"And he was a fairy." - Flins x Fem!Reader, Pt.2
SUMMARY: You now suspect Flins of being every supernatural being you can think of, working your way through an increasingly unhinged lineup, until you finally land on the correct answer. Except not quite correct enough - you call him a fairy, and he sulks about it.
CW: pretty tame make out sesh at the very end
It took your sluggish, alcohol-pickled brain an embarrassingly long time to catch on to the fact that you were inside a lighthouse. Which, okay, sure - lightkeeper, it’s literally in the job title, you had no excuse. But he also ran a cemetery. And he moonlighted as a bartender. Just how many positions did this man hold? He was easily the most employed person in all of Teyvat. Step aside, Katheryne, there’s a new corporate slave in town!
That revelation lasted about forty-five seconds before the lingering alcohol dragged you right back under, and you passed out again with your face in the pillow.
The second time you woke up, the lighthouse was completely empty and dead silent, which meant you were alone in a stranger’s home with zero supervision, a throbbing head, and restlessness that only ever showed up when you were too tired to actually do anything productive but too wired to sleep. You stared at the ceiling for a solid minute, conducting an extremely thorough internal debate, and then made the executive decision that what you really needed was fresh air.
You gave yourself a pep talk on the way to the door. You were the literal Traveler. (Sure, you hadn’t actually contributed to a single physical fight since landing in Teyvat and mostly just stood in the background letting your friends do 100% of the heavy lifting, but still! The reputation was there!) You were fine. Ghosts weren’t real - or rather, they were extremely real in Teyvat, but you had met enough of them at this point that the novelty had genuinely worn off. You pushed open the heavy door with both hands and it let out the most aggressively ominous creak in recorded history.
Outside, the sight stopped you completely in your tracks.
The moon was enormous. It sat almost full over the water, and the whole surface of Nod Krai’s dark bay was lit up underneath it in these long, rippling sheets of silver. Back home, you could never see anything like this because of light pollution!
In moments like these, you seriously wondered why you even missed Earth. Say what you will, your life was objectively far better here. You had found a family (well, Paimon, but hey, it was a starter pack), and you’ve found plenty of friends. You didn’t have a lover, but neither did you back home, sooo… net zero change there!
The sheer majesty of the view hit you so hard your knees just sort of gave out in the nicest possible way. You dropped right down onto the cold ground in front of the lighthouse like a sad frog on a damp rock, chin in your hands, staring blankly out at the water.
Then the giggling started.
It was faint, and it was coming from absolutely nowhere you could identify, just sort of bouncing off the walls and dissolving into the mist before you could pin it down.
Your shoulders went rigid. What the hell!
“I am here,” a voice announced, from somewhere in the dark expanse in front of you.
You sat completely still for one full second. Then you rolled your eyes at the empty fog.
“Well, I am here too, girl,” you called back, at a perfectly conversational volume.
Internally, your heart had vacated the premises entirely and was currently somewhere in the lower Abyss, but that was classified information and the ghost absolutely did not need to know that.
Then something in your peripheral vision made you go very still.
A faint blue glow was floating in the mist to your left, distant enough that the fog blurred it, but close enough to make out a shape. A lantern, just hovering there in the dark with no hand attached to it, with a design that was - even squinting through the haze - way too intricate to belong to a standard Ratnik grunt. The filigree on it looked almost exactly like the one you had seen clipped to Flins’ coat earlier that night.
It stared back, presumably.
Then you blinked, and it was gone! Just gone, like it had decided you were not interesting enough to haunt after all. Ouch. In its place came footsteps walking out of the dark toward you.
Your stomach performed a full Olympics gymnastics routine. You were sitting flat on the ground with nowhere to go and genuinely no plan, and for one long, horrible second you were absolutely certain a lighthouse ghost was about to introduce itself in person.
Then Flins stepped out of the mist and into the moonlight, and you let out sigh of relief. You had never been this happy before to see his stupidly handsome face!!
He looked down at you sitting in the dirt, took in the whole picture, and let out an amused exhale.
“I have to admit,” Flins said, “I did not expect to find you bonding so intimately with the local spirits at this hour, my lady. Is this dedicated field research for the novel, or has the ghost simply proven to be a more captivating conversationalist than myself?”
Your eye twitched. So not funny! “I have been in this lighthouse for a few hours and I am already losing my mind,” you said, your voice cracking on the word mind like a teenager going through puberty. “Maybe all those stories about lighthouse keepers going insane actually hold some merit.”
“My, what a sweeping diagnosis for a single evening.” Flins clasped his hands behind his back. “Though I suppose isolation does have a way of making the mind rather creative, for those unaccustomed to the quiet.”
The subtext was loud and clear. He was essentially calling the currently absent Paimon - and by extension, you - an absolute pair of yappers. The man was practically begging for a noise-complaint ordinance. Welp.
“Those unaccustomed to it?” you repeated. “Nobody gets accustomed to loneliness, honey. That is, like, Human 101.”
“Hm.” He tilted his head, the corner of his mouth tugging upward. “Point taken, my friend. I shall have to enroll in this Human 101 at my earliest convenience.”
“Yeah, you do that.” You squinted up at him. “Though I guess as a vampire your whole psyche is probably just built different. I wouldn’t really know. I haven’t taken Vampire 101.”
Flins simply regarded you with those luminous yellow eyes and said absolutely nothing, which was somehow worse than any actual response could have been.
You soldiered on anyway, because you had the survival instincts of a slime. “Okay, so, for the book, I’m going to assume, purely for the sake of my own continued existence, that you don’t actually drink from humans. So what is it? Animals? Do you just lurk in the woods after dark and-” You pointed at him. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Is it Lauma’s animals? Are you out here poaching her entire woodland entourage for a midnight snack?”
Flins froze for a fraction of a second. Then he pressed a gloved hand to his chest like he’d been physically struck.
“My lady, please, I beg of you, lower your voice,” he murmured, glancing around as though Lauma herself might be lurking in the fog with a clipboard. “If she even hears a rumor that I’ve been eyeing her woodland entourage as a culinary delicacy, my second death will be a permanent one. Have you seen her with those creatures? I assure you, a pack of angry forest badgers is far more terrifying than any vampire your imagination could conjure.”
“So you don’t feed on animals.”
The implication landed on you about one second later.
“So you DO feed on humans!” you yelped, scrambling backward across the cold ground. “That’s why you brought me here! You’ve been waiting for the alcohol to clear out of my system so I don’t taste like a Mondstadt dive bar! You’re MARINATING me!”
Flins stared at you. His hand was still pressed to his chest. He watched you scramble away from him in the dirt, and then he lost it completely, a real laugh that broke loose into the night air.
“All right,” he said, shaking his head, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I really should stop this before you draft a formal letter of distress to the Grand Master.” He looked back at you, still smiling. “No, my lady. I do not drink blood of any kind. Your marination is safe. Your caffeine-and-antidepressant cocktail remains entirely your own.”
You narrowed your eyes at him. “So you’re NOT a vampire.”
And there it was - that subtle shift. The microscopic tilt of his head, the way his weight redistributed just slightly. You had been watching this man dodge questions for the better part of two weeks and you recognized the setup now - he was already gearing up to deflect with another riddle or a witty remark to completely change the topic! Not this time. You weren’t letting him wiggle out of it.
“Yes or no,” you said flatly, cutting him off before he could even draw breath.
The moment those words left your mouth, a sudden silence fell over the shoreline. Both you and him froze, equally shocked by that. You do not know why, but cornering Flins with ‘yes or no’ felt particularly cruel.
“No,” Flins said, finally. “I am not a vampire. I’m sorry to disappoint your editorial vision, madame.”
You scrambled to your feet, brushed the dirt off your clothes, and stepped directly into his personal space. He did not move. You leaned in close and stared straight into his eyes - yellow, pupil-less, catching the moonlight like a pair of very pretty lanterns - and the gears in your head, against all reasonable odds, started turning again.
Yellow eyes. No pupils. Lived alone in the woods. Nocturnal. The cold. The old-world references.
“You’re a werewolf.” You gasped.
Now that would make sense in Teyvat! Wriothesley, Diona, Tighnari, Gorou, Yae Miko… you name it! Animalistic traits were practically a localized weather phenomenon at this point.
Flins blinked repeatedly. “A... werewolf, madame?” Flins asked. He looked down at his sleeves, then back up at you. “I assure you, my grooming routine is intensive, but it does not involve shedding under a full moon. Nor do I have the urge to chase wagons.”
You gave him your most compassionate look and patted him on the shoulder. Your hand then stayed there, because the situation called for sustained emotional support and definitely not because his shoulders were distractingly solid under the fabric of his coat. No, no, you weren’t feeling him up or anything of that sort. “Hey. Don’t be embarrassed about it. The second love interest in my series is actually a werewolf - you’ll still get a whole arc, I promise.” You gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and casually, smoothly slid your hand a little bit down his bicep because... well, because your mom used to squeeze your arms as a kid to comfort you. Yep. True story.
“And honestly, it explains so much,” you continued, keeping your hand firmly planted on his arm for maximum emotional healing. “The isolation, the nighttime patrols, the whole thing where you live on a literal rock in the middle of the water=”
Flins’ eyes had gone approximately as wide as they were physically capable of going. He looked at your hand on his bicep, then back at your face, which was radiating nothing but sincere certainty.
“Your secret is completely safe with me,” you whispered. “I won’t tell a single soul. But - okay - I do have to ask, because I would genuinely love to see it - what does your true form actually look like? Are we talking full quadruped, or is it more of a bipedal situation? Because the character design implications are very different and Yae Miko is going to have questions.”
Flins was quiet for a long moment.
“You have already seen my true form, my lady,” he said finally.
You blinked. The gears jammed completely.
Before either of you could make any headway on that particular cryptic statement, the ghost picked its moment with absolutely catastrophic timing.
“I am hereee!” the voice wailed.
You whipped around. “OKAY,” you shouted at the fog like a grandpa with dementia yelling at a cloud, “and you can get fucking used to me being here, because I am coming BACK-”
Turning right back to Flins, you completely bypassed his riddle and got straight to the point. “Seriously, though, if it isn’t too invasive... I would love to see your wolfsona.”
Flins froze. ”...My what, madame?”
You just giggled, waving your hand dismissively at his reaction. “Hehe, silly you! I still can’t believe that you tried to make me believe you were a vampire!”
Flins ran a gloved hand down the bridge of his nose. The sheer audacity of your mental gymnastics was clearly the most entertaining/ exhausting thing he had encountered in decades. “My lady,” he said, his voice dropping into an incredibly dry monotone. “If I recall correctly, you were the one who came up with that particular blood-sucking conspiracy. If you chose to interpret my mild aversion to the midday sun and my completely normal choice of evening beverage as a rabid craving for human plasma...”
He tilted his head, his eyes crinkling at the corners with an incredibly charming smile. ”...well, far be it from me to stifle the vibrant imagination of Teyvat’s most creative author. Though I must ask, since we have migrated from bats to wolves... should I start practicing my howling, or will a simple ‘woof’ suffice for your next chapter?”
“Unfortunately for you,” you sighed, crossing your arms and giving him a deeply faux-regretful look, “the werewolf love interest only appears in the second book, so you are safe for now. Not that I’m basing the love interest off of you! Obviously. I am just getting real-life inspiration. A muse, if you will. But yeah, if you want to bark, by all means, go on. I’m taking notes.”
“I am deeply honored, my lady. To be the muse for a creature of such literary caliber. Though, I must confess,” he added, a teasing smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he gestured back toward the lighthouse, “perhaps we should move this creative workshop indoors? The night air is quite chilly, and I promise the tea inside is entirely blood-free.”
You rolled your eyes but let him lead the way anyway. Even though you felt a lingering sense of the uncanny and a subtle undercurrent of unsettlement around him, your magnetic pull to him was just too much. You couldn’t help but feel so intensely attracted to him to the point where you completely ignored your survival instincts. Suddenly, your eyes went wide.
Oh, shit. This was exactly how Bella was with Edward throughout the saga! The danger, the overwhelming magnetic pull, the absolute disregard for common sense. You were living out the actual plot!
“You know,” you blurted out, breaking the quiet rhythm of your footsteps as you looked up at his elegant silhouette, “I’m still not so convinced that you aren’t an actual vampire.”
Flins let out a defeated sigh. “At this point, I am not entirely sure I can do anything to convince you otherwise,” he muttered under his breath. “Short of exposing myself to direct sunlight for an afternoon, your mind appears to be quite made up.”
“Well, turning into your wolf self would do the job, but...” you trailed off, giving him an expectant look.
Flins paused, staring at you for a long beat. He closed his eyes, taking a long breath as if praying to the Moon Goddess for strength. “Ah, right,” he said, nodding his head. “The wolfsona. Silly me, I had momentarily forgotten my scheduled transformation. I shall have to check my calendar to see when the next full moon aligns with your printing deadline.”
What followed was, frankly, not the sexy gothic night you had been picturing. The two of you ended up hunched over a desk in the lighthouse going through dusty case files of past Wild Hunt victims by candlelight, which was technically atmospheric but mostly just depressing and gave you a headache. You were simultaneously drunk and hungover - a medical paradox that Dottore would have absolutely loved to dissect - and reading about gruesome disappearances in that state was doing absolutely nothing for your romantic-supernatural-adventure narrative.
Where was the tension? Where was the brooding? You had a suspected werewolf sitting two feet away from you and instead of anything interesting happening, you were doing paperwork! Yae Miko would have laughed you out of the publishing house.
“Ugh,” you announced, squinting at the dawn once the sun finally decided to make its appearance. You shoved a file across the desk and pressed the heels of your hands into your eyes. “I need to get back to the Flagship before Paimon wakes up, or she’s going to assume I’ve been eaten by something and file a missing persons report with the Grand Master.”
Flins closed the ledger in front of him with a neat click. He looked almost exactly as composed as he had the night before. Okay, to be fair, he did have faint dark circles under his eyes and his blue hair had a slightly messy, bedroom-adjacent quality to it - or maybe this was just your mind taking a high-speed dive right into the Fontaine sewers as usual...
(But hey, what can you say? You had to be a certified degenerate to make it in the Inazumian book industry!)
“Ah, yes.” He leaned back slightly, resting his chin in one gloved hand, and his eyes caught the early light with that familiar glimmer of amusement that had been more or less permanent since the moment you walked face-first into his shoulder blades. “The formidable Paimon. We certainly wouldn’t want to set her off. I can already picture the headlines - ‘Traveler Last Seen Marinating in Lighthouse with Suspected Werewolf.‘”
“Hey, it would top the bestseller charts,” you replied, squinting at the brutal sunlight like an actual creature of the night.
Flins smoothly stood up, adjusting his sleeves before offering you a bow.
“Safe travels back to your vessel, my dear friend,” he said. “Do try not to fall into the ocean on the way. I hear the hangover from seawater is entirely unrefined.”
“I make no promises,” you whispered, picking up your things and heading for the door.
You paused with your hand on the frame and looked back at him - standing there in the pale morning light, watching you leave with that smile that you still could not fully read.
“I’m still not completely convinced you aren’t a vampire,” you repeated yourself.
Flins let out a resigned exhale.
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t imagine you are.”
The next time you found yourself alone with Flins, things went south real quick. You ended up purifying his lantern, which apparently triggered a massive boss fight with that Rerir guy.
Long story short: after a screaming match of an argument, he finally fucked off. But you were pretty sure he’d be back, and he’d be way stronger next time. The worst part? The guy had a weird personal vendetta against you and Nefer for some completely unfathomable reason. Like, hello? What did you even do?! Was it because you told him his hair looked greasy as hell in the flashbacks you saw? Okay, sure, you could’ve worded it more nicely, but you were genuinely trying to help! The man needs to change his conditioner like yesterday.
Now, you were back at Flins’ lighthouse, nursing your theoretical battle wounds. Except this time, you had a hovering chaperone.
Paimon froze mid-air, her tiny hands flying to her cheeks as a familiar giggle echoed through the damp mist of the entryway.
“Eek! Did you just hear that?!” Paimon squeaked, her voice hitting a pitch that made your ears ring. She zipped behind your shoulder, using your hair as a shield. “Paimon thinks - Paimon thinks this place is haunted! There’s a- a-”
“Yeah,” you interrupted flatly, not even looking up as you rubbed your tired eyes. “The ghosts here are annoying and like to annoy people. Don’t pay attention to them.”
Flins, who was casually brewing a fresh pot of tea at the counter as if a literal dark entity hadn’t just threatened your entire genetic line twenty minutes ago, let out another one of his sexy ass chuckles. He set down the porcelain teapot with a delicate click and turned his pupil-less yellow eyes toward you two.
Paimon stomped her foot in the air. “What’s so funny?! Flins! There is a creepy voice floating around your house! How are you both so calm about this?!”
You aggressively shushed Paimon, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle her high-pitched panicking.
“Paimon, hush!” you hissed. “Mommy has something incredibly important to attend to right now!”
Paimon bit your hand until you let go, hovering backward and blinking at you in confusion. ”...Important? Like... like planning how to defeat Rerir next time he shows his creepy face?!”
“Uh, no???” you scoffed, rolling your eyes into the next nation. “Who do you think I am??? A shonen protagonist???”
You proudly slapped a stack of messy notes down onto Flins’ wooden table.
“I’ve been reading up on Snezhnaya so that I feel more prepared for our travels,” you announced, puffing out your chest. “And I’ve learned that faes are a massive thing in their folklore! Which has naturally inspired my next literary masterpiece: A Court of Thorns and Roses.”
Across the room, the clinking of porcelain abruptly stopped.
Flins froze. His gloved hand remained suspended in mid-air, a silver tea strainer hovering a mere inch above a cup. His gaze slowly drifted from the tea, turning toward you.
Paimon looked between the two of you, her little eyebrows knitting together. “A Court of... what now? Is that the book where the werewolf love interest appears?!”
“Uh, not really,” you corrected, waving your hand dismissively at Paimon. “Okay, so basically, the main girl is a nineteen-year-old huntress who is single-handedly taking care of her entire deadbeat family. She accidentally kills her love interest’s best friend -who was disguised as a wolf, mind you - so she gets heavily indebted to him! Then she’s forced to cross the wall into the fae world and, like, live in his incredibly lavish court, and then they fall in love!”
You nodded feverishly, captivated by your own stolen genius.
Paimon slapped her hand against her forehead with a loud smack. “What kind of crazy story is that?! Why does everyone in your stories have to commit a violent felony before they can even hold hands?! Can’t they just go to Wanmin Restaurant like normal people?! Paimon thinks this ‘fae lord’ sounds like a total creep who needs to be reported to the Millelith immediately!”
Meanwhile, Flins was uncharacteristically quiet (he does talk a lot.) He slowly set the tea strainer down on the saucer.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he broke his silence.
“A... huntress who breaches the boundary, destroys a companion, and finds herself bound by debt to a foreign court,” Flins said. “My, madame... your ‘vibrant imagination’ seems to have a fascinatingly accurate way of mimicking the more...er, ancient, precarious laws of reality. Tell me, do you truly find the concept of a mortal trapped in the court of a fae to be so romantic?”
“I mean, if the fae is hot, then hell yes,” you stated with zero hesitation.
Flins’ eyebrow twitched upward. “Even if it means being tricked into dancing in a fairy ring until your feet bleed and your soul is spent?”
“Ew, no, I’m not dancing for anybody.” You shuddered. “I am strictly a sit-in-the-corner-with-a-plate-of-appetizers-and-aggressively-judge-the-host’s-music-taste kind of girl. The fae lord can go dance by himself. Also, fairy ring sounds weirdly communal. I’m a novelist, Flins, not a groupie.”
Paimon, who had been listening in mounting horror, suddenly gasped, jabbing a finger in your direction. “Wait! Did you say appetizers?! If this creepy fae guy has a lavish estate, does that mean he has a private chef? Because Paimon thinks that if the snacks are good enough, a little light kidnapping might genuinely not be the worst thing that’s ever happened to us!”
Flins turned slowly to look at Paimon, visibly recalculating, in real time, exactly how much danger the two of you were actually in if she was the one allowed anywhere near contract negotiations.
“A remarkably practical boundary,” he said, turning to you. “It seems your survival instincts do exist - they simply require a threat to your personal comfort to activate. But come, let us test the depths of your ‘Snezhnayan research.’ Tell me, if this alluring fae lord offers you a glass of nectar, or a bite of a perfectly ripe, glittering berry... what does your literary intellect dictate you do?”
You blinked. “Uh... eat it? It’s a buffet, Flins. I just said I’m there for the appetizers. Are you even listening to me?”
Paimon nodded enthusiastically. “Duh!”
He shook his head disapprovingly. “Ladies, to consume the food of a foreign court is to bind yourself to it eternally. You would become a permanent fixture of his estate.”
You rolled your eyes, ignoring his smug teasing, and turned your attention right back to your messy pile of Snezhnayan folklore notes. Guilt over stealing literary work? Please, it’s called creative asset reallocation. Besides, Yae Miko was absolutely going to love this new pitch. She had been incredibly hesitant about your previous Twilight draft, basically telling you it was way too juvenile for the Grand Narukami Shrine’s spicy reputation, which was the exact reason you were currently stripping another entire book series for parts.
“Hey, Flins,” you called out, tapping the tip of your quill against your chin. “Since you’re acting like a total know-it-all on the subject, what else should the main girl avoid doing? Give me the absolute bare minimum survival guide so she doesn’t accidentally get enslaved in chapter three.”
She ends up enslaved by chapter two, technically, but he didn’t need to know that. You had editorial discretion.
“An instruction manual for surviving the Fair Folk.” Flins chuckled. “A wise endeavor, madame, given that your protagonist appears to have the survival instincts of a particularly dim hydro slime. For starters, she must never give them her full name.”
“Wait, why?” You were already writing it down. “Is it a security question thing? Like, in case they try to reset her password?”
“Hardly,” Flins said, visibly choosing not to ask what a password was. “If a fae asks for her name and she gives it, she has handed it over completely. She’ll find she can no longer quite remember who she is apart from him, answering to his every whim like a well-trained hound. A total surrender of identity. So if some mysterious, charming gentleman asks for her name in a dark hallway somewhere, she should lie through her teeth. Though given your current literary track record, I genuinely fear what pseudonym you’d assign her.”
You shot him a glare. “I’m great at names, thank you very much.”
“Ah. And there is mistake number two.” His eyes lit up with mischief, like he’d been saving that one up the whole conversation. “Never say thank you. Ever. Not once. Not even out of habit.”
Paimon poked her head out from behind your shoulder, baffled. “Wait, why can’t she be polite?! Is being rude a superpower in Snezhnaya?! Does Paimon have superpowers she doesn’t even know about?!”
“In a fae court, gratitude is a legal contract, little one,” Flins explained, tilting his head with a smile that had no business being that charming. “To say thank you is to acknowledge a debt has been created. The fae will eventually come to collect, and his idea of fair compensation rarely lines up with a mortal’s idea of comfort.”
“So basically,” you said, scribbling furiously, “she has to be a nameless, ungrateful little gremlin about the whole thing.”
“An excellent summary.” Flins laughed. “I’d frame it more diplomatically in the actual manuscript, but yes. A nameless, ungrateful little gremlin is, structurally speaking, the safest possible woman in all of Snezhnaya.”
Paimon nodded slowly, deeply impressed. “Wow. Paimon’s basically immune, then. Paimon’s never said thank you in her LIFE.”
You both turned to look at her.
“What?” she asked, shrugging. “Paimon says ‘yeah, obviously’ instead. It’s basically the same thing!”
…okay, yeah. A very Paimon thing of her to say.
“Okay, no names, no manners. Got it,” you murmured, furiously scratching the words onto the parchment. “What else?”
“The threshold, madame. She must never, under any circumstances, invite them inside her home,” Flins said, his voice dropping into a mockingly dramatic whisper. “A fae cannot cross into a mortal sanctuary uninvited. But they are masters of manipulation. They will craft grand illusions, mimic the voices of loved ones.”
He leaned in just a fraction closer, his smug smile widening. “And the moment they cross that line, your sanctuary belongs to them. Oh, and do tell your protagonist to never accept a gift. A silver ring, a beautiful gown, a fresh platter of appetizers... accept any of it, and you have willingly placed a collar around your own neck.”
You laughed, a little nervously. “Oh. Collars. Cool. Normal amount of collars to be discussing.”
You stopped writing mid-sentence. The ink on your quill pooled into a fat black dot on the page as a horrible, hilarious realization slammed into you several seconds too late.
You looked up slowly, pointing the quill straight at his sexy chest.
“Hey... wait a minute,” you joked, a teasing grin spreading across your face. “I’ve literally done almost all of those things with you! Like, I gave you my full name the exact day we met. I have thanked you on way too many occasions to count. And I have absolutely drank the tea and stuff you’ve offered me in this lighthouse!”
Paimon gasped, meanwhile you let out an exaggerated sigh of relief, leaning back in your chair and tossing your hands up in the air.
“Phew! Well, thank goodness you’re just a giant werewolf and not a fae, am I right? Otherwise, I’d basically be your permanent property by now!”
“Ugh, you stress Paimon out so much!” Paimon huffed, crossing her tiny arms. “Good thing he isn’t a fae, indeed! Paimon’s stomach couldn’t handle the stress of trying to rescue you from a magical court!”
Flins, meanwhile, just stood there. For a brief second, his perfect composure faltered, completely baffled by the blissful confidence radiating from your face.
Slowly, he went back to his default gentlemanly smile.
“An incredibly narrow escape, my lady,” Flins said. “I must offer my humblest congratulations to your guardian angel. Truly, it is a monumental stroke of luck for us both that I am merely a simple and unassuming lighthouse keeper who occasionally dabbles in full-moon athletics.”
You laughed, propping your chin up on your hands and giving him a cheeky grin. “But you know what, Flins? I’ve actually taken a liking to you! I wouldn’t even mind having you as my fae lord if you were one. I’m sure you’d take excellent care of me, and honestly, it’s probably way better than having to deal with whatever the hell I’ll have to go through once I get to Snezhnaya.”
Paimon’s jaw dropped so low it practically hit the wooden table. “Whaaaa?! Are you crazy?! You’re literally asking to be trapped in a creepy magical court! What happened to not dancing for anybody?!”
Flins paused, his pupil-less yellow eyes widening ever so slightly.
“My lady, you do me a far greater honor than a humble gentleman like myself could ever deserve,” Flins purred. “Why, I am practically swooning. Rest assured, should I ever decide to claim your soul, your accommodations would be of the absolute highest luxury. No dancing required, and the appetizers would be entirely endless.”
“That’s all I’m asking for!”
“Though, I must confess myself a bit hurt, madame,” he joked. “Am I to understand that my primary appeal as a dark master is merely that I am... a more convenient alternative to the Snezhnayan winter?”
“Hey, can you blame me?! The Tsaritsa has been collecting Gnostic chess pieces just to resurrect her dead lover or something! I read it in a book that I found in Lauma’s library, by the way. Which means that I have been dragged through every single nation on this map because she apparently refuses to just download a dating app or find a new husband! The guy better be scorching hot when she finally drops the revival patch, because these Archons are passing out their gnosis like candy! If he is anything less than an eleven out of ten, I swear to God I am personally stuffing him back into the gnosis!”
Paimon looked like she was having a physical intervention with reality, her hands gripping her head. “Wait, wait, wait! Is that why the Fatui are doing all of this?! To fix her love life?!?!”
Flins, who had been mid-sip, looked like he was about to choke on it. He set his teacup down with a slightly less-than-perfect clink, and coughed softly into a gloved hand.
You gasped dramatically, slapping both hands over your mouth. “Ah, shit! We are technically in Snezhnaya right now! Flins, don’t you worship Her Majesty the Tsaritsa?! Oh my god, are you going to snitch on me to the Fatui?! Look, dating apps are an absolute nightmare, okay? I actually see where she is coming from. If you’ve found the one-in-a-million perfect man, why not overthrow the heavens to get him back instead of dealing with the local dating pool? I totally get it. Please don’t tell Childe I said that.”
Flins slowly recovered his breath and tapped a silk handkerchief to his lips.
“Although Nod Krai is technically a part of Snezhnaya, you won’t really hear us habitually refer to ‘Her Majesty, the Tsaritsa,‘” he replied, his tone perfectly dry.
You blinked, leaning so far across the table your face was practically in his saucer. “Who’s ‘us’? Is there a secret club I should know about? Do you guys have matching jackets? A handshake?”
“Hehe. The Lightkeepers, of course,” Flins said, tilting his head with a look of borderline insulting innocence. “Who else could I possibly mean, my dear friend?”
“I don’t know, I totally thought you meant your secret werewolf community.”
He rolled his eyes hard, but before he could fire back, a bark cut through the damp air outside.
Flins stood immediately, the recognition instant, and walked to the doorway. You leaned over to peek out, fully prepared for some terrifying supernatural beast given the company you’d been keeping all week - and instead found a perfectly normal, extremely fluffy white dog that looked like a Golden Retriever. Probably. You weren’t a dog person. You’d know one if it bit you, which felt like a real possibility right now, but identification from a distance wasn’t your strong suit.
The dog trotted up to Flins, barked once, and hesitantly dropped a small pile of old bones at his feet.
Flins crouched down to inspect the delivery and laughed sexily.
“Haha, this is a good one. Here, take this meat for yourself.” He reached over to a small table he kept outside, picked up a piece of meat he’d clearly saved just for this very transaction, and offered it to the dog.
“Wow, you have a dog!” you beamed, your brain immediately connecting the dots. “Is this why you were so adamant on learning how to woof for my book? So that you can communicate with your dog?”
Flins straightened up and dusted off his trousers as the dog happily wolfed down its prize. “Mine? Not at all,” he explained, looking down at the creature with a gentle smile. “It belongs to itself. It simply brings me old bones to help me with my puzzles from time to time, that’s all.”
You stared at the pile on the ground. You were going to firmly assume they were animal bones - they didn’t look very human-shaped, so your sanity was safe for now.
“Bones are another thing that tickles my fancy,” Flins added casually, as if he were talking about collecting rare stamps.
You slowly shook your head. “So let me get this straight... you’re a werewolf, a lighthouse keeper, a ratnik, a graveyard watchman, a bartender, and a bone collector? What a multifaceted person you are, Flins. I can barely do one thing at a time and I absolutely suck at it.”
Flins let out a laugh, walking back inside and executing a mock-defensive little gesture with his hands. “Please, my dear, no more flattery. My ego is already dangerously inflated.”
He stopped by your chair, his pupil-less yellow eyes softening as he looked down at your messy manuscripts. “But are you referring to your writing when you say you ‘suck’? Because I can assure you, you do not. I have lived a very long time, and I have never heard of anyone with as much unbridled creativity as yourself.”
You rolled your eyes, a fond smile tugging at your lips as you shifted off your chair and squatted down on the floor. You extended a hand, and the fluffy white retriever didn’t hesitate for a second - it trotted right over, happily nudging its snout into your palm and letting you scratch behind its ears.
You couldn’t help but notice that it was completely relaxed with you. With Flins, it had kept a calculated distance, dropping the bones and backing up. Well, obviously! Wolves were basically the alpha dogs of nature; of course a regular domestic pup would be totally intimidated by him!
Except... the whole werewolf thing was just a joke. You knew it, and Flins knew you knew it. Hell, even Paimon knew it. It had become this ridiculous inside joke between the two of you. But as you sat there scratching the dog’s soft fur, a sudden thought crashed into your brain: If he isn’t a werewolf... then what the hell is he?
He definitely wasn’t a vampire. He wasn’t a werewolf. What other mythical creatures even existed?!
Your hand froze for a fraction of a second on the dog’s head. Holy shit. It actually made perfect sense. The lighthouse? The misty coast of Nod Krai? And, most importantly... the fact that you were so deeply attracted to him. You had met plenty of absolute eye candy across Teyvat, and you hadn’t felt particularly weak in the knees around any of them. Not like this. The way your brain scrambled around Flins was honestly fucking scary. Maybe he really was a siren, casting some weird, auditory spell on you every time he spoke in that velvety purr.
Before you could spiral into a full-blown existential panic about being magically brainwashed by a hot lighthouse keeper, you forcefully yanked yourself out of your thoughts.
“Aww, you’re just the cutest thing, aren’t you,” you cooed at the dog, loudly, burying your face in its fur partly out of affection and partly to physically hide from your own thoughts.
Above you, Flins shook his head.
“Madame, I must insist,” he said, voice laced with exactly the kind of amusement you’d just been spiraling about. “It is, definitionally, just a dog.”
“You can’t fool me,” you said, looking up with a triumphant grin. “You’ve got a massive soft spot for this dog and you are deeply, deeply in denial about it.”
“I consider it more of a trade partner,” he countered. “A purely transactional arrangement of protein for paleontology. But by all means, madame, go on. Do continue to map human sentimentality onto my ledger.”
“Oh, please. You literally have a designated ‘dog meat’ plate on your outside table,” you pointed out. “That is not a corporate merger, my dear Flins. You’re more of a dad who said he didn’t want a cat but now lets it sleep on the good pillows.”
Paimon, who had finally deemed the dog safe enough to approach, floated down to poke its fluffy tail. “Yeah! And Paimon saw you smile when it brought those bones! You can’t fool us, you big softie!”
Flins simply raised an eyebrow. “A compelling theory, the pair of you. However, I must remind you that a good businessman always keeps his assets well-fed.”
Later that night, back aboard the Flagship, sleep refused to come. You tossed and turned, staring blankly at the ceiling. Your brain was entirely occupied by a single maddening question: Seriously, what the hell is Flins?
Unable to quiet the noise in your head, you slipped out of bed, leaving Paimon snoring under the covers. You lit a dim candle and dragged your messy stack of Snezhnayan folklore research across the desk. You flipped through the weathered pages, your eyes scanning past tales of frost-spirits and forest monsters, until your gaze locked onto a translated passage regarding the Fair Folk.
You leaned in closer, reading the ink-stained words carefully:
“Yet heed the beasts of the hearth and field, for they possess a sight denied to mortal eyes. While the Fae may command the obedience of the ox or the goat, the hounds of the house and the steeds of the stable are not so easily beguiled. Where a man sees only a fair countenance, a horse shall rear in terror, and a dog shall keep its distance, bristling at the strange glamor. For it is written that the dog possesses a second sight, sensing the ancient, hollow magic that hides beneath a gentleman’s guise.”
The quill dropped from your hand, clattering against the desk.
You gasped, your hands flying to your mouth as a chill ran straight down your spine. The white/ golden (?) retriever. The way it had happily bounded right up to you, but kept a stiff distance from Flins, dropping the bones at his feet like a nervous subject approaching a king. You had laughed it off as a werewolf joke.
But it wasn’t a joke. It had been staring you dead in the face the entire time.
Flins was not Edward Cullen! Nor Jacob Black! He was a Rhysand! Ha!
But then the math started formatting itself in your brain, and your stomach did a spectacular flip-flop. Oh, shit. You had given him your full name. You had said “thank you” a plethora of times. You had blindly chugged down every single mysterious tea and beverage he had gracefully slid across the counter to you. And to top it all off, you were heavily indebted to him for physically saving your life.
According to every single piece of ancient folklore you had just read, you hadn’t just walked into a snare - you had basically tied the knot on the collar, handed him the leash, and filled out the adoption paperwork yourself. He could legally do whatever the hell he wanted with you!
Instead of spiraling into absolute mortal terror like a normal person, a highly delighted bubble of laughter escaped your throat. You weren’t a normal person after all. You were an author for Yae Publishing House. A degenerate, that’s what you were.
You froze. Paimon kicked her tiny legs under the blanket, rolling over with an irritated scowl on her sleeping face.
“Stop being weird and go to sleep!” she mumbled aggressively, pulling the pillow over her ears.
”...Sorry,” you whispered back, biting your lip to keep from bursting out into another wave of giggles.
The dust had barely settled from the absolute circus that was defeating Rerir. Honestly, the entire battle had felt less like a tactical military operation and more like a crowded family reunion where everyone and their mama just happened to show up uninvited. Durin had been there. So had Albedo, for reasons nobody had fully explained and you’d decided not to ask about, because at this point in your life, asking questions only ever got you more questions back. Also... is that Alice?!?! Klee’s mom?!
Now that the threat was neutralized, the grand, triumphant victory celebration consisted of exactly five extremely tired people (the only ones who managed to show up) sitting around the Flagship, none of them doing anything that could reasonably be described as celebrating (except for Varka, of course.)
Fortunately, one of those five people was Flins.
To secure your window of opportunity, you had strategically abandoned Paimon with Grand Master Varka, who was currently roaring with laughter and dumping an insane quantity of food onto her plate while recounting some wildly exaggerated war story that had already grown two extra dragons since the last time he told it. She was going to be stuck there for hours. She didn’t even know she was being deployed as a distraction. She was simply too busy eating to notice.
With Paimon safely neutralized by sheer Varka volume, you finally found yourself alone with Flins near the Flagship’s entrance.
“Flins,” you said, leaning against the wall and giving him a look that was equal parts smug and mysterious. “I have something to show you. It’s, uh, in my room.”
He tilted his head, instantly and embarrassingly interested. “Hm? And what might that be, my dear friend?”
“Well, I am a gentleman, my lady. I cannot simply barge into a lady’s private quarters at this hour-”
“Oh, hush, old man,” you said, already turning. “Just follow me. I promise it’s not a crime.”
“You said ‘promise.’ Now I am suspicious.”
You grabbed his hand anyway and towed him down the hallway.
“Hmm,” he said, glancing around as he let himself be pulled along. “As I recall, our very first meeting took place right out there, in that exact hallway. Ah, the nostalgia. Should I prepare for another collision, my lady, or has your aim improved since then?”
“My aim was never the problem. You were just standing there like a fucking piece of hallway furniture!”
“I prefer ‘load-bearing,’” he said. “It implies purpose.”
You gave him a look over your shoulder. “Chop chop, come on in!”
You gave his hand another firm yank, hauling a thoroughly stunned several-hundred-year-old man fully into your room, and slammed the door shut behind him hard enough to rattle the one decent picture frame you owned.
“Well,” Flins said, looking around the room slowly, hands now folded in front of him. “I confess I expected either a crime scene or a surprise party. I am unsure yet which one this is.”
You didn’t waste a single second. You marched straight to your desk and gestured proudly at a completely chaotic spread of shiny objects, the exact energy of a kid showing off a Pokémon collection to a relative who hadn’t asked.
“Tadaaa! This one’s from Sumeru, found it deep inside a pyramid!” you announced, holding up a glowing green crystal. “This one’s actually stolen from the Akademiya, oopsie, don’t tell the General Mahamatra. This one’s from Natlan, and this-”
Flins stood by the closed door, looking from the pile of contraband to your wildly proud face, the absurdity of the whole situation visibly catching up to him in real time.
A helpless laugh escaped him. He stepped closer, hands clasped behind his back, leaning down to inspect a jagged piece of Natlan ore.
“Tell me. Is this, perchance, a dowry of sorts?” Flins asked, studying the pile a moment longer with newly suspicious eyes. “Because if so, my dear, I feel obligated to inform you that the traditional arrangement involves rather more livestock and rather less stolen Akademiya property. I imagine the General Mahamatra takes a dim view of bridal gifts that come with an active investigation attached.”
“Oh, no, honey. It’s not a dowry, it’s a gift.”
“Forgive me. I simply assumed, given the candlelight, the locked door, and the fact that you have just shown me your entire net worth in under a minute, that we had skipped several steps and arrived directly at betrothal negotiations.”
“Ha, in your dreams.” You laughed, because there was no way you could take anything his flirty ass said seriously. In reality, you were the one doing the dreaming, embarrassingly, nightly, and in increasingly specific detail. Honestly, you should just call up Xiao and have him eat that particular dream before it got you into trouble! Unfortunately, he will never see you the same way after this, but as long as you stop dreaming of this flirty terrorist...
“I only ask,” Flins went on, “because I have no livestock to offer in return, and I worry that puts me at a significant disadvantage in these negotiations.”
This was it. The trap was sprung.
You stepped closer, abandoning the rock collection entirely, and placed your hand firmly over his. You looked him dead in his pupil-less yellow eyes.
“Consider it me paying off my debts to you.”
The playful air around him vanished. His hand beneath yours went rigid. For one full second, the charming lightkeeper wasn’t there anymore, and something far older was looking back at you instead.
He didn’t pull his hand away. His gaze held yours, jaw tightening just slightly, eyes searching your face.
“Oh? Is that so?” he said, voice dropping. “Paying off your debts with a handful of stolen gravel, madame? You price your own soul rather modestly.”
He turned his hand beneath yours, so your fingers were caught under his palm instead.
“A clever attempt,” he murmured, leaning down just enough that you felt it more than heard it. “But I fear you’ve underestimated the terms of the old debts. A life saved is not so easily settled with trinkets, however well-traveled. Did you truly believe it would be that simple, to buy back what you so freely invited in?”
You held still, heart doing something unhelpful, equal parts thrilled you’d clearly rattled him and concerned about what exactly you’d just confirmed.
“Yeah, well, I’ve always had self-esteem problems. I wasn’t aware my soul could cost this much.”
Then, just as suddenly, the tension vanished. He shook his head in exasperation.
“Hey,” you said, leaning in, narrowing your eyes at him. “I know your secret.”
“Do you,” he said, tilting his head. “And what truth has my lady unraveled, alone in her cabin at this hour?”
“Your skin is pasty white-”
Flins let out a long-suffering sigh, his shoulders dropping a fraction. But you pressed on, desperately biting your lip to keep from bursting out into a full-blown laugh at his reaction.
“Animals are scared of you,” you continued, ticking it off on your fingers.
He actually pouted a little, crossing his arms and huffing a bit. “You really do not have to say it so bluntly, my lady. I assure you, my complexion is a product of the northern climate, and that dog simply lacks manners.”
“You’re old,” you added ruthlessly.
“This, I cannot deny,” he conceded with a dramatic winced shrug. “Time is a cruel master to us all.”
“And you have a way bougier lantern than any of the other ratniki.”
The mock-defensive posture melted away as he uncrossed his arms and stepped a fraction closer, his pupil-less yellow eyes sparkling.
“Then tell me, madame,” Flins said. “Given your thoroughly exhaustive list of my flaws... what does that make me in your grand narrative?”
You grinned, matching him fully. “The second love interest in my Fae YA series. Obviously.”
Flins closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head, somewhere between disbelief and delight. “Naturally. I should have known I was merely fodder for your literary ambitions all along. I do hope I’m at least the interesting kind of fodder.”
“So,” you pressed on, sliding the pile of stolen Sumeru and Natlan gems a few inches closer to him, “accept my gift. Pay off my debt.”
Flins looked down at the glittering trinkets.
“Your soul is worth far more than these gems, madame,” he said. “No matter how precious they may be.”
You didn’t skip a beat. You leaned back against the desk, arms crossed, looking up at him with a challenging smile. “Okay then. Tell me your full name.”
“Hm?” His composure hitched, just slightly.
“You never told me yours when we met,” you pointed out. “I gave you mine. Seems only fair.”
According to every piece of folklore you’d stayed up reading, names were power. Getting a fae’s full true name balanced the power imbalance, or at the very least gave you enough leverage to avoid being turned into a footstool somewhere down the line.
Flins stared at you for a beat, long enough that you wondered if you’d actually broken something, and then took your hand back into his, grip firm and careful, and bowed his head over your knuckles.
“Well,” he said. “My name is Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.”
“But you may call me Kyryll.”
He looked up at you, and all you could do in return was stare into his eyes. He straightened slowly, still not letting go of your hand.
“There,” he said. “My secrets laid bare in your parlor. Tell me, madame, now that you hold the leash, what exactly do you intend to do with me?”
You rolled your eyes, giving his hand a teasing squeeze before letting go. “I’ve done enough research to know that wasn’t nearly enough to balance it. But thanks for trying to make me feel better.” You leaned back against the desk, looking up at him with an absolute lack of the mortal terror you probably should have been feeling. “Real question is, what do you intend to do with me?”
“What do I intend to do with you,” Kyryll repeated, stepping forward until he was close enough that you had to tilt your chin up to keep looking at him properly. “I believe my immediate intentions involve forcing you to actually finish a single chapter of that novel without spiraling into another mythological crisis halfway through. And perhaps,” he gestured toward the desk with mild, weary disapproval, “insisting you return that stolen Akademiya property before the General Mahamatra traces it directly back to my lighthouse. I do have a reputation to maintain. People expect a certain professionalism from a man with this many job titles.”
“Cyno’s actually a huge jokester, you know,” you said, shaking your head. “You two would get along great. You could trade terrible old-man puns and he’d forget all about the gem entirely.”
Kyryll shuddered. “A pun-wielding arbiter of justice. Delightful. I shall keep my doors locked from this point forward, on principle.”
You leaned back, suddenly feeling nervous. “But hey, I’m guessing other humans have thanked you over the years too. Or told you to come on in, or handed over their full name without thinking twice about it. And I don’t see any human servants fetching your tea around here, so. I’m going to go ahead and dumbly trust you.” You tilted your head. “But you know, you can ask more of me.”
He went quiet at that. Actually quiet, the kind that made you realize how rarely he actually stopped talking long enough for you to hear the wind outside. He stepped back a fraction, giving you space, though his gaze didn’t move from yours, not even a little.
“If I were to ask more of you,” he said, finally, voice lower than before, “it would not be for your labor. Nor your soul. Nor your stolen rocks.” A beat. “I believe I would simply ask that you keep bringing your thoroughly bright presence to my dim lighthouse. The evenings there have gotten dreadfully dull on the nights a certain stubborn novelist isn’t around to insult my pastiness.”
You felt your eyes drop, just briefly, and he noticed. Of course he noticed. His eyes followed the movement.
He didn’t pull away. If anything, he leaned in, just slightly.
“Is there really nothing else?” you murmured.
For a second, the immaculate gentleman facade dropped entirely. His gaze dropped to your mouth and stayed there.
“Madame,” he said. “You are playing with a match beside a powder keg, and you look entirely too pleased about it.”
Slowly, he raised a gloved hand, thumb brushing the line of your jaw, light enough to be a tease and somehow still burning everywhere it touched. He tipped your chin up just slightly, so you were looking directly at him, no room left to look anywhere else.
“If I asked for what I actually wanted,” he muttered, thumb tracing along your lower lip, “I suspect that dumb trust of yours would turn into a very wise, very frantic sprint for the door. Fae are greedy creatures, my lady. We don’t take halves.”
He let his hand linger one breath longer before drawing it back, though he didn’t step away, didn’t put a single inch of distance between you.
“So for now,” he said, “I shall be a very patient, very well-behaved old man. Unless, of course, you’re daring me to be otherwise.”
“Oh, but I have research to do for my books, soooo-”
You let the sentence trail off, heart slamming, and closed the last few inches between you anyway.
Kyryll went completely still, eyes widening just as the warmth of your mouth caught him entirely off guard. The surprise lasted exactly one heartbeat.
He stepped in slow, his hand coming up to cup the side of your face, fingers cool against your skin, thumb resting just below your cheekbone.
The first press of his mouth against yours was testing, like he was giving you one last second to change your mind. You didn’t. You felt the second his hesitation broke - his hand sliding into your hair, fingers curling against your scalp, while his other arm wrapped around your waist and pulled you flush against him until there was no space left between your chests.
He was cold. You felt it everywhere he touched, his mouth, his hand at the small of your back, the line of his body pressed to yours. He kissed you slowly, his mouth moving against yours like he had nowhere else to be and nothing better to do with the next hour. Every time you tried to speed things up, pressing even harder, tilting your head to chase more contact, he pulled back just enough to keep you exactly where he wanted you, his grip on your waist tightening to hold you still. Ugh.
Your hands found the front of his coat, fisting into the fabric, and you felt his breath catch against your mouth, a small, involuntary hitch that told you he wasn’t quite as composed as he wanted you to think.
He broke away just far enough to speak, his mouth still close enough that you felt the words against your lips. “Tell me, my dear. Is this also research for the novel?”
“Shut up,” you breathed, and pulled him back down by the collar before he could enjoy that too much.
He laughed against your mouth, a sound you felt in his chest more than heard, and kissed you again, his hand sliding from your waist up your spine, pressing you even closer.
Somewhere around the fourth kiss, breathless and a little dizzy and entirely too pleased with yourself, you pulled back just enough to whisper, “Wow. I didn’t know kissing a fairy would feel like this.”
His whole body went still against yours.
He pulled back fully, putting real distance between you, his hands dropping away from your waist and your hair at the same time, and stared at you with the expression of a wounded animal.
“I mean - fae? Whatever the correct term is, I haven’t fully nailed down the terminology-”
“A fairy,” he said again, somehow more offended the second time.
“Kyryll, I didn’t mean it like-”
“I require a moment,” he announced, already turning on his heel.
He crossed the room, hauled the door open with more force than the hinges had agreed to, and stalked into the corridor. You followed just in time to see him stop, fold his arms, and - without another word - dissolve into a small, drifting wisp of pale blue flame, sinking down into his own lantern, the one that usually hovered at his hip on its own without him so much as glancing at it.
Except it didn’t hover this time!
You lunged and caught it about four inches off the ground.
You stood there, holding a sulking, several-hundred-year-old lighthouse keeper in lantern form, his pale blue flame flickering with what could only be described as offended energy.
”...Kyryll. Are you seriously making me carry you right now.”
The flame flickered, unmistakably annoyed, and did not respond, and did not start floating again either.
“Okay, well, I’m not putting you down on the floor like a sad little candle, so I guess we’re doing this.” You adjusted your grip and held the lantern up slightly, the way you’d hold a very small and very judgmental cat. “I take it back. You’re not a fairy. You’re very intimidating and gravitas-having. Please come out and float on your own again, this is getting heavy.”
The flame flickered once, in a way you were fairly confident translated directly to no.
You sighed, adjusted your grip again, and started walking back toward your room with your several-hundred-year-old, extremely petty, not-vampire-not-werewolf-not-fairy tucked under one arm like groceries.
“This is genuinely the most unserious breakup I have ever caused,” you told the flame. "Please, let me see your beautiful face. Otherwise I'll... Nod and Krai."
The flame did not respond. The flame had, apparently, said everything it needed to say, and was now committed to making you carry the consequences. Literally.
Snezhnaya was, predictably, freezing, industrial, and not remotely interested in your emotional state.
You’d been there three days, and in those three days you had managed to miss your pretty, petty, manipulative, possibly-fiancé, definitely-something lighthouse keeper an embarrassing amount. You weren’t even sure what the correct label was at this point. Boyfriend felt too casual and juvenile. Husband felt premature, though you weren’t ruling it out down the line.
You sighed for what had to be the fortieth time that day, watching your breath fog up. “Ugh. I miss my man.”
Nobody answered. That was the other problem. There was no Paimon around to violently roast you for it, or to loudly demand a warm meat pie to brave the blizzard. If life couldn’t get any worse! Great, now you missed your daughter/little sister/ best friend/ annoying baby cousin -- Paimon was quite versatile.
You were so deep in your own head, mentally drafting A Court of Thorns and Roses chapters to pitch to Yae Publishing House, that you almost walked face-first into someone for the second time in your entire Teyvat career. Which, honestly, would have been a real conversation starter if you actually had any friends left around to tell it to!
You caught yourself in time and looked up to find a man watching with the face of someone who found you both annoying and fascinating in roughly equal measure.
“You walk like a woman whose mind has wandered off without her,” he said, voice doing absolutely nothing to hide how little he cared. “Commendable focus, mortal. Wasted entirely on not looking where you’re going.”
“Excuse you,” you said, recovering out of sheer muscle memory. “I have a lot going on. Emotionally speaking.”
He tilted his head. “Do you. How dreadful for you.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. He cleared his throat. “I am Noy.”
“Cool. I’m emotionally devastated and extremely far from home, so we’re really just trading credentials at this point.”
You squinted at him properly – more precisely at his pointed ears.
“You’re fae,” you said, flat, already tired of your own life.
“How clever of you.” He didn’t even bother denying it, which in hindsight should have been your first warning. “I had assumed mortals had grown duller with the centuries. You’re a pleasant exception.”
“I’ll have you know I am extremely well-versed in your whole situation,” you said, crossing your arms, channeling weeks of increasingly unhinged folklore research. “Names, gifts, thresholds. I’ve done the reading. Save the riddles for someone who hasn’t already failed this exam once.”
Something flickered across his face. “Have you.” He hummed. “And who, precisely, has been teaching a little human girl all our secrets?”
You thought of Kyryll, sulking in his lantern somewhere very far away, and felt a stupid, sudden pang of homesickness that had nothing to do with Earth whatsoever.
“A blue flame,” you said. “Very dramatic. And petty. And flirty. And old.”
Noy went still for a beat too long.
Then something close to recognition crossed his face, swallowed almost instantly by a smile considerably sharper than the one he’d started with.
“A blue flame.” He said it slow, turning the words over like he was checking them for a second meaning underneath. “Now that’s a name I haven’t heard whispered in quite some time.”
You didn’t know what that meant. You weren’t sure you wanted to find out.
“Anyway,” you said, shrugging, “I’m just passing through. You wouldn’t happen to know somewhere around here that serves anything resembling a margarita?”
Noy considered you for one long moment.
“I know several,” he said. “Walk with me, little traveler. I find myself suddenly very curious about your azure flame. Let us see what kind of debt he has anchored you with."
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