#t.ext

tartaglia-- or sweetheart, as he makes you call him. he clung to you like a drowning man, mouthing at your neck as gloved hands intertwined themselves with yours, the bundle of white dying at his lips and shrinking before turning into nothingness. he presses into you with a chuckle, breathing you in as his hand finds the laurestine that matches the bruise he had gotten in sparring against the traveller, his fingers tracing love hearts around the bud before he strokes his thumb over the flower, finger pressing flat against your skin in a soft smother, idyllic murmurs trailing out of his mouth as he sighs and rubs his cheek against your shoulder.

“he’s… something.”

you had grabbed him by the arm, and with a smile on his face the idea of the perfect soulmate turns to pull you in closer. the snezhnayan breeze cards through his hair. he’s perfect, a reflection of the ideal, tall, handsome, impossibly rich-- not to mention just the right balance of loving & protective. his fingers always found earnestly drawing daisies into your skin and the constant seeking to intertwine his pinkie with yours. his love, delivered & tied so neatly as the bow that adorned the box that accompanied the letter he sent from liyue-- frivolous fancies and trivial dreams spouted across paper in dark ink that had the same highs and rolls as him, with straight lines and stabbed dots.

but under all that is the boy who found himself in the abyss, the one who made you cough up flowers and leave you stroking at your throat and humming pains out years later. the one who does not know the difference between the red on his hands-- whether it is his or someone else’s. but when he sees the red on your hands, and that glassy look you watch him with, he does nothing but kneel at your feet, mumble quiet apologies as he traces the bud, flower not even truly open and in full glory as it dies, silent in its short uneventful life.

“what’s wrong?” he had asked, once, pulling his gloves on as the two of you stand by the door of your house. the world howls outside.

but you can only shake your head, words suddenly stuck in your throat, unable to be coughed out.

“be safe,” is the only thing that slips out, croaked under the veil of moonlight across the cold.

in these plains of broken towers, beyond the cold of the mountains and snow of the loveless land, you found sparking familiarity cradled between your hands and pulled out of your throat.

“its just a fatui meeting,” at your huff, he laughs, pressing a kiss to your forehead as if you were made of glass, his gloved knuckles running up and down your arm in a poor imitation at a will for warmth, “alright, i’ll be careful.”

and you let him go, all that is left of him.