact height a person would hold it if a person were standing there. It turns, very slightly, on its nothing-chain, as if it has only just noticed you, too.
The second is that you have already reached out your hand.
You have seen weirder things than a dying lantern with no one to hold it. You were twelve the night the Wild Hunt cornered you to a cliff, and whatever you carry from that night you have never spoken of to anyone, not even Babulya, who you suspect already knows because she never once asked. Set against that, a flame guttering in its little iron cage seems almost a kindness of a haunting, the sort a girl could reasonably survive.
Still, fear comes, and it settles less on the lantern itself than on the air pressing close around it, the way the cold here seems to bend slightly inward, the way the silence holds itself with a kind of attention. A shiver moves through you that has nothing to do with the wind. You know its name. You have felt it before, kneeling too close to the iconostasis with its rows of painted eyes, in the breath before a held secret decides whether it wants to stay held. It is the body's oldest language for something here is watching you back.
You ought to turn around now. Babulya told you this part too, the part that comes after the warning has already failed, where you are meant to drop your hand, walk back to the road, and let the wind keep whatever pity you were about to spend on a thing built to spend you in return.
But the flame dips low again, nearly to nothing, a wick about to surrender its last claim on burning, and something in your chest answers it before your senses can intervene. You think of the crow. You think, absurdly, that nothing this weak could possibly still be dangerous, the same lie every soft-hearted fool has told herself walking up to every wounded thing that ever bit her for the trouble.
You pull it from the air. It is lighter than it has any right to be, the iron cold enough to ache through your mitten, and you tuck it inside your coat against your ribs the way you'd carry a half-frozen kitten, your other hand coming up to shield the little glass door from the worst of the wind.
The clasp is iron too, plain and old, sized for fingers larger than your own, and it takes three tries with numb hands before it finally gives. The moment the door swings open, the flame leaps, rising thin and furious, bending away from your fingers like something startled out of sleep that wants nothing to do with being seen this close, this raw. You nearly snap the door shut again on instinct, certain you have woken something better left to die in peace.
But it does not strike you. It cannot, you understand a breath later. It has not the strength left to do anything but flinch, and the flinch costs it; it dips lower than before, and something in your own chest twists with a tenderness that makes no earthly sense, pointed as it is at a marsh-light, a Fae's stolen coal, a thing your own grandmother spent half your childhood teaching you to fear.
You cup your hands around it anyway. You bring your face close, the way you would to coax a coal back to life in a dying stove, and you breathe.
Not hard. Not the way you'd feed a fire that wanted feeding. Soft, the way you'd breathe warm air over fingers gone white, willing the blood back into them before it could be lost for good. The wind itself seems, for one strange suspended moment, to hold off from you, as though even it is waiting to see what you'll do.
The flame catches your breath the way a starving thing catches the smell of bread.
It does not simply grow. It answers. The blue of it deepens to something nearer violet at the root, then climbs to gold at the crown, and the little glass casing fills with light so sudden and so warm against your numbed face that you gasp and nearly drop the whole lantern into the snow. Heat rolls off it, real heat, more than a flame that size has any business giving off, and for one heartbeat you feel something unmistakably like relief, though whether it belongs to you or to the flame you could not say.
Then the air around the lantern draws tight, the way air draws tight before lightning finds its mark, and a crackle of something that is neither quite fire nor quite frost races up the iron in a bright thread, snapping hard against your fingertips. You cry out and let go.
The lantern does not fall.
It is simply gone. No smoke trails where it hung, no sound marks where it might have struck the snow, only the smell of scorched air left behind and the ghost-shape of the flame still printed on the inside of your eyes, the way a candle leaves its light behind even after you've shut them.
You stand there with your scorched hand cradled to your chest, the wind rushing back into the silence all at once as though it, too, had been holding its breath, and for a long moment your mind refuses to agree with what your eyes have just told it.
It is only when you finally look down, half expecting to find iron and broken glass scattered somewhere in the drifts, that you see them.
Two prints, pressed deep into the snow before you, where a moment ago there had been no prints, no one standing at all. Not a hare's tracks. Not a wolf's. Boot prints, large, larger than any foot you have ever stood across from, sunk into the snow with the full weight of someone who had been standing there, close enough to have reached out and touched you himself, for who knows how long before you ever noticed him at all.
The wind is already filling them in, patient, the way it fills in everything in Nod-Krai eventually. By the time you find the nerve to step back toward the road, there is almost nothing left to prove they were ever there.
Almost.
.
.
.
The izba is a smear of gold across a field gone the colour of spilled milk, and the sight of its one lit window does something to your knees that the whole night of walking had not managed. Smoke threads up from the chimney in a thin grey rope, bent sideways by the wind, and the gate hangs in its drift with a crust of ice fused so thick along the latch that you have to work your fingers under it to lift the bar at all, your scorched hand screaming where the cold metal finds the rawest part of it.
You do not let yourself think about why that part is raw. Not yet. There will be time for that later, in the dark, when no one is asking you to be brave in front of them.
Babulya does not wait for the knock. The door opens before your knuckles ever reach it, spilling stove-light and the smell of tallow candles and dried dill out into the storm, and there she is, smaller than you remembered, wrapped in three shawls against a cold that lives in her bones now more than it ever lived in the air, one hand braced on the frame as though the doorway itself might decide to abandon her if she let go.
"Devochka moya." Her voice cracks on the second word, half scold and half prayer. "What kind of fool walks Nod-Krai in a storm like this one?"
"The kind whose grandmother is dying," you say, and step into her arms, and you hear her sardonic chuckle at your humor, the particularly dark kind you have only been comfortable enough to use with your grandmother.
She is thinner than the letter let on. You feel it through the shawls, through your own numbed hands, the way her shoulder blades sit too close beneath the wool, like a bird's, like something built for leaving. She smells the same as ever, woodsmoke and beeswax and the particular bitterness of the herbs she keeps strung along the rafters, and for one long moment neither of you says anything at all, because some reunions are better held in silence than spoiled with words.
It is she who pulls back first. It is she who takes your face in both her hands the way she always has, thumbs pressed to your cheekbones, eyes narrowed in the candlelight like she is reading something written beneath your skin.
Then her gaze drops to your hand, and whatever she finds there stops her cold.
"Show me."
"It's nothing, Babulya."
"Show me, or I will know you for a liar before you've even taken off your coat."
You hold it out. In the stove-light the burn looks worse than it felt, an angry welt curled across two fingers and into your palm, the skin gone tight and shining where the crackle caught you. Babulya's mouth presses into a line you know from a hundred childhood scrapes, the line that means she is deciding how much of her fear to let you see.
"A frozen latch," you say, before she can ask. "On the gate, two farms back. I grabbed it without my mitten, stupid of me, and it stuck like a tongue to iron in January. I had to pull it free."
It is not, strictly, a lie. There was iron. There was cold enough to take skin. You have simply rearranged the order of things, set the lantern's clasp where a gate latch ought to be, and you tell yourself this is mercy and not cowardice, that a woman with a chest like a creaking floorboard does not need to hear about lights that should not exist hovering in Nod-Krai at midnight.
Babulya studies you the way she studies bread to know if it has risen properly, with the whole of her attention and none of her trust.
"Mm," she says, which from her has always meant I do not believe you and I am choosing, for now, to let it be.
She makes you sit by the stove anyway. She fetches the little clay pot of goose fat and honey from the shelf where it has lived since before you were born, the same salve she has smeared on every burn and chilblain and skinned knee of your whole life, and her hands, though they shake now in a way they did not used to, are still steady enough for this. She works in silence, mostly, her lips moving now and then in something too quiet to be speech and too rhythmic to be anything else, a prayer worn smooth from decades of use, the kind that does not need the saint's name spoken aloud anymore to still reach him.
"You were always like this," she says at last, winding clean cloth around your fingers with a practiced, gentle pressure. "Even as a small thing. Found a wounded sparrow once, hid it under your bed in a shoebox, fed it bread soaked in milk for a week before your mother found the smell." She ties off the bandage and holds your hand a moment longer than the task requires. "Soft hearts make for hard living, in a place like this one, devochka. The wood does not reward you for your kindness."
"Then it is fortunate," you say, "that I did not do this out of kindness. I did it out of carelessness."
She looks at you the way she has looked at you your entire life, the look that has always meant I see straight through to the lie and I love you regardless, and says nothing further on the matter. She only crosses herself once, quickly, before she rises to bank the stove for the night, the gesture so old and so automatic it might be aimed at God or at you, and you are not certain, even now, that there is much difference between the two as far as Babulya is concerned.
That night you lie awake on the bench by the stove long after her breathing in the next room has gone slow and even, listening to the wind worry at the shutters, your bandaged hand cradled against your chest. The pain has dulled to something distant, banked the way Babulya banked the coals, and you are nearly asleep, the line between waking and not gone thin and porous, when the warmth finds you.
It comes first as a hum beneath the bandage, faint, almost ticklish, the way a struck glass keeps singing long after the spoon has stopped touching it. Then heat blooms beneath the cloth, gentle and total, spreading up through your wrist and into your arm like sunlight remembered rather than felt, and for one disoriented moment you think you must be dreaming of summer, of the river before it freezes, of your mother's kitchen with bread in the oven.
You do not open your eyes. Some animal instinct keeps them shut, the same instinct that once told you not to look directly at the flame in the wood, and you lie there in the dark and let whatever this is finish what it has come to do, half terror and half something perilously close to gratitude, until sleep takes you before you can decide which one ought to win.
In the morning your hand does not hurt.
You notice it before you are even fully awake, the absence of pain so total it takes you a moment to understand what is missing, the way a sudden silence can wake a person faster than any sound. You unwind the bandage by the grey light coming through the shutters and find skin beneath it unmarked, no welt, no shine of new scar tissue, nothing at all to say that iron and lightning had ever touched you there.
Babulya finds you staring at your own palm like it belongs to someone else.
She takes your hand without asking, the way she always has, turning it toward the window, running her thumb once across the place where the burn should be. Her face does something complicated, disbelief and suspicion and something older than either, something that might once have had a saint's name attached to it before the church got hold of the old fears and dressed them up as sin.
"This was not nothing two days ago," she says.
"It must not have been as bad as it looked, Babulya. The cold makes everything look worse than it is."
"Mm," she says again, and this time the sound carries more weight than before, a whole unspoken sermon folded into one syllable, but she lets your hand go and does not press further, the way a woman learns not to press a wound that has decided to close on its own.
You spend the rest of the day telling yourself the same thing in a dozen different ways, peeling potatoes at her table, feeding the stove, listening to her cough in the next room with a sound like wind through a cracked window. You tell yourself the cold does strange things to the body, that burns from frozen metal heal faster than burns from fire, that you imagined the hum beneath the bandage the way exhausted travelers imagine all manner of things in the dark.
But some quieter, more honest part of you keeps circling back to the lantern.
You think of the way it had answered your breath like a starving thing answers bread, the violet at its root, the gold at its crown. You think, before you can stop yourself, that perhaps this is its doing somehow, some strange debt repaid across whatever distance separates you now, a kindness returned for a kindness given.
Silly, you tell yourself, almost fiercely, the way you might scold a child caught believing too easily in things that want to be believed. Why would a Fae's stolen flame trouble itself over the burned hand of a girl who'd only meant to save it? You are not even certain it was Fae at all, not truly, only that it matched every word of every warning Babulya ever gave you. And warnings, you have learned, are not always honest about what they are warning against.
It is only later, scrubbing the supper pot in water gone cold, that the other thought finds you, the one you had managed, until now, not to look at directly.
The footprints.
Someone had been standing in that ring of undisturbed snow. Someone large enough to leave a mark like that, close enough to have watched you take the lantern from the air, to have watched you breathe life back into a thing that should not have had breath left to take. A lantern does not simply float along a forest road for no reason at all. A lantern belongs to a hand, even one that does not show itself.
You wonder, scrubbing harder than the pot requires, whose hand that might once have been.
The dead, perhaps, lost and wandering as the dead in this country are said to do when the ground freezes too hard to properly hold them.
Or something else. Something that does not die in any way the priests would recognise, that only loses its light for a while and waits, patient as the wind filling in footprints, for someone soft-hearted enough to give it back.
.
.
.
The days that follow settle into a rhythm so ordinary it almost convinces you to forget the forest entirely. You boil oats and feed them to Babulya by the spoonful when her hands shake too badly to manage the bowl herself. You mend the hole in the second shutter where the wind has been getting through and complaining about it all winter. You sit by her bed in the evenings while she tells you, again, the story of how she met your grandfather at a spring fair, embellishing some new and entirely impossible detail each time she tells it. And you let her, because a story told a hundred times is still a gift the hundred-and-first time it is given. The cough in her chest does not improve, but it does not worsen either, and you decide to count that as something close enough to mercy.
It is on the fourth morning that you notice the woodpile under the eaves has shrunk to almost nothing, and you rise before the sky has so much as considered turning grey to do something about it.
The hour before dawn in Nod-Krai has always had a particular quality of dark to it, a dark that seems to have weight, that presses against the lantern glass and the backs of your eyes both, and you have walked it before with your heart in your throat and your axe held tighter than was strictly useful against a forest that does not, as a rule, care how tightly you hold anything. You bundle yourself into your tulup, wrap the strap of the hand-sled twice around your palm, and step out into a cold so total it feels less like weather and more like a held breath, the stars still hard and bright overhead, Orion's belt hanging just where Babulya taught you to find it as a child, a line of three lights she always called, with no apparent irony, God's own measuring rope.
The walk to the deadfall stand should take the better part of an hour in this dark, picking your way around drifts and roots buried under the snow with nothing but memory and starlight to guide you. Tonight it does not.
You notice it first as an absence rather than a presence, the way you notice a missing tooth with your tongue before you understand what is gone. The drifts that usually swallow you to the knee along this stretch of path have firmed beneath your feet into something almost like a road, packed and even, as though some patient hand swept it clear before you arrived. You tell yourself it is only the wind, that drifts shift and settle on their own logic, and you keep walking, and the feeling does not leave you even as the explanation does its best to.
Then there is the light. Not moonlight, which has none to spare behind tonight's thin cloud, and not starlight either, which has never in your life been bright enough to throw a shadow. This is something low and blue, hanging at the edges of your sight the way a held thought hangs just behind the eyes, never quite where you look but always present in the place you've just stopped looking. Each time you turn your head to find its source it slides away into the black between the birches, patient, unbothered, content to let you doubt it rather than be caught.
The sled grows lighter as you fill it. This, more than anything else, is the detail you cannot make peace with later, turning it over in your mind the way you'd turn over a coin to check it wasn't counterfeit. By the time you have stacked it with as much deadfall as you can reasonably drag, the weight across your shoulder where the rope bites should be considerable, should ache the way it has ached every winter of your life doing this same chore. Instead the sled seems to glide, its runners finding the smoothest line through the snow as though the ground itself has tilted very slightly in your favour, as though some unseen hand has taken up the back end of it and is bearing the worst of the weight without once asking to be thanked.
A raven watches you from a low branch the entire time you work, untroubled by your nearness in a way no wild bird ought to be, its head tilting with what you could swear, if you allowed yourself to swear to such things, looked very much like curiosity. When you straighten and meet its eye directly it does not startle into the dark the way it should. It simply watches you a moment longer, as if deciding something, and then lifts off without a sound, not so much as a single wingbeat disturbing the snow it leaves behind.
There are other small wrongnesses too, the kind you would not think twice about alone but that begin, stacked one atop the other, to take on the shape of something deliberate. Frost ferns bloom across a fallen log in a pattern too symmetrical to be weather's careless hand, fanned out like fingers pressed flat against the bark.
The cold that should be biting at your scorched fingers, the ones that healed too fast and too clean to ever properly explain, seems instead to skirt around them, leaving every other part of you numb while that one hand stays strangely, impossibly warm.
Once, you are certain you hear footsteps falling in time with your own, just beyond the treeline, matching your pace exactly, and when you stop dead to listen, they stop too, a half-beat too late to be only an echo of your own boots.
You do not run. You tell yourself this later as though it were a point of pride rather than the simple fact that your legs, full of wood and cold and four days of grief held carefully at bay, would not have carried you far even if you'd asked them to.
It is on the walk back, the sled heavier with cargo and somehow no harder to pull, that the ice on the little creek crossing gives way beneath you.
You have crossed it a hundred times in your life, this narrow vein of water that cuts the path near the old stone marker, frozen solid every winter you can remember, safe enough that Babulya never once warned you off it the way she warned you off the deeper water further south. You do not know, would not know, until much later from a neighbour's offhand mention of overflow ice swelling beneath the surface this year, that the crossing has turned treacherous, the visible ice no more than a skin stretched thin over a slow black current still moving underneath, waiting for exactly this kind of trust to be placed in it.
The crack beneath your boot sounds almost gentle, a small dry note like a knuckle popping, and then the world tilts and the cold reaches up through the broken ice to close around your shin before your mind has finished understanding what your body already knows.
You do not fall further than that. An arm comes around you from behind, solid and sudden, an entire wall of warmth pressed flush against your back where a moment before there had been only forest and falling, and you are hauled bodily off the cracking ice and onto solid ground with a strength that does not strain, that lifts you the way you might lift something you were never in any danger of dropping.
For a long moment you do not move at all, and could not if you tried. The cold has not finished delivering its verdict on your soaked boot, the creek still hissing behind you where the ice gave way, and your whole body seems to be arguing with itself over which sensation deserves your attention first, the water working its slow way through wool toward bare skin, or the warmth at your back, vast and improbable, radiating clean through your coat the way the stone bench beside Babulya's stove holds its heat on the rare nights the fire has been fed too generously. Your heart has not slowed since the ice cracked. If anything it climbs higher now, hammering against your ribs with a fear that has only just caught up to the danger that provoked it, several breaths too late to be of any use to you.
He has not let go. One arm remains banded firm across your middle, his hand spread wide against your stomach through the layers of your coat, and you understand, distantly, almost academically, that you ought to fear that more than you fear the water. You are not a fool. Babulya did not raise you to mistake a stranger's hand for safety only because it happens to be warm. And yet some unguarded, traitorous part of you leans back into that warmth before you can stop it, the way a half-frozen thing will press itself gratefully into the very palm that may, in the end, decide to do it harm.
You try, on instinct, to turn and see him properly, and find you cannot. Not because his hold has tightened, though it has, slightly, but because some older instinct, the one Babulya spent your whole childhood sharpening in you, insists that turning would be the worse mistake of the two. Still you catch fragments at the edge of your sight: a sleeve of something dark and heavier than wool, rimed white at the cuff the way iron rimes over in a hard freeze; a hand broader than your own and entirely bare despite air that numbed your own fingers through two layers of mitten; breath fogging out over your shoulder in a plume gone faintly, impossibly blue at its edges, like woodsmoke caught the instant before it remembers how to be flame.
Fear and something far less sensible move through you in the very same current, indistinguishable by the time either reaches your throat.
"Who's there?" It comes out smaller than you intend it to, edged with a tremor you cannot quite master, though you make yourself say it regardless, because Babulya also did not raise a girl who goes quiet simply for being afraid.
"Forgive me." His voice meets you low and unhurried, courteous in a way you were entirely unprepared for, the voice of a man who might once have bowed over a lady's hand at some fair now long since swallowed by frost, strange and out of place against the cold breathing out of the dark beyond the treeline. "I startled you. That was never my intention, only to keep you from going under." A pause, faintly rueful. "Though I confess you make it remarkably difficult to be merely a passing rescuer and nothing more."
Some inkling of bravery seeps into you, "Let me see you, then, if your intentions are so honest."
"Not yet." Said so gently it costs the refusal nothing of its firmness. "Forgive me the discourtesy of denying you twice in one night. You have done enough looking at things you oughtn't for one winter, brave as you are foolish."
The hand at your stomach shifts, just slightly, fingers spreading wider as though to better hold you upright, and you feel it then, through the wool, the unmistakable ridge of scarred skin across his palm, a burn healed over rough and old in a shape the too-observant part of your mind recognises at once, because it is the very shape your own hand wore for one single night before it healed too clean to be natural.
You do not have the chance to ask him about it. "Mind the ice on your way home," he says, close enough now that you feel the words against your hair before you hear them, something almost like a smile threaded through the courtesy of it. "I find I would rather not make a habit of fishing you out of it."
Then the warmth at your back withdraws all at once, the cold rushing in to fill the space he leaves so completely that you sway on your feet from the shock of it alone, and when you finally turn, breath fogging hard in front of you, there is nothing left but a scatter of frost already creeping back across the broken ice and a low blue light receding fast between the birches, swallowed by the dark before you can take a single step after it.
You stand there a long while with your soaked boot going numb and your heart going the opposite of numb entirely. It is only the thought of Babulya waiting on you, of smoke needed for the stove and oats needed for the pot, that finally turns you back toward the road at all.
The rest of the day passes you by the way a current passes a stone too heavy to be carried along with it.
You are aware of moving through it, of sweeping the floor and feeding the chickens and changing your soaked boot for a dry one before Babulya can ask why your stocking is wet halfway up your shin. But none of it quite reaches the part of you that is still standing at the edge of a cracked creek with a stranger's hand spread warm against your stomach.
By evening you have not managed to put it down. You feel it still as you set the pot to simmer, the cabbage and the last of the autumn carrots going soft in water, gone the colour of weak tea, a phantom warmth pressed flat against your middle that no amount of cold air or honest work seems able to chase off. Twice you catch yourself with the ladle hovering forgotten over the pot, your mind thirty paces into Nod-Krai instead of in the kitchen where it belongs, and twice you have to scold yourself back into your own body before the soup scorches.
"You'll put a hole clean through that pot, staring at it so hard," Babulya says from her chair by the stove, not unkindly, her knitting needles clicking along at their own steady rhythm. "Or did the soup insult you somehow, that you mean to murder it twice?"
"I’m only tired, Babulya. I was up before the birds."
"Mm. The birds in this house keep later hours than they used to, then, because you've been somewhere else since you walked in that door, and it was not in the henhouse." She does not look up from her needles. "I am old, devochka, not blind."
You busy yourself with the bread instead of answering, and she lets you, for now, the same way she let the lie about the gate latch stand for now, and you understand, even as you're grateful for it, that her patience has never once in your life been the same thing as her forgetting.
The samovar takes longer than usual to come to a boil, or perhaps it only feels that way with your thoughts circling where they keep circling, back to the shape of a scar pressed into your stomach through two layers of wool, the precise, impossible warmth of a hand that should have been as cold as the air around it and was not. You wonder, not for the first time today, whether a thing like that leaves a mark a person cannot see. Whether you are walking around now carrying some invisible brand the way livestock carry the burn of their owner's iron, claimed by something that never once gave you its name, only the warmth of its hand and the courtesy of refusing to let you see its face.
You do not know if you should be afraid of that thought. You find, uncomfortably, that you are not nearly as afraid of it as you ought to be.
Outside the window, far off toward the mountains, light flickers once through the clouds, a soundless, violet-white flash that has no business existing in a sky this cold. Lightning in a Snezhnayan winter is rare enough that the old wives count it an omen, one way or another depending on which old wife you ask, and you stand very still at the window with the kettle forgotten in your hand and watch the dark for a second flash that does not come, and think, with a certainty that has no reasonable foundation at all, that it was watching you back.
Dinner is quiet in the comfortable way, the bread torn instead of cut, the soup eaten straight from the same pot it was cooked in because Babulya has never once seen the sense in dirtying a second dish for two people who already know each other's faces too well to bother with manners. She tells you, between spoonfuls, that the priest's wife caught her husband talking to the goat again, and that she is fairly certain it is the goat doing most of the talking these days, and you laugh harder than the joke perhaps deserves, grateful for anything loud enough to crowd out the violet flash still printed behind your eyes.
After, you kneel at her feet with the little jar of warmed juniper oil and unwrap the wool from her legs, and she hisses through her teeth at the first touch the way she always does, more out of habit now than real pain.
"Careful, devochka, I am not yet so far gone that you may simply knead me like dough."
"You complain every winter, and every winter you ask me to do it again the very next evening."
"A woman is allowed her contradictions. It is one of the few luxuries left to me." She watches you work for a while in silence, her swollen ankles giving slightly under your thumbs, and then, in the same mild tone she might use to remark on the weather, she says, "You have the look of a girl who has met something in the wood."
Your hands do not still, though it costs you something to keep them moving.
"I met a cracked creek and a wet boot, Babulya. Nothing more interesting than that."
"Mm." The sound carries the whole weight of a sermon again, the way it always does. "I have lived a long time in this house, devochka, longer than is strictly polite for a woman to admit to. I know the smell that clings to a person after the strange has had its hands on them. Ozone and woodsmoke and something underneath both that has no right name in any tongue I was ever taught." Her eyes, when you finally look up, are not angry. They are only tired, and old, and afraid in a way she is trying very hard not to let show. "You have carried that smell into my house twice now."
You say nothing, which is, between the two of you, its own kind of confession.
She sighs, long and rattling, and reaches down to touch your face the way she has since before you could properly remember being touched at all. "Even as a babe you reached for the spider before the flower," she says, almost fond despite herself. "Strange things have always known a soft heart when they find one, dear. They collect hearts like that the way magpies collect anything that shines, not always out of cruelty. Sometimes only because shine is rare, and they are hungry for it in a way you and I will never properly understand."
"Is that a warning?"
"It is an observation. The warning is older and you have heard it from me a hundred times already and ignored it on the hundred-and-first." She lets her hand drop back into her lap. "So I will give you something more useful instead. If it comes to you again, and I think we both know it will, do not give it your name. Not your true one, not even in jest, not even to be polite. A name is a door, devochka, and you do not hand a stranger the key to your own house no matter how warm his hand felt on the threshold."
You think of the creek, of a voice low and unhurried against your hair, of how easily a name might have slipped free of you in that moment if he had only thought to ask for it.
"And if I lose my way," you say, half a question, "out there. In the dark."
"Turn your coat inside out and put it back on," Babulya says, as plainly as if she were telling you how much salt the soup wanted. "It will not save you from everything. But it confuses the kind of thing that leads by tricking the eye, and confusion, in my experience, has saved more fools than courage ever has."
You finish the oil in silence after that, and she lets you, watching the fire instead of you for once, and when you finally rise to bank the stove for the night her hand catches your wrist, briefly, only long enough to say, without words, that whatever else she is, she is not finished being afraid for you yet.
Sleep does not come easily. You lie on the bench with the blanket pulled to your chin and your thoughts will not stop circling the same low orbit, danger and warmth tangled so closely together you cannot any longer find the seam between them, the way you never could as a child either, always the first to climb toward the high branch instead of away from it, always the one who followed the strange sound into the trees instead of running from it. You have always been like this. Babulya is right to fear it in you. You are not entirely certain you would change it even if she asked.
You rise once, near midnight, drawn by nothing you could properly name, and go to the window.
The yard is empty. The snow lies smooth and undisturbed all the way to the treeline, lit faintly violet by clouds that have not yet decided whether to give up their lightning again, and you stand there with your palm pressed flat to the cold glass and your heart doing something unsteady in your chest, half hope and half dread, both feelings so similar in your body that you cannot say with any honesty which one you are hoping will win.
For one heartbeat, just at the treeline, a shape resolves out of the dark. Tall, still, edged faintly in the same violet-white as the lightning, the suggestion of a man standing exactly where the birches grow thickest, watching the house, watching, you understand with a certainty that settles into your bones like cold water, you.
You blink, and the shape is gone, swallowed back into the trees as completely as if it had never stood there at all.
You stay at the window a long while after, your breath fogging the glass in slow, even clouds, waiting for it to come back.
It does not. But you find, lying back down in the dark with your pulse still unsettled and your skin still remembering the precise shape of a hand it will not soon forget, that some part of you is already certain this is not the last you will see of him.
.
.
.
You are not, at first, certain anything has changed at all. The morning after the lightning, you wake expecting the world to have settled back into its ordinary shape, the way a held breath settles once the danger that provoked it has passed, and for the length of breakfast it seems to have done exactly that. It is only later, hauling water from the well, that you notice the rope has come up without its usual stiff fight against the ice, sliding through your palms smooth as something freshly oiled though you know for a fact no one has touched it since autumn. You stand there a moment with the bucket dripping at your feet and tell yourself it is only a milder morning than most.
The bread proves you wrong by midday, rising fuller and faster than the same dough has any right to in a kitchen this cold, the crust coming out of the oven a deep, even gold instead of the patchy brown you have made your peace with every winter of your life. The hens, who by this point in the season usually offer you one egg between the four of them if you are fortunate, give you four whole eggs that morning and four again the next, and you carry them inside cradled against your chest like something stolen, glancing back over your shoulder at the coop as though it might explain itself if you looked at it hard enough.
You do not mention any of it to Babulya at first. You tell yourself this is only because none of it seems worth mentioning on its own, a softer rope, a better loaf, a generous hen, the small unremarkable mercies that any winter might occasionally offer a person without there needing to be a reason behind them at all. You know, even as you tell yourself this, that you do not entirely believe it.
By the third night you have stopped pretending not to notice.
The wind that has been needling its way through every gap in the shutters since the first snow falls strangely quiet around you on your way back from the woodpile, the bite gone out of it so completely that for a few startled paces you could swear something has wrapped itself bodily around you, warm and close as a held breath, before retreating back into ordinary cold the moment you cross the threshold.
Your lantern, when you light it that same evening to check on the chickens one last time before bed, catches on the first strike of flint instead of the usual three or four, and burns brighter than the wick should allow, its flame threaded through at the very root with the faintest, most fleeting hint of blue, gone again before you can be entirely certain you saw it at all.
You stand in the yard with that lantern held up before your face for far longer than the chickens require, watching the flame for some sign of itself, your breath fogging white and even in the cold, and you do not know, even now, whether what you feel watching it is fear or something far less easy to name honestly.
Babulya notices before you find the courage to bring any of it to her.
"The wood from that last cord is lasting longer than it ought," she says one evening, not looking up from the sock she is darning, her needles moving with the same steady rhythm they have kept your whole life. "I split that cord myself, in better years, and I know its measure. We should have burned through half of it by now."
"Perhaps you split it more generously than you remember."
"Perhaps." She does not sound convinced, and does not pretend to be. "Or perhaps God has finally taken an interest in this house after forty years of looking elsewhere, which I confess would surprise me less than the alternative, which is that you have struck some manner of bargain with someone considerably less patient than He is, and considerably less inclined to wait for a proper prayer before deciding to help." She glances up at you then, sharp despite the candlelight softening every other line of her face. "Tell me, at least, that it was a charming devil, devochka, if you've gone and doomed the both of us. I should like to know I died for good company."
"I haven't doomed anyone, Babulya."
"Mm." The sound again, that whole unspoken sermon folded into one syllable, and she goes back to her darning without pressing further, though you can feel her attention on you for a long while after, the way you can feel the cold radiating off a window even with your back turned to it.
It is Babulya herself, in the end, who gives you the clearest proof that something has indeed turned in your favour, however little you understand the shape of it.
Her cough, which has rattled through this house every night since the letter that first called you home, begins, gradually and then all at once, to ease. The colour comes back into her face in a way you had stopped letting yourself hope for, a faint warmth returning to cheeks that have been the colour of tallow for weeks, and one morning you wake to find her already up and dressed and humming something tuneless over the porridge pot, her hands steadier on the spoon than they have been since before the snow came. You stand in the doorway and watch her for a long moment, your chest aching with a gratitude too large and too frightened to hold comfortably, because you cannot account for it, cannot point to any medicine or prayer or change in the weather that would explain a recovery this swift, and the not knowing sits in you alongside the relief like two animals forced to share the same small cage.
"Don't look so pleased with yourself," Babulya says, catching you staring, a wicked little glint surfacing in her eyes for the first time in longer than you can remember. "A woman my age improving this fast smells less of mercy than of mischief. Though I'll say this much, devochka. I'd rather die of mischief, in the end, than of that cough. At least mischief has the decency to be interesting."
You laugh, because the alternative is to weep, and she lets you, watching you with an expression that holds both her old wit and a far more careful underneath it, the look of a woman who has lived long enough to know that gifts given without a clear giver are rarely given for free.
The hearth proves the strangest mercy of all. Some nights now you wake near dawn to find the stove still glowing warm and low though you banked it hours before with barely enough wood to last until midnight, the coals at its heart burning that same faint, impossible blue you have started to recognise the way you'd recognise a voice in a crowded room, low and constant and entirely too familiar for something you have only properly heard once in your life. You lie there in the dark on those mornings with your blanket warm around you and your heart going much too fast for sleep, and think, with a certainty that frightens you more than any cold ever has, that the very fire keeping you alive through this winter has decided, for reasons of its own, to keep you.
You should be more afraid of this than you are. You know this the way you know the catechism, by rote, without it changing anything about how your chest tightens each evening as the light fails and you find yourself listening for footsteps that do not come, watching the treeline from the window with an attention that has nothing to do with wolves.
It is the nights, more than anything, that betray you.
You tell yourself, the first few times, that it is only natural to think of him. He saved your life. He has, perhaps, gone on saving it in a hundred small ways you cannot prove and cannot quite bring yourself to refuse. It would be strange, you reason, not to think of a man like that, however briefly you knew him, however little of him you actually saw.
But the thinking does not stay brief, and it does not stay innocent for long.
You lie awake long after Babulya's breathing has gone slow and even in the next room, and you feel again, with a clarity that should by rights have faded by now, the exact warmth of his hand spread wide across your stomach through two layers of wool, the way it had not felt like a stranger's hand at all but like something that had always meant to rest there, patient, certain of its welcome. You feel it settle low in your belly each time you let yourself remember it, a warmth that does not stay politely where it started, that creeps, slow and unhurried as melt water finding the path of least resistance, further down than any decent thought has business travelling, and you lie very still in the dark and let it, because some traitorous part of you has stopped pretending it wants to stop.
You imagine his voice some nights, low and unhurried, frost caught somewhere in its register the way it had been at the creek, murmuring things you cannot quite construct into full sentences even in the privacy of your own skull, only the shape of his breath against your ear, warm where everything else in this house is cold, his chest a solid wall at your back the way it had been for that one suspended moment before he let you go. You wonder, in the dark, what those hands might feel like elsewhere, hands broad enough to span your whole stomach, scarred in a shape that matches your own, gentle in a way that does not feel remotely safe.
You try, more than once, to quiet the wanting with your own hands, alone beneath the blanket with your jaw set against the sound of your own breath. You chase the memory of him down through your own skin in the dark, palm pressed flat where his had been before letting it wander lower, into the ache that has pooled there for days now, slick and insistent and entirely unmoved by reason. For a moment, sometimes, it is almost enough. Your back arches off the bench, your breath catches high and helpless in your throat, your thighs tense around the hand that is trying so hard to be his and so plainly failing to be anyone but your own.
It is never enough. You come back to yourself each time a little emptier than before, your fingers slack and your chest still tight with a frustration that has very little to do with your body and everything to do with the fact that the only hand you actually want is one that does not belong to you, has perhaps never belonged to anyone, and chose, for reasons you cannot fathom, to belong for one single moment to you instead. You lie there afterward in the dark, spent and unsatisfied in the same breath, and feel, underneath the shame of it, something far more dangerous: the dawning, helpless certainty that no hand but his will do.
There is a darkness coiled inside the wanting that you do not examine too closely, not at first. You know what he is, or near enough. You know what Babulya's stories say about things that wear kindness the way a wolf wears sheep's wool, patient, generous, building a debt in small mercies until the debt comes due all at once. You know you ought to fear a creature that mends your grandmother's lungs and warms your hearth and never once asks what it wants in return, because nothing in this world, mortal or otherwise, gives so freely without eventually wanting something back.
And still you find, lying awake with your blood still unsettled and your own hand gone still and useless atop the blanket, that you do not only fear it.
Some small, dark, unguarded part of you wants to be wanted that badly. Wants to be worth the trouble of a wood that lasts longer, a cough that eases, a fire that burns blue through the coldest hours of the night. There is something in being chosen, even by something monstrous, even by something that may yet prove to want you only the way a magpie wants anything that shines, that you cannot make yourself entirely wish away.
You go to confession in your own head most nights, the old habit too deep to fully shed even now, and find you cannot make yourself properly sorry for any of it.
It builds like this for the better part of two weeks, favour and longing rising together in the same slow tide, until one night you simply cannot lie still in it any longer.
You do not plan it, not really, not in any way you could explain afterward to Babulya or to yourself. You wait until her breathing has gone deep and even, until the stove has burned down to its low blue coals and the house has settled into the particular silence that only comes once every living thing in it has finally stopped fighting sleep, and then you rise, and dress, and take down your cloak and your lantern from beside the door, and nothing else.
You do not know, stepping out into a cold gone strangely gentle around you, what exactly you mean to do if you find him. Demand to know why he has been so generous with a stranger's house. Ask him what the lantern was to him, what it cost him, what it meant that you were the one foolish enough to breathe life back into it. Or something else entirely, something you do not let yourself name even now, something carnal and reckless that lives lower in your body than any decent question ever has.
You walk without any clear destination, only the pull of something you cannot properly describe, the same instinct that once sent you reaching for a wounded sparrow before anyone could tell you it was foolish to. Your thoughts wander as your feet do, back to the creek, to the crack of ice and the arm that caught you before you'd finished falling, and a new and uncomfortable thought surfaces in you, unbidden, sharp enough to stop you mid-step in the snow.
What if the ice had never been an accident at all.
What if a creature patient enough to warm a hearth for weeks without once showing his face was also patient enough to know, long before you ever set foot on it, exactly which crossing had gone treacherous this year, and exactly when you would cross it.
A strange new heat moves through you at the thought, equal parts fury and something far darker and more thrilling than fury has any right to be tangled alongside it, a feeling you do not have a clean name for and would not say aloud even if you did. You do not know whether you want to scream at him for it or thank him, and the not knowing frightens you more than either answer would on its own.
It is full dark by the time you notice you are no longer alone.
The wind parts strangely around a stand of birch ahead of you, the falling snow bending visibly to either side of some shape you cannot quite see, the way mist parts for a body moving through it even when the body itself stays hidden. A pale light flickers at the very edge of your vision, the same low impossible blue as your lantern's flame, gone the instant you turn to look at it directly. Somewhere behind you, soft and unhurried, footsteps fall in a rhythm too deliberate to be the wind, matching your own pace exactly, the way they had once before, only this time you do not stop to test them. This time you keep walking, your heart loud in your own throat, something fierce and unwise blooming behind your ribs.
Fool I may be, you think, but who is being imprudent now, following a fool like me out into his own woods at midnight.
You catch yourself smiling at the thought, alone in the dark, and the smile frightens you more than the cold does.
It is only then, with the trees pressing close on either side and that light still flickering at the very edge of what you can see, that Babulya's voice surfaces in you, clear and sharp as it had been by the fire. Do not give it your name. Not your true one, not even in jest. You hold that one close, easy enough to keep, a door you have no intention of handing anyone the key to, however warm his hand had felt on its threshold.
Turn your cloak inside out, if you lose your way. It will not save you from everything. But confusion has saved more fools than courage ever has.
Your hands rise to the clasp at your throat almost on their own, the old obedience deep enough in you to move.
And then you stop.
You stand very still in the snow with your fingers resting against the cold metal of the clasp, your breath fogging slow in front of you, the light still flickering somewhere just out of reach, patient, waiting, and you think of warm hearths and healed lungs and a hand spread wide and certain against your stomach, and some small, dark, long-buried part of you, the same part that has always reached for the spider before the flower, decides, quite calmly, that it does not want to be found its way out of this at all.
You let your hands fall back to your sides, the cloak left exactly as it is.
If you are going to be led astray tonight, then astray is precisely where you mean to go.
You walk a while longer with that decision settled warm in your chest, the light still flickering somewhere ahead of you through the birches, patient as a held breath, and you let yourself believe, for a few more minutes, that the prickling at the back of your neck is only anticipation. It would be like him, you tell yourself, to make you work for it. To let you walk a little further into his woods before he finally let himself be found.
It takes you longer than it should to notice that the feeling crawling up your spine has stopped resembling anticipation at all.
The wind is the first thing to turn honest with you. It has been strangely gentle since you stepped outside, the bite gone soft around you the way it has been most nights this fortnight, and you do not register the moment it changes back, only the moment you realise it already has, cold enough now to needle straight through your cloak the way winter always has, the way it always should have, and something in your stomach goes very still and very cold in a manner that has nothing to do with the temperature.
It is, you tell yourself, only the ordinary cold reasserting itself. Even kindness must have its limits. Even a fire banked all winter eventually burns down to ash.
You do not entirely believe yourself, and the forest, in its own way, seems determined to prove you right not to.
The quiet comes next, and it is the wrong kind of quiet. The Chernyles at night is never truly silent, not even in the deepest cold, always some small business of owls or settling snow or wind worrying at branches to fill the dark with ordinary sound. Tonight that ordinary sound simply stops, all at once, the way a held breath stops, and you become aware of your own heartbeat with an intimacy that feels almost obscene in a silence this complete.
Then the smell reaches you. Not woodsmoke, not the clean mineral bite of frost you have grown almost fond of these past two weeks, but something underneath both of those, faint at first and then suddenly, sickeningly present, the smell of meat left too long past its honest use, of earth turned over somewhere it was never meant to be disturbed.
You stop walking.
The light ahead of you flickers once, low and frantic, and for the first time since you left your own door you understand, with a certainty that drops through you like a stone through black water, that it is trying to warn you rather than lead you.
The dark that comes pulses before it arrives, the way thunder sometimes announces itself in your chest before the sound of it ever reaches your ears, a pressure against your sternum that has no business being felt rather than heard. When it finally breaks across the treeline it does not come as light at all, but as its absence, a bruised, hungry black that swallows the snow's pale glow wherever it touches, and within that black, shapes.
You know the shapes from a hundred half-remembered stories before your mind even finishes assembling them into something whole, riders sat too straight in saddles built for bodies with proper weight to them, horses whose legs bend in places no living horse's legs were ever meant to bend, the whole procession dragging that swallowing dark along behind it like a hem too heavy to lift clear of the ground. The riders themselves are worse for being almost familiar, the shape of men and women both, faces collapsed in on themselves around hollows where eyes should be, mouths hung open on hinges too loose to be holding anything resembling breath. You understand, distantly, sickly, that these were people once. That something has worn them the way a hand wears a glove long after the glove has stopped fitting properly, and gone on wearing them regardless.
You were twelve the last time you stood this close to something wearing the dead. You have spent nine years building a wall around that night thick enough that you rarely have to look at it directly, and the wall comes down now in pieces too fast for you to stop it, the cold of a hollow tree trunk pressed against your back, the smell of rot passing close enough to taste, the particular, specific silence of a child too frightened even to weep. You remember thinking, at twelve, that you would surely die there. You remember surviving anyway, and never once feeling, since, that survival and luck were properly different things.
You do not have a hollow tree to press yourself into tonight. You have only open snow, and a lantern with no flame, and a cloak you deliberately, foolishly, left exactly as it was.
The Hunt sees you the way a storm sees a single standing tree, not with malice exactly, only with the simple, terrible inevitability of a thing that has never once had to ask permission to take what stands in its path. The lead rider turns its ruined face toward you, and whatever sound comes out of that hinge-loose mouth is not a word, has perhaps not been a word in longer than you have been alive, but you understand its meaning regardless, the way you understand a wolf's bared teeth, the way your whole body understands, all at once, that it is about to run out of road.
You do not get the chance to run. The lead rider's hand closes around your wrist before your single backward step has even finished, more claw now than hand, cold enough that it burns, and the wound it leaves does not wait politely for the rest of the world to catch up. Something rakes hard across your cheekbone in the same instant, parting skin, the pain arriving a full breath behind the shock of it, hot where everything else has gone numb, and you are being dragged forward into the reek of old earth before you've even managed to scream.
The world breaks open before the scream finishes leaving you.
There is no warning to it, none of the patient, gathering dread that announced itself before. One heartbeat the claw is closing tighter around your wrist, dragging you into the dark whole, and the next the night simply splits down its middle with a crack of violet light so total it scours every shadow from the clearing at once, the sound of it less heard than felt, a blow against your chest that drives the breath from your lungs before the cold ever could. The claw is gone from your wrist in the same instant, torn away by something too fast for your eyes to properly follow, and you go down hard into churned, blackened snow with your ears ringing and your cheek still bleeding and no clear memory of the half second between captivity and freedom.
He is already among them by the time your knees find the ground, as though he had never once been anywhere else, as though the Hunt itself had simply made the grave error of existing in the same dark he already occupied. There is no warming up to the violence in him, no measured beginning. Chains uncoil from somewhere beneath his coat and find their marks before you can track the movement that threw them, and where they strike, riders that should not still be moving simply stop, the bruised black light bleeding out of them into the snow like ink swallowed by water. The lantern at his hip flares violet with each turn he makes, throwing his shadow huge and shifting across the trampled ground, and within a handful of heartbeats far too few to properly count, the clearing belongs to no one but the two of you and the wreckage left behind.
He crosses to you before the last of it has finished settling, kneeling in the bloodied snow with a quickness that has nothing courtly left in it at all, and his hand finds your jaw before you can flinch away from it, tilting your face toward what little light remains.
"Hold still," he says, low, and you do, though whether from obedience or simple shock you could not honestly say.
His thumb finds the cut along your cheekbone and the pain there does not so much fade as forget itself entirely, warmth blooming beneath his touch and spreading outward in slow, deliberate waves, the same impossible heat you have spent two weeks chasing through your own hands in the dark and never once managing to properly recall. You feel the skin knit itself closed beneath his thumb, feel it with a clarity that makes your breath catch high in your throat, and he does not hurry the work, his palm cupping the whole curve of your jaw afterward as though reluctant to relinquish a thing he has only just finished claiming back from harm. His other hand finds your wrist next, the bruise already purpling there fading to nothing under the same slow, deliberate warmth, his thumb tracing once, lightly, over skin that remembers, beneath the new healing, exactly how his hand had felt the first time it held you.
"There," he says finally, and does not move away as quickly as the word suggests he might. His face is close enough now that you can feel the cold coming off him in waves even through the lingering warmth of his touch, close enough that you understand, with a lurch low in your stomach that has nothing to do with fear, that he is in no particular hurry to put any distance back between you. "The debt's settled, then. Though I doubt that will stop you coming to find me again regardless."
"You sound very certain of that."
"I am." Something almost fond moves behind the exhaustion in his eyes. "You have a particular look about you, little fool. The one that has never once in its life known how to leave a wounded thing well alone, even when the wounded thing in question is considerably more dangerous than it looks."
You hold his gaze, breath unsteady, and find some reckless scrap of courage still left in you despite everything the night has already spent. "Then tell me your name, and I'll know exactly how dangerous to be afraid of."
He laughs at that, properly, the sound of it melodic and surprised and entirely too warm for something that came out of a face built like winter, and the laugh does something complicated and unwise low in your chest.
"Bold," he says, "for someone who was warned, I expect, never to give away her own. Did your grandmother not also tell you what a name is worth, before you go demanding mine so plainly?" His thumb moves once more along your jaw, absent, proprietary. "Names are not handed over for the asking. Not by anything like me."
"Then how am I meant to find you again?"
"There is a stone marker by the creek that already owes you a debt of its own," he says, the amusement settling into something quieter, more deliberate. "Leave something there that was truly yours, given freely and not by accident, on a night the moon hides her face completely. Choose carefully what you part with. I am not always so generous with what I take in return as I have been tonight."
His gaze sharpens then, holding yours with an attention that feels almost like being read rather than looked at. "But you already know that, don't you? You knew it walking out here tonight with your cloak left exactly as it was." A pause, soft and certain. "You know precisely what you're doing."
He leans closer before you can answer him, close enough that his breath, when it comes, is warm against your skin in a way nothing about him should by rights be, his fingers ghosting once down the line of your throat with a touch too light to be anything but deliberate.
"Perhaps," he murmurs, "you will come to find out in time."
One final step closes the last of the distance between you, his breath heating the air at your temple, and then he is smoke before he is anything else, the whole solid weight of him unraveling into a low coil of violet-blue flame that gathers, impossibly, back into the small lantern at what had been his hip, and the lantern disappears with a single soft crackle, leaving nothing behind but scorched air and your own ragged breathing in the dark.
You kneel there a long while in the ruined snow, your skin still humming everywhere he touched it, heat pooling low in your belly with a persistence that has nothing left to do with fear at all. Some small, dark, unguarded part of you, the part you will not yet admit to even lying alone in the dark tonight, has already begun turning over what you might leave at that stone marker, what among your few poor possessions could possibly be valuable enough to be called truly yours.
You are, you understand with a thrill you cannot entirely call unwelcome, already looking forward to the choosing.
.
.
.
Whatever guides your feet back through Nod-Krai that night does so with a generosity that borders on tenderness, the drifts parting ahead of you the way a crowd might part for someone it had decided, for reasons of its own, to let pass unharmed. You reach the izba in half the time the walk out had cost you, your wound healed clean beneath cold-stiffened skin, and you let yourself entertain, somewhere between the gate and the door, a thought too dangerous to examine closely in daylight. Perhaps he is not the only one waiting on this. Perhaps, wherever he goes when he is not chains and violet flame and a voice low enough to live somewhere beneath your ribs, some part of him is also turning over what you might bring him, the way you cannot stop turning over what there is in your whole poor life worth giving.
It takes you the better part of two days to understand exactly how poor that life is.
You go through what little you own with the methodical, increasingly desperate attention of a woman searching for something she is no longer certain exists. Your mother's handkerchief, edged in thread gone soft and grey with age, feels too easily lost to trust to a roadside stone. The single coin you've kept since the spring fair, pressed flat and smooth from years in your pocket, has value only to a moneylender, and you doubt very much that a creature who heals wounds with a thought and unmakes the dead with a glance has any particular use for coins. A wooden comb, a chipped clay bead from a necklace long since scattered, a ribbon worn thin from braiding and rebraiding the same hair through a dozen winters, each in its turn seems too small, too cheap, too easily mistaken for an accident rather than an offering, and each in its turn you set back down with the same hollow, mounting frustration.
You are not, you are forced to admit somewhere in the long second afternoon of searching, a woman who has ever owned very much. You have only ever had people, and people, you suspect, are not the sort of thing a stone marker is built to hold.
Babulya notices long before you find the nerve to tell her anything at all.
"You smell of him again," she says on the second evening, not looking up from the stocking she is mending, her voice gone careful in a way that frightens you more than any sharpness might have. "Worse than before. Like something has gotten its hands properly on you this time, rather than only its kindness."
You set down the basket you've been pretending to sort and find you cannot, this time, manage another easy lie. "He saved my life, Babulya. The Hunt found me in the wood."
The needle stills entirely in her hands. When she finally looks up, the fear in her face is not the gentle, half-affectionate worry she has worn through every other strange thing this winter has brought you. It is older than that, and far less willing to be teased into something softer.
"The Hunt," she repeats, and crosses herself, quick and instinctive, the gesture of a woman who has spent a lifetime not quite believing and never once daring to stop hedging her bets regardless. "Bozhe moy. And you went looking for him anyway, after that. I can see it on you, devochka, you needn't lie to spare me the trouble of guessing."
You kneel at her feet then, the way you have a hundred times before for the oil and the wool, only this time it is your own hands that are unsteady. "I have to tell you something, and I think you already suspect most of it." You tell her about the lantern, finally, the whole of it, the blue flame guttering in the snow that first night, the warmth of it answering your breath, the crackle that took it from your hands and left only frost and footprints behind. You tell her about the burn that healed itself in a single night, about the wood that lasts and the hens that lay and the hearth that burns blue and unaided through the coldest hours, every small mercy you have spent weeks quietly refusing to question aloud.
She listens to all of it in a silence that does not soften, her hands folded too tightly in her lap, and when you finally finish she does not scold you, which somehow frightens you more than scolding would have.
"You did not save a lantern," she says at last, quiet. "Whatever you saved that night, devochka, it was never only a lantern. You understand that now. I think you understood it before you ever told me."
"I think I have, for some time."
"And still you went looking for him in the dark, with your cloak left exactly as it was." It is not quite a question. She studies you for a long moment, something complicated moving behind her tired eyes, equal parts grief and a reluctant, painful tenderness. "Do you remember what I told you, the spider and the flower, when you were small enough to still believe me about everything?"
"I remember." You hold her gaze, surprising yourself with how steady your own voice comes out. "You said strange things have always known a soft heart when they find one. That they collect hearts the way magpies collect anything that shines." You pause, something turning over in your chest that has been waiting, you realise now, a very long time to be said aloud.
"But you never finished the thought, Babulya. A flower only ever gives sweetness back to the hand that reaches for it, and nothing more, no matter how long you hold it. A spider, if you let it close enough, might actually look at you while it decides what to do with you. I think some part of me has always wanted that more than I wanted to be safe. To be looked at. Properly. Even by something that might, in the end, choose to ruin me for it."
Babulya says nothing for a long moment, her hand coming to rest, light and trembling, against the side of your face. "Then God help you, devochka," she says finally, "because I do not think I can anymore. I can only hope whatever you've gone and let yourself love has at least the decency to be careful with you."
She does not forbid you from going back. You understand, watching her turn back to her mending with hands that have not quite stopped shaking, that this is its own kind of permission, the only kind she has left to give a girl who was never, by either of your own admissions, built to be talked out of a thing once her heart had already decided it.
You go on searching after that with no greater success, the third day bleeding into a fourth without anything in your possession rising to meet whatever standard he meant by truly yours, until you find yourself, on a still, solemn afternoon with the light already failing early the way it does this deep into winter, sitting before the small cracked mirror in your room with no particular purpose beyond simply being tired of looking everywhere except at yourself.
You have not looked properly in some time. The face that meets you in the silvered glass is not unfamiliar, only tired in a way you had not let yourself notice until this exact moment, the eyes a little hollowed by weeks of broken sleep, though something else lives in them too now, something restless and faintly bright that was not there before the night a lantern first answered your breath, a spark that survives, stubbornly, beneath all that weariness. Your chest rises and falls in the glass with each unsteady breath, the simple, ordinary motion of any living body keeping itself alive, and it is that motion, that small private rhythm of your own breathing, that finally drags the memory up whole and entire, the way it has been waiting, patient as frost, to be properly let in.
You tucked him there. Against your ribs, beneath your coat, pressed close to the very same body breathing in the mirror now, on the first night you ever saw him, when he was nothing more to you than a dying blue flame too pitiful to leave to the cold. You carried him against your own skin like something small and helpless, warmed him with nothing but the heat your own body had left to spare, and you understand now, sitting here with your own reflection watching you understand it, that he had been that close to you from the very beginning. Closer, perhaps, than he has been at any single moment since, closer than the creek, closer than tonight's ruined snow, his whole guttering self held against the place where your heart keeps its most honest rhythm, and you had not even known enough to be afraid of how intimate a thing that was.
Heat floods through you at the thought, slow and total, and you let it, alone in your room with the light failing and no one left to see your face but the mirror.
You wonder, for the first time, whether an ancient thing's patience is built the same way a mortal one's is, with a thread that frays a little more each time it is asked to hold, until eventually, inevitably, it simply does not. He has watched you for weeks now, mended your hearth and your grandmother's lungs and the small soft wounds the world keeps handing you, has come to your aid twice now with a violence that cost him nothing visible and a tenderness afterward that cost him, you suspect, considerably more. You think of his hand at the creek, of his thumb against your jaw healing skin that had only just finished tearing, of the particular unhurried way he had let his palm linger at your wrist long after the bruise beneath it had already gone. You do not think a creature moves that slowly, that deliberately, over a debt it considers fully settled.
You let yourself imagine it properly for the first time, sitting alone in the dying light, what it might mean if the patience fraying in him is not so different from the ache that has been fraying in you. What it might look like, the moment that thread finally gives. Whether he has lain awake, in whatever cold and ancient place things like him go to rest, turning over the memory of your breath against his dying flame the same restless way you turn over the memory of his hand against your stomach. Whether wanting, for something built of frost and old violet fire, feels anything at all like the slow, low-bellied ache that has kept you from sleeping properly more nights than you have admitted even to yourself, or whether it is something colder, hungrier, a wanting with teeth in it, patient only because patience has always been the surest way for a predator to make certain of its meal.
You think you would let him have you either way. The thought arrives calm and entire and frightens you with how little fight you have left in you to argue against it.
You imagine, because you cannot any longer stop yourself from imagining, what it might be to be wanted by something that old, that careful, that has spent weeks proving itself willing to set a wood untouched and a grandmother's lungs whole simply to keep a single mortal girl comfortable through her own ordinary winter. You imagine his hands again, broad and scarred and entirely too gentle for what you know they are capable of doing to anything that crosses him, moving the way they moved at your jaw, only slower, only further, learning every cold and ordinary inch of you the unhurried way a man learns a prayer he intends to keep saying for a very long time. You imagine his mouth finding the same places his thumb has already mapped, his breath the only warm thing left in a world gone entirely to frost around the two of you, and the ache low in your belly answers the thought so immediately, so thoroughly, that you have to press your own hand flat against your stomach simply to feel something solid beneath all that wanting.
Your hand does not stay at your stomach. It rises, slow and unthinking, to the soft underside of your breast, to the exact place a small iron lantern once rested against your own racing heart on a night you still cannot properly account for, and you hold it there a long moment, feeling your own pulse beat hard and unhidden beneath your palm, and understand, with a clarity that settles through you like the first true thaw of spring, exactly what it is you have been searching your whole poor life for these past two days without ever once finding.
It was never going to be a thing. Not a coin, not a ribbon, not anything you could set down on cold stone and walk away from with both hands still empty.
You have already decided, you realise, sitting there with your hand still pressed warm against your own chest and the last of the daylight finally giving out around you. You decided it, perhaps, the very moment you chose not to turn your cloak.
You know exactly what you mean to give him.
You dress, on the appointed night, the way a much younger version of yourself might have dressed for a spring fair she had no business attending, and you catch yourself at it halfway through lacing the bodice of the one good dress folded at the bottom of your chest, sky-blue thread worked into the collar by your mother's own hand, kept for Easter liturgy and your own nameday and almost nothing else in between.
What are you thinking, you ask yourself, hands stilling over the laces, he will not even see it under the cloak.
You finish lacing it anyway.
The goodbye you give Babulya is shorter than either of you pretends not to notice. She does not ask where you are going, though you suspect she has guessed well enough by now, and only takes your face in both her hands the way she has since before you could properly remember being touched at all, her thumb tracing once over your cheekbone as though memorising the shape of it against the possibility that this might be the last time she is given the chance to.
"Come home," she says, which is not quite the blessing it sounds like, and not quite a prayer either, though it carries the weight of both.
"I mean to."
"Mm." She crosses you, quick and certain, two fingers pressed to your collarbone the way she has done since you were small enough to need carrying. She does not say be careful. You think, perhaps, she has finally understood that careful was never going to be a road open to you.
The night holds no moon at all, the sky scoured down to bare, hard stars, and heat crawls over you the entire walk to the creek despite the cold, a current that will not lie still no matter how the frost outside tries to claim it, settling low in you the way water settles beneath ice and goes on moving long after the surface above it has stopped looking like anything alive.
You wait at the stone marker a long while once you arrive, your pulse keeping time the way the rosary beads by Babulya's icon keep time, fast and overworked, counted out one bead at a time against a silence that gives nothing back. You do not know what to call him, have never once been given anything to call him by, and so when you finally find your voice it comes out smaller and stranger than you intend.
"I've come," you say, to the dark, to the birches, to whoever or whatever might be listening. "As you asked."
For a moment nothing answers you at all, the night holding its breath the way it had before the Hunt found you, and your heart climbs into your throat with a fear that has, this time, almost nothing to do with danger.
Then he is simply there, the way a held breath becomes, all at once, the air you finally let go.
You have seen pieces of him before, his back in violence, his hand at your jaw, his eyes catching low firelight, but nothing has prepared you for the whole of him standing before you now beneath bare winter stars, and the sight of him knocks the breath clean out of your lungs the way the ice once had, sharper, colder, and far more dangerous to your continued survival. He is beautiful in the particular, merciless way a blizzard is beautiful, all sharp pale elegance and midnight-blue hair bleeding to ice at its tips, his mouth made for something caught exactly between a smile and a threat, his gold eyes holding yours with an attention so total you feel it land somewhere beneath your sternum.
He smiles, slow, and it does something unforgivable to your knees.
"What have you brought?"
The question is not unkind. It is, somehow, worse for being asked so gently, and you feel the heat climb your throat and settle high in your cheeks under the particular focus of his gaze, the same gaze that watched you mend yourself back together from a dying flame, now turned wholly and unbearably toward whatever answer you are about to give him.
He steps closer when you do not immediately speak, tilting his head, one dark brow lifting with the patient, knowing amusement of someone who has already guessed and is only waiting, with some private cruelty, to hear you say it aloud yourself.
"Myself," you say first, and then, quieter, your voice nearly lost beneath your own racing pulse, "my body."
He goes very still.
Whatever courteous mask he has worn for you until now slips, for one bare, unguarded instant, and beneath it you catch something far sharper, hunger and amusement tangled together so closely you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins, his mouth curving into something that is not quite a smile anymore, something closer to a sneer, cruel and delighted both at once.
"How generous." His voice has dropped, gone low and edged in a way that raises the hair along your arms. "Mortal flesh, freely offered, as though I have not had my fill of soft, foolish bodies a hundred times over before your grandmother's grandmother was so much as a thought in her own mother's womb." He circles you slowly, unhurried, the way a wolf circles something it has already decided is not, in fact, any real danger to itself. "You think yourself a gift, little dove. I wonder if you understand yet that you are closer to a sacrifice."
You should feel smaller for it. Some part of you does, heat rising shameful and furious in your chest at the easy, contemptuous certainty in his voice, and yet beneath the shame something else coils tighter still, something that does not want him to stop looking at you like that, like a thing worth picking apart slowly simply to see what it is made of.
He stops in front of you, too close now, close enough that the cold coming off him raises gooseflesh along every inch of skin the cloak fails to cover, and leans down until his face is level with your throat, breathing you in slow and deliberate, the way a man might breathe in bread fresh from the oven, helpless to it despite himself.
"Are you sure, little dove?" His mouth brushes the shell of your ear, and you feel the words more than hear them, frost and heat both at once. His hand finds your waist and draws you the last small distance forward, until there is no cold left between you at all. "I will unmake you."
You do not have the chance to answer him with words. His mouth finds yours instead, slow at first, almost reverent, as though he means to memorise the shape of your hesitation before he takes it from you entirely, and then it is not slow at all, not reverent, only deep and certain and utterly unhurried in its thoroughness, his hand sliding from your waist to cradle the back of your skull as though he means to keep you exactly where he has decided you belong.
You lose the night somewhere in the middle of it. You lose the cold, the stars, the stone marker digging into your hip where he has walked you back against it, lose every coherent thought beyond the slow, devastating drag of his mouth against yours, his other hand finding your jaw, your throat, the fevered pulse beating there, tracing it like something he intends to learn by heart. Your own hands fist in the heavy fabric of his coat, in the cold chains looped beneath it, anchoring yourself to him the only way you have left, and the kiss only deepens for it, lengthens, builds the way a held note builds before it finally breaks, until your knees have gone entirely unreliable beneath you and the only thing keeping you upright at all is the solid, immovable wall of him.
When he finally draws back, just far enough to let you breathe, you are dizzy in a way that has nothing to do with the cold air rushing back between you, your lips swollen, your pulse a wild, unsteady thing beneath his still-resting palm, and the satisfaction low in your belly has not eased so much as sharpened, gone taut and aching and entirely unwilling to be soothed by anything less than more of him.
He watches you come back to yourself with an expression that has finally, fully abandoned anything resembling courtesy, hunger sitting plain and unhidden in those hollow gold eyes now, and his thumb drags once, slow, along your bottom lip, as though tasting the effect of himself on you for his own private satisfaction.
"Well," he says, low, rough at the edges in a way his voice has never once been before tonight. "It seems I have only just begun unmaking you at all."
He has you pressed against the stone marker, but the rigidness of the rock is nothing compared to the absolute pleasure he delivers through you. In seconds, as though it took no thought at all, he hikes the skirt of your frock, and pulls down your underwear. He grins in absolute, dark glee at the shining slick of your core. You gasp as the cold winter air hits your skin.
“How long have you been dreaming of this, dove?” He asks, slow and deep. He pulls your thighs apart, holding you by the waist as he pins you to the stone. “Those nights spent trying to satisfy yourself, imagining it was I?”
His tone is mocking and you whine. He is so slow, so unhurried, he has not even touched you yet, and yet the breath of his mouth against your clit, his fingers pressing hard against the plush of your inner thigh has you squirming. You can’t help but move closer to him, like a desperate dying moth fluttering towards the blue lamp, knowing for certain a lick of its tongue would lead to your unfettered death right there. You want that death. You want his fingers in you. His mouth over you. Him.
And then he inserts his finger into you. You cry out, sharp and furious, the same cry you had let out when the lantern had burned you, left your skin charred. It’s unfair, really, how long his fingers are. They curl just so perfectly against your gummy, wet walls. Your eyes fill with tears, damp little drops decorating your lashes. You swear you see stars dancing over you, little flames. He smiles, and it’s a mocking smile, one that is so egotistical, to be the only one that could undo you like this.
He leans over you and presses hot, open mouthed kisses against your skin. His lips press against your cheek, your throat, your collarbone. It travels down and down, and soon enough he has your carefully tied bodice undone. The dress gathers at your waist. It leaves you bare underneath, your breasts perfect round mounds of soft flesh. Sweat gathers in the valley between them. And the Fae reaches up and gathers one of your breasts in his hot mouth. You moan out loud, the sound echoing across the forests, the sounds are so lewd you think, for one dizzying second, that it could ward off even the fiercest of creatures. His finger works magic inside of you, curling and pinching, it has you writhing beneath him. The carefully tied knot low in your belly unspooling with each curl of his finger. It’s all so much. His mouth on your chest, his finger bullying its way inside, hitting that sore, aching spot you’ve never been able to reach on your own.
“P-Please! Ah… mhm, I—” You cry out. You feel, at your entrance, the skin of another long finger, it dancing over your entrance. You shiver in its ghostly hold. And then, for one shocking second, for one nauseous clarifying moment, you think to ask a question that out of all moments, this moment precisely, you ought to ask. You heave in his hold, before you stutter out desperately, “Y-You, haahn…. Your—name?”
The Fae laughs, the vibrations travelling over your stomach, and then plunges a second of his fingers inside you. He relishes in the lewd moan you let out, the way your legs come up around him, bucking at his digits. And then, all too cruelly, before you can finally come undone, finally have the knot inside you untangled, he pulls out his fingers; they come away glistening and sticky, a thin strand of your arousal liquid connecting his digits to yourself. The sudden cold, the sudden absence of his flesh has you gasping. Tears spill from your face, and you look down dumbly, at his face twisted into a courteous yet mocking expression.
“You never stop asking, do you, golubka?” He sneers at you. He watches as your hole clenches around nothing. And then almost taking pity on you at the sudden punishment, he breathes against your clit. His voice comes low, “Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.” And then his tongue darts out, pressing itself flat and hot against your flesh. Your back arches.
The name, Kyryll, Kyrll, Kyrll, floats around your mind. “Satisfied, are you?” He asks. You don’t get to respond to that as his tongue darks out like a spike into your entrance. Almost subconsciously, you give him your name, too. And it seems to be at that moment that he seems to truly gain a different glean in his eye. He hauls you by your waist, his large hands keeping you elevated against the giant stone, your legs thrown over his shoulder, as he fucks into you relentlessly. You swear you see stars as you feel your folds open and licked clean with his tongue, long and flexible.
Kyryll presses his mouth between your thighs, and feels the way your body convulses before you even realise it. “Yes, ah…” He murmurs low, keeping the pace. “Come undone for me, dove.” Your body relinquishes in an instant, your body nearly lifts from the stone as your weeks-awaited release washes over you in waves. “Hnah…. Kyryll, ah!” You writhe.
For one second, as your orgasm comes over you, it’s all euphoria. You pant, your breath laboured and heavy, and you dare to glance at the man, no, Fae, that kneels at your feet. His mouth is covered in your slick and you feel the heat rise to your cheeks when you see his tongue come out to lick at his lips, as though the minutes he spent between your thighs, feasting on your bud and its liquids have not yet quenched his thirst. His eyes, you take note, have turned into slits, snake-like as he pierces into you. He takes a hold of the fabric of your frock and discards it to the side.
“You’re beautiful like this,” He murmurs. “Bare, your eyes wide, your body squirming, given to me like an offering.”
“Kyryll…” You whisper. His eyes get blown wide. Your mouth is heavy with his name, your tongue tasting the consonant of its writing. You realise, belatedly, that you hold some power over him. He had given you his name, his most sacred possession, and you could dangle it in front of him like you would dangle a wad of feathers in front of a cat. You try again, “Kyryll.” And this time, he pants. His grip on your thigh tightens, so tight in fact that you don’t doubt that red marks have been plastered all over your skin, like you have been branded to be his for eternity.
Kyryll moves before you can properly register it. It is as though the utterance of his name has him completely, absolutely, totally ensnared by you. He has your back pressed against the stone in an instant. His hands come up below your thighs and circles your plush legs around his waist.
You don’t know if it is simply your imagination or not, but the woods around you blur at the edges of your vision, and it seems for one dizzying moment that you are not in the wild at all, and rather that you are in a synagogue of sorts with your back pressed against a large marble pillar. Certainly, this is the most sacrilegious thing you have done so far. But your surroundings do not matter. It does not matter where you are or what local sacrilege you are committing. All that matters is that Kyryll is looking at you with a stare so penetrating it could cut through you. His clothes have come undone, discarded who knows where, and you dare to glance downward.
His cock is hard and erect. A long pink thing with precum leaking from its head. It has your mouth salivating. You realise that you need it, that all the magic his hands and mouth could do would pale in comparison to how full he could make you feel. He could press it in you to its hilt, have you see the world in a way you never could before. You can hear the snarl in Kyryll’s voice when he says, “Say it again, baby.” You realise, belatedly, thoughts clouded with lust, that his speech is far less controlled now, far less pompous, it rather takes on a base and vulgar tone. “Say my name.”
And you do. Or, rather, you moan it loud and harsh.
Kyryll whines, bites you hard enough on the throat you whine, hips bucking against him. You shiver when he lets his tip catch your clit a few times until you manage to tilt your pelvis enough for him to slide in. Just a bit, but enough for his breath to catch and a hurried curse in a language you do not recognise, to fall from his lips as your walls eagerly flutter around the intrusion.
“Oh, ah, I—,” you whine softly as he finally presses closer to you. Your hands scrabble for purchase on his back as his body surrounds you. chest brushing against yours and sending pleasure from the pressure against your breasts. You are reminded of his lantern heat, and you nuzzle into him. One hand grips your thigh and holds your legs open as he sinks to the base. He places kisses and marks along your collar. His teeth, sharper than most, graze against your skin. It leaves stinging marks on your supple flesh, marks that you are sure will leave deep purple bruises come daylight. “...Feels good!”
“Ha–Hah… I, dear… God,” Kyryll mutters, but at the utterance of the word ‘God’ his entire body convulses. His length stutters inside your walls breaking the pace he had set. You moan louder. It was almost as though any utterance of ‘God’ sent shocks of pain and repulsion through him. Kyryll snarls and sinks his teeth into your collarbone. You cry out, clawing into his back with marks that are sure to leave half-moon scars on his pale, smooth skin. You like that thought. You like having carved yourself into him, the same as he is doing to you now.
And then he moans out your name, over and over and over again, a substitute for God. Each brutal thrust is punctuated with a cry of your name. Your vision turns white at the edges. You feel as his cock hits your cervix. Pleasure and pain entangle themselves together, your legs press tighter and tighter. You can feel and see and hear only him. His thrust speeding up, his breath against your ear, you take it all as the creature inside you comes undone.
All it takes is one final moan, “Kyryll!” And he comes undone.
Your orgasm floods you yet again, stronger and more potent this time, overtaking all your senses. And you swear that Kyryll loses it. He fucks you through it, hard and fast, and you feel it in the way he chases his own release, rutting into your soaked entrance like he had not had an offering this good before. You could bet, if you were braver, that he truly had not had someone like you at his whim before. Thick white ribbons of cum release and it coats your insides, dripping down your thighs onto the ground below. He stays there for a minute longer, ensuring all of his seed would nest deep inside you.
You pant, sweat gathering at your temples, but he does not seem to mind. Kyryll cups your jaw in hand and smiles, slow.
.
.
.
.
When you finally surface back into your own body properly, you find the snow beneath you has melted in a wide, perfect circle, bare earth steaming faintly where frost has no business yielding at all. He has kept you warm the entire time, you understand, distantly, the same patient heat that has lived banked in your hearth all winter now spent freely on nothing but you, and the realisation settles through you with a tenderness that aches almost as much as anything else tonight has.
He does not move away from you after. This, more than anything else, is what undoes you completely, the way he stays close, unhurried, his mouth finding your shoulder and pressing there, soft, before moving on to the curve of your collarbone, to the inside of your wrist where your pulse still has not properly settled, to each of your knuckles in turn as though every part of you deserves its own separate, private reverence. You lie still beneath the slow, deliberate attention of it and feel something in your chest crack open even further than your body already has, because this, the gentleness of it, the patience, frightens you in a way his hunger never quite managed to.
You ache everywhere, a soreness that has settled deep and low and entirely pleasurable, the particular satisfied heaviness of muscles finally, properly spent, and you think, with a breathless half-laugh you cannot quite suppress, of every restless night you spent these past weeks chasing this same release with nothing but your own poor, insufficient hands. Nothing in all those long, frustrated hours came anywhere close. You are sated now in a way that reaches all the way to the bone, and some small, smug, satisfied part of you decides, lying there in the steaming snow, that the weeks of wanting were worth it simply for the contrast.
He helps you dress afterward with the same unhurried care, and it is this, more than the kissing, that you will remember longest. He laces your bodice the way you imagine a much gentler world might have taught him to, slow and careful, his fingers brushing your skin with each pull of the cord, pressing a kiss to the join of your shoulder once it is closed, to your collarbone above the sky-blue embroidery your mother once worked there. He kneels to tie your boots himself, an act so absurdly domestic for something built of chains and old violet fire that you have to look away from him for a moment simply to keep your composure, and even that small task he performs as though it were a rite rather than a chore, his thumb tracing once over your ankle before he lets the laces fall closed.
He settles your cloak back over your shoulders last of all, drawing the clasp closed at your throat himself, his knuckles grazing your jaw as he does, and presses one final kiss, soft and lingering, to your temple, as though sealing something shut that he has no intention of letting come undone again so easily.
"Kyryll," you say, quiet, savoring the shape of it now that the urgency that first dragged it out of him has burned down to embers. It sounds different in this voice than it had in the other, softer, almost shy of itself, and you watch something in him answer that softness in kind, his composure slipping for just a moment at hearing his own name spoken so gently after spending however many centuries hearing it, you suspect, mostly in fear or in screaming.
"Do not waste it," he says, though there is no real warning left in the words now, only a kind of fond, weary resignation, his thumb tracing slow over your knuckles. "I am told I am rather difficult to get rid of, once properly summoned."
You laugh, and the sound surprises you both, bright and unguarded in the cold dark.
He walks you to the edge of the treeline and no further, some old instinct in him apparently still unwilling to be seen too near Babulya's gate, and there he stops, drawing you in by the waist one last time, his forehead resting against yours, his breath warm against your mouth.
"This was never going to be a single night's bargain, golubka." His smile, when it comes, is dark and slow and entirely too pleased with itself, and yet underneath the danger of it lives something that looks, unmistakably, almost embarrassingly, like tenderness. "I have spent weeks now learning the shape of you, one small mercy at a time. I find I have no intention whatsoever of stopping simply because the debt's been paid twice over."
He brushes one last kiss against your mouth, lighter than all the others, almost careless, almost a promise.
"You will see me again," he says, already drawing back into the dark between the birches, his eyes holding yours until the very last possible moment. "Sooner, I expect, than either of us has the sense to properly prepare for."
And then he is gone, the way he always is, all at once and without sound, and you stand alone at the edge with your lips still warm and your whole body humming with a satisfaction that finally, finally, feels complete, and find that you are already, helplessly, counting the days until he keeps his word.
He is the only one he sees the courting, for the rest of the world is just him bein g his ussual gentlemen and chivalry side.
He always listens to you, about anything and everything, he takes pleasure in trying to help you.
He always asks you if you could let him accompany you to your house so he can reassure that you get safe and sound.
When he sees you on the shadows, he always uses his lamp to brig you to light, even when its just to distract you from something or someone.
You always get hypnotized looking at the blue and purple flames and he is more than flattered of it, like you are making him the best compliment ever.
He is a practical man and his definition of love is doing things for the ones he loves, so for courting he is always asking you what you need, doing it on advance or even doing stuff you didn't even know you needed.
He collects flowers you like cause he thinks it would look great of your apartment.
He buys some of your groceries cause you've been complaining about how you hadn't found time to do them.
Also, he takes you to walks into all kind of places in Nod Krai, especially if you aren't from there. he would give you the whole tour.
If you are already from there, he would ask you to acompany him on his lightkeeper duties.
He is also a little cryptic and deep so he always chooses his words to be a message of his profound love for you.
But you don't get it cause he is too deep and cryptic, and he doesn't realize it so he gets a little frustrated about it and complains to Lauma, who always laughs.
Lauma is the best advisor he could get to start being more obivous about his intentions and even though he still isn't clear about it, you start noticing things.
At some point, he realized that his courting didn't go anywhere and it doesn't work anymore.
This is a somehow modern world and he already has showed you up all his heart, if you don't like him, then no courting in Teyvat would change that.
He takes you to a special place, most probably the cemetery and takes you to the top of the light house to look at the night sky.
He would have your favourite flowers, chocolate or whatever gift he knew you would like, cause he always listens to your tastes and knows what you would like for the perfect asking out date.
He doesn't stutter but he made a really long speech about his love for you and with the nerves he cut a lot of stuff while talking, but you didn't know that.
Of course you say yes, and he has a big smile on his face, he can finally breath and peace and kiss your lips like he has been imagining for months.
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This used to have Albedo but I want to redo his part. Unfortunately, it will have to wait until I have the energy to write again.
Diluc:
Diluc is a gentleman through and through. He would never force a kiss on you, always seeking out your consent before attempting to do so. To him, kisses with you are intimate and romantic occasions that he takes very seriously. He may not express his love for you verbally often, but he doesn’t need to. His actions speak for him. If you look into his eyes, you will see a rare softness in his expression, a tender side to him that he buries under his stoic yet professional façade as the wine tycoon and Darknight hero of Mondstadt. When he’s with you, he lets his walls come down to reveal the soft and sweet side of him that he shows only to you. Diluc caresses your face in his hands like you are his most precious treasure, and perhaps you are—if his adoring and loving gaze is anything to go by.
Diluc would gently tuck a stray strand of your hair behind your ear before cupping your cheek with his bare palm. He likes to take his gloves off when he’s with you so he can feel the softness and warmth of your skin, as it enhances the intimacy between you two. Diluc guides your face closer to his in a slow movement, his lips brushing against yours in a warm and firm kiss. He won’t overwhelm you with his kiss, but he could be insistent about its duration. He’s a busy man and doesn’t get to spend time with you as often as he’d like, so he wants to make use of every opportunity he has to catch up on the affection he’s been craving from you.
While he kisses you, he rubs the pad of his thumb against the skin of your cheek, the motion featherlight and brimming with the tenderness and adoration he holds for you. His touch conveys just how utterly smitten with you he is. And when you part from the kiss, one glance at Diluc is enough to melt your heart. A small, loving smile would tug at his lips, the love and tenderness he feels for you evident in his crimson eyes, and it makes your heart ache. You are the light that casts away the shadows in his heart, and he feels incredibly lucky to have you in his life.
Kaeya:
Kaeya is confident in his kissing abilities, and it shows. He never gets flustered or shy when you ask for kisses or surprise him with one on his lips. He rolls with the punches, quickly adapting and matching your pace. Kaeya’s silver tongue is also good for more than just talking. He knows how to use it while kissing you deeply, his tongue brushing teasingly against your own, eager to hear the muffled sounds of pleasure this elicits from your throat. He’ll do his damnedest to make you weak in the knees with his kisses, taking great pleasure in watching you lose your bearings as your mind clouds over with pleasure—all because of him. He’d tease you about it with a cocky smirk, laughing when you get annoyed with his antics and playfully smack his arm in retaliation.
However, Kaeya doesn’t know how to act when you kiss him in places other than his lips. When you kiss his shoulder, forehead, temple, or hand, his breath hitches and he momentarily freezes. He’s used to being alone; protecting all of Mondstadt from the shadows by committing morally questionable acts just to keep you and those he loves safe. He doesn’t think of himself as a good person that’s deserving of true love. But when you take his face in your hands and rise up on your toes to press your lips to his forehead, something in him breaks. During those moments he’s quiet and uncharacteristically melancholy, though he’ll try to put on a cheery act so you don’t notice how misty his eye had gotten. To his chagrin, you see through him and just give him a loving smile, telling him that he’s worthy of love by showering him in more soft kisses. The feeling of your lips on his face is a foreign yet welcome sensation for Kaeya. His heart aches at the realization that he’s been craving love and affection for many years, even if he wasn’t aware of it. Your kisses reassure him and let him know you truly love him for him, and that this relationship isn’t some fling.
Kaeya won’t admit this to you, but your loving kisses make him feel vulnerable and emotional in the best way. After he comes to this realization, Kaeya will treat you with even more care afterwards, being protective and supportive of you in subtle ways since he’s too shy to say it upfront, but you truly are special to him for touching his heart so deeply.
Venti:
Venti is very comfortable kissing any time and any place—the boy has very little shame and isn’t embarrassed to show the world just how much he loves you. He’s fond of kissing your cheeks or lips in greeting since he misses you when the two of you are apart. The bard is also fond of taking your hands in his and intertwining your fingers together before leaning in to touch the tip of his nose to yours. The way you smile and giggle while he rubs his nose against yours makes his heart feel airy and warm, and he laughs along with you. Your laughter makes him feel better whenever he’s feeling down; it’s a genuine comfort for him to see you happy.
Venti likes to bask with you under the warm sunrays that filter through the canopy of the great tree at Windrise. The two of you often lay in the grass together and watch the leaves rustle in the wind and the clouds pass overhead. Venti strums on the lyre for you, but what you don’t yet know is that the melody is a future ballad he will sing for you once he’s able to put his feelings for you into words. While your attention is focused on the clouds or his tune, Venti would turn his head to look at your serene face. He makes sure you aren’t paying attention to him because he doesn’t want you to see the longing and fondness in his eyes. Venti is so enamored with you that his own emotions overwhelm him until he succumbs to the urge to lean over and smooch your cheeks and forehead. His spontaneous affection surprises you, but you can’t help but giggle under his flurry of kisses. Venti smiles at having gotten you to laugh, but he also hopes you feel as loved as he wants you to be.
Whenever you and Venti are apart during the day and you feel a gust of wind blow past you, know that the gentle caress of the breeze against your face is Venti’s way of giving you the kisses he can’t give you in-person. You are the only person capable of tethering the bard’s roaming heart, and he will forever be grateful to have someone as wonderful as you return his feelings. You mean the world to him, and he will make sure you know it once he finally completes his love ballad for you.
Dainsleif:
There is something restrained about Dainsleif’s kisses when you first take that step in your relationship. They feel nice. Very tender, careful, and loving, but you can tell that he’s afraid of something. Each kiss feels like he’s kissing you for the last time, and it always make your heart ache to feel him act as if your relationship is already over. Dainsleif knows he’ll outlive you because of his curse, and there’s a part of him that’s already trying to numb himself to the inevitable day when he’ll lose you to time just so it won’t hurt as bad.
Underneath the fear of losing you, you can also feel that Dainsleif craves for more from your shared kisses, but he never asks for it. It's not until you confront Dainsleif about it that he confesses he feels an urge to be more aggressive with his kisses, but he didn’t want to ask for more since he doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable or force you into something you don’t want. Even when you tell him it’s okay, Dainsleif will remain stubborn and won’t let himself indulge in his cravings. It will take a lot of patience and convincing on your end for Dainsleif to finally loosen the chains on his self-restraint and give in to his desires.
Once he lets himself indulge, you’ll feel a stark difference in his kisses. Dainsleif is like a man starved. He deepens the kiss, kissing you with a hunger that burns you up inside. You can feel that he craves you, desires you, longs for you just from how firmly he presses his lips to yours, melding them together and barely letting you have a chance to catch your breath. He’s lost so much, and lives with those painful memories every day of his immortal life, feels and sees the effects of the curse on his body. But with you by his side, he can forget about the curse and pain he feels, if only for a moment. You are his respite, and he tries to lose himself in you by kissing you senseless. Though he knows one day he’ll be forced to part from you, you chose him to be your lover and he wants to at the very least express his gratitude by giving you all the love he is capable of.
