#guyluke

drew this in celebration of me getting a guy fukubuku (hes still on the way but im excited to get him!!!!!) i want a luke nui so bad he's so expensive 😭🙏 also what da heck this took me 5 hours

From here, he doesn’t take quite as much care to mask the sound of his footsteps. Once he is outside the building, they crunch unevenly against the snow anyway, so very loud against the dulled roaring in his ears. It is better, all of it, than Van’s voice, which tickles at the edges of his mind too.

It’s very dark out. It occurs to him, suddenly, that he does not know what time it is, that he could not possibly wager a guess when the sun is nowhere in sight. So far north as they are, in Keterburg, night seems to last a lot longer than normal anyway.

He doesn’t really know how long he is there before the crunching snow alerts him to a new presence behind him. Though even now his shoulders are tense, he does not turn in defence. Even if made different by the elements here, Luke has been listening to those footsteps for a long time. He doesn’t need to look to see who it is.

“What’re you doing out here?” asks Guy. “It’s freezing.”

“It’s not so bad,” Luke lies.

“Well, at least you thought to grab a coat.” Guy comes to a stop beside him, just in front of a frosty bit of railing. “You didn’t answer my question, though.”

Luke sighs. He turns his gaze up to the dark sky. Though in the crisp cold the stars shine brighter than they ever did in Baticul, they seem awfully far away.

After a moment, Guy says, “Wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t know.”

And it is the truth. Luke thinks Guy probably knows that as well as he does.

“All right. Guess standing around in the cold isn’t so bad, either.”

Despite himself, Luke’s lips twitch up at that.

“You don’t have to stand out here with me,” he points out. “I thought you were still asleep.”

“Ah, but it’s my job to know when you’re doing dumb stuff, so your decision to come out here and freeze to death must have woken me up.”

Luke laughs, but it is a hollow sound, which falls flat against the frigid wind in no time at all.

“But,” Guy goes on, “I don’t mind too much. Fresh air can be pretty good for you too. When it looks like you might be freezing to death, I’ll pull you inside. No harm done.”

Luke has done a lot of harm, though, hasn’t he? And here’s another thing Guy surely knows as well as he does, though he is, perhaps, too kind to say so.

A long, shaky exhale sneaks out between his chapped lips. It clouds in front of him, then falls away. His breath, his life—how easily it goes. Nearly every single night.

Though he cannot look at Guy, he has to ask, “Would it be so bad?”

“What, freezing to death?”

“Yeah.”

He appears to think on it for a moment, and then he steps a bit closer, so Luke can feel his body heat from where their arms brush together.

“It probably wouldn’t feel so great,” he says lowly. “But you don’t want to die anyway.”

Luke’s eyes fall down to his bare hands. They are clean, unburned. His hyperresonance doesn’t hurt him, after all.

“Luke?”

“N-no.” He curls his hands into fists and sets them on the cold railing. “I didn’t want to freeze to death.”

Guy’s hand falls over top of Luke’s, suddenly. It spreads warmth all the way down to where they touch the railing. All at once, the tingling of hyperresonance and the sting of cold metal seem to fade away entirely.

When after a moment he manages to lift his head again, Guy offers him a smile.

“Let’s get inside,” he says quietly. “You need to warm up.”

He doesn’t move as Luke hesitates. Not until, at last, Luke nods, and lifts his hands away from the railing. Just as he is swinging the right down to his side, Guy grabs it and holds it tight, all the way back to the entrance of the inn.