Archive of Our Own

When Demyan arrived with an unusual tray looking like a clock, the chatter at the table died in a heartbeat. At the center, there was a golden pointer like a clock’s hand. The drinks sitting around it were also placed strategically. The ones on the left side, where the night hours would be, were rather bitter and sour, while the ones on the right were pleasant and sweet like a summer day.

Flins could recognize most of the flavors. Blue for lakkaberry, orange for midsommer berry, pink for nocturnal blossom, and green for mint.

The Knights sitting around the table seemed mesmerized by the idea of a shot roulette, something they hadn’t seen even back in Mondstadt, where drinking was integrated into social life more than anywhere else in Teyvat.

The Ratniki, ever so quick on the uptake after years of observing unpredictable patterns in the wild, caught the flicker of interest and stepped in to explain the rules of the drinking game before any knight had the chance to ask.

As for Flins, he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. He debated whether he should be the one to spoil the fun tonight or if he should wait for somebody else to do it.

Varka sat across from him, laughing with Nikita about the time he and one of his friends drunkenly pranked the bards at a tavern in Mondstadt by making them believe their lyre spoke to them in cryptic musical notes, almost putting the tavern out of business after rumors about it being hunted spread throughout the city. He held onto Nikita’s arm while he tried to keep himself upright, like it was a habit he’d never thought to question before.

And for Varka, any small touch might as well be an unchallengeable habit. An arm slung over the shoulders on patrol. A tap on the back for a job well done. A reassuring squeeze on the arm after something went wrong.

Varka was always physically present. Everywhere and with everyone.

Flins tapped his elbow, considering.

Yes, he had to deliver the bad news himself.

“My apologies,” Flins said mildly, knowing that the sound of his voice alone would bring full attention to him. “I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news and dampen the spirits,  but… those drinks do not contain any alcohol.”

The Ratniki had close to no reaction, while the Knights entered into a diffident panic mode, shooting their arms out to take the glasses from the roulette and test the smell of the liquid.

“What in the name of Barbatos is this?”

“Guys, don’t be so disappointed… They smell fun and fruity!”

“Unfermented fruits! What a waste.”

“Ugh, one of the reasons I wanted to come to this expedition was to escape the nuns and their campaign of getting me to stop drinking…”

Flins had Varka’s attention on him now, but he didn’t look at him yet. He relaxed into his chair. “There is a strict policy here against diluting alcohol. So every few days, there is a special alcohol-free menu.”

The Knights fell one by one, their shoulders slumped, and their heads hung low. One of them straightened as if pulled by a string infused with optimism, and peeked at the end of the table. “Grand Master?”

A deep crease took form between Varka’s eyebrows. “Why are you all looking at me like that?” he asked. “Do you think I just carry alcohol on me at all times?”

The knight blinked slowly. “Yes?”

Varka huffed, crossing his arms. “Well, I used to before Jean cornered me about self-control and setting an example.” He waved a hand, physically brushing the memory aside. “Anyway. What was that about joining me to escape the church?” His gaze sharpened, but the humor lingered. “You shouldn’t be so eager to flee the very place you swore to protect.”

The Knight heaved a prolonged sigh, the kind that hurts the back of the throat. “But if even the Grand Master has to listen to the Acting Grand Master like that, then what chance do I have against Sister Victoria?”

“She is more stringent than Barbatos himself. You can have your wine after working hours if you want to,” Varka said, holding a finger up. “But don’t let me catch any of you blitzed out on the field. I don’t want any of you to find out how that ends. You’d probably cry out for Sister Victoria to pray for your souls.”

Flins chewed on the inside of his lip, keeping away any smile that was short of polite from his face. Varka really had the talent of scolding others without making it sound reproachful, and Flins was a little charmed by it.

What was less charming about him was his competency at building walls between them.

Flins was too old to erase his own faults from this predicament: he had created and maintained a shield around himself, with respect and diplomacy as the top layers, for decades. He ensured that anybody too curious to chip away at his defense would stay away.

A myriad of curious souls tried to get close to him over the years by inviting themselves into his life. Some he tolerated more than others. Some he daunted until they never showed their faces again.

Varka somehow slipped past those two categories, and Flins did not know what to do about him. Varka intrigued him, but he did not pique Varka enough to incite him to clash with his buckler.

And that was fine. Flins could start things himself and wait for Varka to finish them.

Flins discreetly caught Demyan’s attention and nodded his head once. Of course, he was not cruel to rope those poor Knights into a sober night to achieve his foolish plans of getting closer to Varka. Nikita owed him a favor, which he wanted to be repaid by inviting the Knights and the Ratniki at The Flagship to celebrate their fruitful cooperation.

Demyan brought another colorful array of drinks and set them on the table.

Most of those present were too absorbed in the drinking game, spinning the roulette and asking each other questions, to see that their imposing, rock-steady, and cherished  Grand Master flicked the decorative mint leaf pinned to the glass rim with mild disgust, as if he’d rather fight ten legendary beasts at once than ever be caught drinking with something other than a tankard.

“Are you certain you do not wish to try the wildberry trail?” Flins asked, propping his chin into his open palm. “It is said it can make people happy.”

Varka gave the glass one last glare and pushed it to the side. “Actually, one of the best parts of drinking is the toast and pleasure of sharing it with someone.  You can’t do that with non-alcoholic drinks. It brings bad luck.”

“Oh?” Flins tilted his head. “I didn’t take you for a superstitious person.”

“I don’t like taking unnecessary risks,” Varka said, locking eyes with Flins for the first time. “I can make an exception for you, though, my friend. Especially if you think I don’t look too jovial right now.”

Flins’s eyes fell to the table, following the way Varka wrapped his fingers around the slim leg of the glass again and listened to the way the ice cubes trembled together. The collar of his shirt shrank down a size.

“Oh, no, no. Please, do not misunderstand me. You look… good. As always,” Flins said, already reaching for the new drink tray and pulling it in front of him, the motion a little too quick and deliberate to be considered casual. He pressed on before Varka could linger on it, smoothing the moment away. “Besides, someone of your size and standing really ought to have a drink that does you proper justice.”

Mustering up his practiced ease with a dab of carelessness, he extended his arm and lightly covered Varka’s fingers with his, gently pulling the glass of wildberry trail out of his grasp.

“Someone of my standing?” Varka asked in a low tone, opening and closing his now free hand.

Flins hummed and bit his tongue, keeping his gaze away from Varka and picking the biggest glass on the tray for him. “Please accept this as an apology. I should have mentioned earlier that there would be no alcohol.”

His plan was simple, and, thankfully, it didn’t require too much speaking from his side. He would pepper in some innocent touches here and there, and wait for Varka to internalize that touching him was fine, that he didn’t have to be an exception to the rule, an outsider that already stuck out too much around people.

Really, it was only because Flins wanted to blend in among humans. A visible distance between him and this physically expressive Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius drew unnecessary attention to him.  It was simpler and safer to let the space close, to allow the sort of casual contact that no one else thought twice about to take place between them.

Varka eyed the cup in Flins’s hand for a few, long, calculated moments. Eventually, he brushed his fingers against Flins’s, only to close his hold completely when Flins tried to pull his hand away.

“That’s so considerate of you. But,” he emphasized, not letting go. “Everything comes with a price around here. How would I need to repay your kindness?”

Flins’s thoughts froze the moment he felt Varka’s hand tightening over his own, and Varka’s exploratory gaze did not help him regain his composure faster. His expression didn’t sketch any of the emotions inside.

But Varka seemed to have found something enjoyable in the way Flins lagged in his response.

“It is a correct assumption to make about others,” Flins said. “As for me… I only thought that it would be agreeable to have company for a drink tonight. Nothing more than that.”

Varka watched him for a moment too long, then broke into his characteristic easygoing smile and puffed out a laugh, taking the glass from Flins’s hand fully.

“Good, good! I mean, I wouldn’t have turned you down even if you asked for something in return,” he laughed, pulling the attention of some Knights who forgot he was even there. Flins tried to hide his smile behind the rim of his own glass when Varka clicked their glasses together and then tipped his own down, taking a big gulp with a satisfied sigh. “Where did you get this? Do you have a secret stash somewhere in the basement?”

“That is information that would cost you something.”

Flins allowed his hands to rest on his lap under the table, gripping his fingers, which still buzzed with a faint spark where Varka touched them. He didn’t tell Varka that he could always invite himself to his cider at The Flagship whenever he wanted to.

The thought flashed into his head like a trespasser on foreign land, something that should not have been there. He set it aside at once, as he did with anything that threatened to overstep its place.

Flins put himself in numerous situations that could easily be counted as unintentional.

He sat closer than strictly necessary to Varka as they bent over maps charting the most recent sightings of the Wild Hunt, their shoulders angled in together. He tilted his body to touch Varka’s side just enough to be counted as a flukey mishap. The crackle rolling down his arm when he felt Varka against him, bulky and comfy and invitingly warm, was just as much of a mishap, too. It lasted less than five seconds, and yet Flins carried the feelings with him the whole day.

When the mist thickened on a moonless night, shrouding the supply lines of Nasha Town in gloomy smog, Varka decided to assist with the patrol himself. Flins joined him.

After splitting up to clear most of the paths for the merchants and traders to pass through, they selected a rock smoothed over by the relentless winds and rains of Nod-Krai to rest.

Flins scanned the stretch of land under the cliff, the ground dipping under a Tideseal Stone lit by a faint golden glow. Varka took his lamp at one point, flicking his finger against the glass casing and laughing at the way the flame seemed to respond to his provocation.

“Is it responding to me, or do you feel the Hunt nearby?”

Flins had been waiting for the stench of the Abyss to fill the air, if only to answer that very same question. His lamp was perpetually aflame, burning steadily at his hip, showing no emotions of its own unless Flins channeled his power to it. Now it was acting absurd enough to make him consider the fact that it broke down again.

Varka held it up to his face, and Flins had to blink again and again to get rid of something that wasn’t there, to explain to himself why the flame angled itself towards Varka’s face, leaving the other side of the glass empty as it excitedly struggled to get closer to Varka. It was getting embarrassing.

Grazing Varka’s knee with his own, light and fleeting, Flins used the contact between them to calm down the flame in his lamp. It should not get a life of its own like that, and he couldn’t tell what made it act out. It was not resentment or fear. It was more like… he could not name it yet.

“It might have broken down again,” Flins lied, anchoring his eyes at the glow of the stone. “Maybe I fed it something anomalous again.”

“Hold up, you feed it like a pet?” Varka asked, turning to face him. “Can I give it something?”

Flins fastened his hand at his side lightly, glaring at the lamp until the wicker burned and the flame dimmed low. “After I fix it, I don’t see why not.”

Because if he let Varka play it for much longer, he was afraid it would blow up on the spot.

And if it weren’t for centuries of composure and quick reactions, Flins would’ve flinched away when Varka hooked the lamp back at his waist.

Days later, Flins decided that the lamp’s affinity for Varka could work in his favor.

He positioned himself in the dim, narrow corridor leading to the bedrooms at The Flagship, turning the lamp on all sides to test whether it would sow wild oats if it was just the two of them. After some moments, the flame flickered high and dimmed in the next second, being as good as any clue that he was in the right place. His fingers were busy with minute wick adjustments  when Varka came down the corridor with a confident thump of boots. 

Flins planned his presence there, but what he had not needed to plan was the way he lost his balance when they collided; how he swayed momentarily when Varka overshadowed him with his height and solid presence. Varka held his elbow and steadied him on his feet with a firm touch, holding Flins until he was sure he would not fall.

Despite himself, he hoped that Varka’s grip on his elbow was just as uncalculated. 

“Sorry,” Varka said, close enough that the warmth of him almost made Flins wobble on his feet again. “Didn’t see you there.”

Accidental and trivial, just like the leaves shuddered in the wind. That was what Flins went for with their physical contact.

He understood from the start that this would require him to step outside of his comfort zone. What he hadn’t anticipated was how naturally Varka drew him in, and how the true effort was waiting for Varka to bump into him.

From a comfortable distance, Flins noticed a small group of Ratniki gathered around a well-kept fire on the beach. Ordinarily, he would have passed them by without a second thought and continued his way toward the lighthouse. This time, however, Nikita and Illuga stood among the group, facing one another with Nikita extending a bundle of letters that, by the look of it, were meant to be delivered that very moment.

There was nothing unusual about the exchange, nothing that demanded his attention. It would have been entirely reasonable to ignore it. And yet, Flins altered his course all the same.

“Mr. Flins,” Illuga said, a little too earnest, his hand still outstretched for the letters that Flins snatched and held at his back. “You really don’t have to do this for me.”

“I insist,” Flins replied calmly. “You should spend time with your father while you still can. There will be plenty of nights when you’ll have no one but errands to keep you company.”

Nikita watched their interaction from the side without uttering a word. Even if he suspected that there was something amiss with Flins’s behavior lately, it would not be his place to meddle in his personal affairs. His performance had not dropped in quality, and duty was the one and only affair he could ask about.

Varka, on the other hand, be it Knight or stranger, was not the type to dance around his own curiosity. When he saw Flins approaching the secret base on Lempo Isle, he clasped his hands at the back and rocked on his heels slightly.

“I did not expect to see you work as the Starshyna’s messenger boy,” he said with a relaxed, almost all-knowing smile. “What happened to Illuga?”

“Nothing,” Flins said, holding out the envelopes. “The Starshyna you may want to steal him away from the Ratniki,” he added, recollecting a story Nikita told him about Varka praising Illuga before. “It might be more appropriate if I come instead.”

Varka had to find something funny in Flins’s half-truth, laughing first and then tapping his chin pensively, searching Flins’s face for something. “Is he not afraid of me trying to steal you from the Ratniki? I’ll say, it seems like his judgment isn’t as sharp as he’d want it to be.”

For some reason, his lamp flared up again, casting weird shapes on the ground. Flins ignored it. “It would not be in your interest. I’ve been told I can be… difficult to work with.”

“I’ll have you know I have a penchant for working with tricky figures. In fact, you remind me of someone from back home…”

Before Flins could debate with himself if asking about that person would cross a line he did not wish to violate, Varka extended his hand towards him. He gently placed the letters into his open palm, making sure that his fingers lingered for just one second. Varka was always so warm.

Having finished his task, Flins should have bid his farewell and head back to the graveyard, but Varka seemed like he was not in a rush to leave yet, flipping through the sealed envelopes absentmindedly.

“Will you go to Nasha Town?” Flins asked with some difficulty, his words falling at the end in a whisper. It was not his place to ask. “I could escort you there if you want.”

Big, fatal mistake on his part. Almost instantly, a cryptic smile crept up Varka’s face before he looked up at him again. “I see what you’re trying to do.”

Flins blinked a few times, stupefied and fretful at the same time. “You do?”

“Yes,” Varka said, slipping the letters into a pocket inside his coat, right over his chest.

For the first time, Flins understood what humans meant when they spoke of feeling suffocated.

“You’re trying to make me look bad in front of the Ratniki. I’m the Grand Master! I don’t need an escort.” He stopped, considering something for a moment. Then, with a grin already forming, he said, “That said… would you like me to walk you home?”

Flins believed he had long since grown accustomed to Varka’s antics, that they no longer held the power to catch him unprepared. Still, that familiar crackle pricked the back of his neck, a sensation reserved for Varka alone, and with it came a happiness he had never found the words for. It had him light on his feet.

“Want is an insignificant part of my decision-making,” mostly, Flins added for himself, well-aware that he had become self-indulgent lately. “However, it is not every day that someone expresses interest in visiting my graveyard.”

“Ghosts don’t scare me.” Varka had already turned away, the plan apparently made for both of them. “And it’s a good evening. Might as well enjoy it.”

Flins almost didn’t want to admit that walking like this, just the two of them, with the moon as their sole witness, was unsettlingly pleasant for his soul. There was a quiet thrill to it that he preferred not to examine too closely.

Most of the time, Flins could only catch glimpses of Varka from afar: laughter carried over a crowd, an animated gesture mid-conversation. His attention was claimed by Knights and companions who had known him for years. People who spoke the language of memories and home and untroubled days. Flins had never imagined himself competing with that, nor did he believe he could.

Yes, they had shared moments alone, most of them in the dimly lit corners of the tavern or when Flins was the only qualified person to ask something about the Wild Hunt. But to Flins, these moments were akin to a borrowed book from the library. He was allowed to fill in the space of Varka’s loved ones while he was away from home. Then, he’d have to give him back to them.

It did not make him sad. At least, not in any way he recognized as sadness. This had always been his reality: people arriving, lingering for a time, then passing on, scribbling the pages of his immortal life until the ink dried out together with their life force, and they left for good. Now, it seemed, the roles were simply reversed for a while.

Caught in these thoughts, Flins almost crashed into Varka’s back after crossing the shallow body of water dividing the lighthouse from the mainland. Varka shot his arm out like a barrier, keeping Flins back and blocking his view with his broad shoulders.

“Wait,” he said.

He had tried to sense the crack in the air, the inevitable arrival of the Hunt splitting through the gentle breeze, but there was nothing there. The Hunt rarely advanced to his graveyard, even less so on clear nights like that one.

Varka advanced a few steps, crouching down in the sand without saying anything. Flins pulled his lantern up, craning his neck to see what exactly grabbed Varka’s attention so suddenly.

“Flins?” Varka said. “Why didn’t you tell me you take care of this little thing here…”

Flins lifted an eyebrow. The words Varka had said made no sense, no matter how he turned and flipped them. Except for some frostlamp flowers, nothing grew here. The blood seeping into the ground must not be the best fertilizer for the environment.

Out of nowhere, Varka sprang to his feet, holding something over his head. “This is the cutest pup I have ever seen!”

The lantern weighted down his arm, and Flins found himself rooted in place, blue flame at his side, watching a sand-colored puppy with ice-blue eyes licking Varka’s cheek.

“That is not mine,” Flins said, conflicted by the way the puppy reached for Varka’s face with its forelegs, frustrated that they were too short.

“How did she get here?” Varka said, placing her on his arm, her little legs dangling over. He ran his fingers through her short hair. “She’s so cute. Do you wanna pet her?”

Flins took a step back just as Varka walked towards him, raising his hand in a silent gesture of stop. “No. I’ve never been particularly popular with animals.”

As if to prove a point, the puppy flinched at the sound of his voice, turning to cuddle closer to Varka’s chest and as far away from Flins’s  stare as possible.

“Aw, are you scared of that little guy?” Varka cooed, scratching behind her ears. “You really don’t have to be. He’s barely taller than you.”

Flins didn’t know what bemused him more: the way the puppy melted in Varka’s arms or how casually he just called him short.

“Did the Moonchanter lend you some of her powers?” Flins asked, walking in front of Varka towards the lighthouse. “The little… lady adores you already."

When Varka plunked himself down on the steps leading to the lighthouse, Flins paused, unsure whether he was meant to sit beside him or stay where he was.

“What kind of Wolf Knight would I be if dogs didn’t like me?” Varka said, letting the puppy nuzzle under his chin. “She’s a sweetheart. And even if she gets a little shaky around you,” he paused, his hand staying steady on her back, “She’s still right here.”

“I believe she belongs to one of the dogs that brings me bones from time to time in exchange for meat,” Flins said. “He should be nearby.”

“Bones?” Varka asked, brows lifting in brief surprise before he eased into a grin. “What kind of freaky things do you get up to out here?”

The corner of Flins’s mouth twitched before he could stop it. “This place can get lonely.”

Varka continued to drag his hand gently along the puppy’s back, his shoulders relaxing more with each pet. “Would it be strange if I said I liked it here?”

Hearing something raw and almost unguarded in Varka’s voice, Flins snapped his head up to look at him again.

“I love Nasha Town, but it can get a little too much sometimes. All that metal clanking and machinery buzzing…” Varka said, stretching his palm and waiting for the puppy to nose at his fingers.“Mondstadt has none of that. Things can get very loud very fast here.”

Flins’s lamp dangled slightly as his stance softened into something lighter. “You miss home, don’t you?”

Varka didn’t look at him, busy with the way the puppy attacked his fingers. Flins could see that he was not quite present in the motion. “Sometimes. I guess it might sound absurd to you.”

His gaze slipped from Varka’s face to the ground, catching on a  wide crack and lingering there.

Flins had never understood the concept of nostalgia, of longing for something that had come to pass. He did not miss the banquets at the palace, nor the fae he had known in Snezhnaya, nor even the human companions he had gathered and lost along the way. Curiosity held more weight for him than longing. He did wonder what Snezhnograd looked like today, and he would not object to encountering one or two old fae acquaintances. But there was no ache in it, no pull backward. Nothing he yearned for, and nothing he wished to reclaim in order to fill in some void.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna play with her?”

Flins looked at him again, searching for that subtle hint of vulnerability in Varka’s shoulders, and he found nothing. He was back to his casual, laid-back demeanor, scratching the puppy on the belly.

“I do not think it’s a good idea.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Varka said, curling his finger, signaling Flins to come closer. “Do you not want to, or are you afraid she will reject you?”

Flins frowned and hovered for a moment before lowering himself to sit beside Varka. The puppy turned around and looked at him for a moment, almost inquisitively, waiting.

“She must feel very safe in your arms,” Flins said, attempting to touch her nose. She sniffed him for a little while, and she didn’t cower back into Varka like he expected her to. “I suspect her interest in me will disappear the moment you are gone.”

Varka hummed low in his chest, and if Flins hadn’t been so focused on the small creature tugging at his glove, he might have noticed that Varka never once took his eyes off him.

“That’s all right. She is very cute. I won’t mind coming here to see her again.”

An old man in Piramida had spent years trying to convince Flins to adopt a cat or a dog. Even setting aside the fact that animals were wary of his scent, there was another, more decisive problem: Flins did not believe he was capable of offering a pet the kind of affection it required. He had seen Lauma with animals before, had watched how naturally she interacted with them, and even observing them left him faintly exhausted.

What that man didn’t manage to do in years, Varka managed to do in less than a night. 

It began with small things: questions about the puppy and her family, bits of cured meat pressed into Flins’s hands to pass along to the dogs whenever he saw them, requests for pictures of how his little girl was growing. Before long, Flins had seen more of that dog family than of some of the ghostly shadows that lingered by their graves.

They sat at a table at The Flagship, glasses clinking softly against each other all around them, while Varka showed a picture of the puppy to some of his Knights. She was sleeping, ears flopped over her closed eyes, inside the lighthouse on a rainy night. Varka smiled like a fool, and Flins believed it was all worth the trouble if he got to see this. 

Flins had nudged Varka’s boot under the table without too much thought. He hadn’t expected any response, but before long, Varka’s foot nudged him back, then it hooked lightly around his ankle and stayed there. Flins found, with some irritation, that he was actually sweating.

Some days later, Varka leaned in to look at the new set of pictures, peering over the crown of Flins’s head. He didn’t touch, not quite, but his presence, close and solid, at Flins’s back, was warm and inescapable all the same. If he wanted, Flins only needed to lean back an inch to feel his chest against his back. But he did not think he could mask that as an accident.

“She kind of resembles you, don’t you think?”

Flins angled up the picture for Varka to see better, and Varka took hold of it, his grip firm enough that Flins’s hand was caught beneath his wrist and the photo, held there without comment.

“Depends. Can she fight? I don’t compliment on looks alone.”

When Varka stopped by the lighthouse again with supplies from Nikita, as he insisted on mentioning, Flins was not surprised to find more blankets and meat for what appeared to be his favorite fluffy friends in Nod-Krai.

They were sitting on a bench from the old tavern on the island, the puppy doing circles around Varka’s leg until he picked her up and allowed her to sleep in his lap.

Really… Flins had never thought that such small animals could harbor so much greediness.

There was a ghost in front of them, hands clasped together and murmuring a prayer Flins could not understand fully. She had been stuck in this loop for days, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not reach her.

“Still not afraid of ghosts?” Flins asked with a trace of a smile. “Or is the Grand Master not afraid of anything?”

“Oh, I’m afraid of plenty,” Varka said with no hesitation or bravado. “Maybe even the thought that I might become like this one day.”

Flins was puzzled at the sudden grip around his chest, yearning to reassure him that it would not happen; that Varka was not one to die with regrets and linger behind like this.

But what right did he have to say something like that, and how could he be so sure of it? Worse yet, he would only have the chance to find out when Varka died, and that was just a thought he did not wish to entertain for too long.

He instinctively slid his hand a little closer along the bench, toward Varka’s.

“Do you understand what she is saying?”

“She’s bound to an oath,” Flins said, tilting his head as his ears pricked up. “It’s a promise she made to someone else, and to herself, that she never kept. I can’t figure out the promise, though.”

The bench creaked with a low sound.

“You should bring more people here,” Varka said. “Let them see what it means to stand still while you still have the time to act.”

When Flins looked down again, their fingers were less than an inch away, and he could not tell if it was he who moved all the way there or if Varka met him in the middle.

He wished, suddenly and without much logic, that he would never have to face the day when he had to watch Varka pass on peacefully, or linger behind as nothing more than a wisp of consciousness.

“Don’t die in these lands,” Flins said, clenching his jaw. “Wait until you get back home to be reckless with your life."

“First off, just for the record, I don’t think there’s anything capable of killing me around here,” Varka said, and Flins could hear the smug, lopsided grin on his face. “But even if something takes me out, I have a dear drinking buddy who would come and collect my soul from here.”

“Your Archon friend is truly remarkable,” Flins said, drumming his fingers on the bench.

“Is he? Eh,” Varka clicked his tongue playfully. “I’ve heard similar legends about this Azure Flame that guided fallen souls across the icy plains. I can’t remember the name, though… Maybe you could help me with that.”

Flins’s hand went still, slowly gripping the edge of the bench. “You seem to be more knowledgeable than you let on.”

Varka let out a breathy laugh, tipping his head back to look at the blinding lights of the lighthouse. “I talk a lot of nonsense to a lot of people, which makes them tell me a lot of truths in return. I tend to remember the ones I care about.”

He could be hallucinating, but Flins was fifty percent sure that Varka touched his hand then. By the time he looked down again, his hands were the same as before: impossibly close, but still not touching.

The puppy woke up and started jumping on Varka’s chest, ending the moment with a simple bark. The little thing was truly a greedy goblin.

When it finally happened, Flins was thoroughly horrified.

They had made a makeshift camp along the shore, Knights and Ratniki scattered in mismatched clusters around the Tideseal Stone they had set up after a long, punishing encounter with the Wild Hunt.

From where Flins sat, feeding the fire and watching it take hold in measured flames, the number of people guarding the seal seemed excessive. The stone did not require this much attention.

He did not comment on it. He held no authority there, and Varka, sitting shoulder to shoulder next to him, was already absorbed in a game of cards, his laughter rising and falling with the turn of each hand.

Flins took the liberty of looking over into his cards, his mouth twisting. “You will lose.”

Varka tutted, more playfully than viciously. “Stop making me lose focus.”

Unsurprisingly, Varka did end up losing that game. He turned his body just enough to whisper to Flins, “How did you do that?”

Flins couldn’t tell which side of him felt warmer. The one opened to the fire, or the one pressed lightly against Varka. “I have played more rounds than some people lived.”

“Interesting,” Varka said under his breath, turning to the others with newfound confidence. “Wrap it up! We are going to play in pairs.”

For what it was worth, Flins did not like to draw unnecessary attention to himself. Attention invited questions, and questions invited explanations he had no interest in providing.

But even roped into the game and playing more competently than anyone else present, the focus never truly shifted to him. It remained on Varka and his unapologetically petty and deliberately provoking remarks against his opponents, drawing in more spectators who stood by the side of the seal before. It was like he was doing psychological warfare while Flins took care of the game itself.

And that was when it happened—right after that first win. Among the groans and curses of the players, Varka patted him on the back as he did with so many of his friends. It was there. What he wanted happened. The casual touches were his to enjoy.

But they did not feel like they should have felt.

Flins grew restless out of the sudden. Too restless. He started winning faster, throwing the correct card at the right time, ending the games quickly, restarting them, as if repeating the same motions might undo something he had no control over.

More Knights drifted closer. Someone laughed. Someone else insisted Varka was cheating.

Cheating how, no one could explain. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was. And Flins felt cheated, too. Not by Varka, but by his own body and brain.

And Varka was enjoying himself. Laughing with his head thrown back, leaning into him, hands everywhere in that careless way of his. His fingers closed around Flins’s arm, their shoulders bumped together, and his hand landed on Flins’s knee when he laughed too hard. All so familiar and easy and unthinking, even with Flins on the receiving end.

But that was the problem; Flins was on the receiving end, and he hated it.

No one noticed. Why would they? It was normal. Varka touched everyone like that. Always had. Flins did notice it, though.

He noticed how wrong it was. The sameness of it. The way there was no hesitation anymore, no weight to his touch, no lowered voice, no moment held just a fraction longer than necessary.

Nothing.

Gradually, the groups broke apart and drifted back to their duties. Flins could still hear them in the distance: the Ratniki calling for a rematch at the tavern, Varka laughing in that reckless, eager way he sometimes had before a battle. The Knights announced their return to the night patrol. All so normal and pathetically mundane that it made Flins realize he was overreacting over nothing.

He stoked the fire with a stick, stirring the embers and nudging the coals to feel like he was a part of the same mundaneness as everyone else. His wish was not to stick out among Varka’s company.

He blended in, didn’t he? It should have ended there. So, why was it not enough?

All of a sudden, it all sounded so stupid that he had to close his eyes against the absurdity of it all. He did not need to blend in with the Knights at all. It was not like Varka would stay in Nod-Krai more than necessary. He didn’t even have to be near them if he didn’t want to.

Varka joined him after the noise simmered down, leaning back on his arms and sighing as he looked up at the cloudy night. A storm was coming.

“Your friends are hilarious,” Varka said. “They all ganged up on me while I wasn’t even looking at the cards. My taunting skills are great. Frankly, I should be commended,” he laughed, unapologetically proud of himself.

Flins told himself that it was the smoke drifting to his face that affected him, and not Varka’s way of entertaining himself without anyone’s help. He could not contain a smile of his own.

“You were the one who did all the real work, though,” Varka said, his tone dropping to a gentler pitch. “You’re absurdly good at that game. Then again, you seem to be absurdly good at everything.”

Flins really wished he could say something in return. Maybe something witty that would draw another laugh from Varka, or to tease him politely about who is a better fighter in the game of cards. Anything to keep the moment moving, to fill the silence before it cooled down.

But there they were again; Varka sitting closer to him than necessary, lowering his voice to something softer, more real. The lantern dimmed at his hip, expectingly.

“Hey, are you okay?” Varka asked, nudging their shoulders together. “You’re being quiet. Even for you.”

“It’s just the smoke,” Flins said, eyes squinting as the sooty smoke curled towards his face. “It seems determined to inconvenience me tonight.”

Varka studied the fire, then the shoreline, then the way the wind blew across his face. With a simple flick of his wrist, he redirected the wind towards the sea. “Better?”

Flins blinked a few times, feeling the sting in his eyes ebbing away, before he turned to Varka. “Yes. Thank you.”

Varka seemed to take in all of him.

Flins found himself held in place beneath the weight of that attention, unable to move as Varka’s gaze traced its way down. His eyes lingered on the set of his brows, the tired shadows beneath his eyes, then paused at his mouth for a moment longer than necessary.

Only after did his gaze focus outwardly, setting not on any single feature, but on Flins himself, having him feel whole and unmistakably seen, not just noticed or looked at with the intention of discovering something hidden.

And even the probing looks of strangers, those trying to peel back his true nature and gain something from it, had never unsettled him like this, never driven him so close to flight. But that wasn’t quite it either. What Flins wanted, suddenly and acutely, was to be the one to look away first before Varka could read his eyes and understand how little he minded being seen by him in the first place.

He barely shifted on the sand when Varka moved, stopping him. “Hold on. You have something there…”

And as if it was the most normal, natural, and mundane thing in the world, Varka reached out and cupped his face. Flins had known that compared to his perpetual coldness, Varka was like a golden flame in the form of a man, and yet, he was not prepared to feel that warmth on his face, to feel his rough and big hands holding him still. The glowing blue light in his lamp erupted anew, fighting against the glass casing with the sharp control of a fire stripped of warmth.

Varka’s thumb brushed the thin skin under his eye with a gentle, yet firm stroke, strong enough for Flins to not mistake it as a gust of wind, and light enough to slow down everything around them; the waves lapping at the shore, the fine drizzle falling over them, the fire embers sighing heavily under the rain.

Flins knew that Varka did, indeed, sweep something sticky from under his eye; probably soot from the fire. He should move away, clear his throat, and thank him again for the help. But he could not. It was like he was bound by something other than Varka’s hands on him.

Varka drew back himself, if only for less than a hand’s distance, but did not let go. There was a complicated look on his face and a weird tension in his shoulders. “Flins.”

It was bad enough that Flins had fixed his attention on the faint dimple at Varka’s chin, having picked it as the only place safe to look at. But when Varka spoke his name, his eyes traveled to his mouth, widening in brief surprise before snapping up to meet Varka’s.

“Yes?”

Light rain blades fell from the sky, catching on Flins’s bangs before dropping into his eyes. It did not bother him; he did not need to blink. Varka moved his thumb then, tucking it under his jaw to push his head up, fully knocking out the outside world from his perception.

“Do you also feel like—”

“Grand Master!”

Flins flinched back to reality only after Varka’s hands dropped from his face and he leaned away, settling back into his own space. Two unfamiliar Knights rounded a corner and came upon them standing in the drizzle, silent and oddly still.

He barely registered whether they said anything else. His composure only returned once Varka was upright again, close enough to squeeze his shoulder in passing. “Don’t stay out in the rain too long, all right?”

Flins stood there, his clothes dampened and weighing him down, long enough to realize one horrifying truth. Varka holding his face—leaning in, tracing his skin, pushing his head up—had felt right. The shoulder squeeze afterward made it all the more clear just how much it was not enough. It was like a slap in the face, ugly and unwanted.

Flins didn’t know if he should feel relieved or conflicted by Varka’s ability to live in the present.

He would not call him forgetful, but he was definitely more attuned to the wind of today than the tempest of yesterday. In a way, Flins could resonate with that very well, for the past had always been difficult to measure for him. Something without a start and without an ending. He did not dwell on it, and, under different circumstances, there would be a pleasant current running under his skin at the thought of having something in common with Varka. However, Flins was more irresolute about the whole thing.

Flins wanted Varka to finish the sentence he had started in the rain to make more sense of what had been picking his brain apart. But even as an incomplete thought, Flins could still find a way to answer it: he had been feeling something he should not be for a while now. It was difficult for him to name that nagging sensibility burrowing under his chest when Varka was involved.

Jealousy? It could not be anymore. He no longer wanted to fit the same mold as Varka’s companions, and as far as he was concerned, Varka did not go around offering his raw and unfiltered affection on a silver plate.

Admiration? Flins admired Varka greatly. Starting from his prowess in battle to his honest appraisal of situations and people. That had never changed. His commitment to staying true to himself was almost unnerving for Flins.

Fascination? He found himself looking for Varka without meaning to. Tracking the rhythm of his habits, noticing the way he occupied space, locating him almost before he was aware he’d begun searching. But Varka did that to everyone. Varka drew attention the way wind did, not by asking for it, but by passing through and leaving nothing quite where it had been. Flins had no chance against it.

Nothing had really changed after that moment on the beach, although Flins wished it did. They still met mostly in groups, they had drinks together, and they acted as the liaison between the Knights and Ratniki in joint operations against the Wild Hunt.

Varka seemed to have erased every last trace of their moment on the shoreline from his memory, so Flins decided to file it away as a one-time unresolved mistake.

A scholar from Sumeru arrived in Nod-Krai with considerable enthusiasm and resolve, intent on writing a comparative thesis on the Wild Hunt and Sumeru’s Withering. Flins first heard of her through Nikita, who had been approached by her for access to Ratniki reports, and later through Illuga, who had encountered her at The Flagship.

By then, Illuga had already spoken of Flins at length, recommending him as the Ratniki’s best storyteller.

But his stories were just that: stories, tools he used mostly to deflect questions and redirect attention. Still, he couldn’t help thinking that the scholar’s grasp of Nod-Krai was lacking if she chose to ask about the Hunt in a tavern brimming with lies and secrets.

His days slipped back into an old and familiar pattern. Solitary patrols, nights spent in the cemetery easing the unrest of the dead, long and thoroughly unremarkable reports detailing his sightings and battles against the Hunt.

Sometimes, he found himself watching his new neighbors. The dog family that had settled outside the graveyard rarely crossed to the mainland to hunt for food. They had been receiving cured meat for weeks without offering much in return; Flins had not been brought a bone in quite some time. Varka’s generosity had spoiled them rotten.

On nights when the waves crashed too loudly and the flashes of the lighthouse too bright,  Flins took brief walks through the dark.

More often than not, he found the puppy waiting on the steps, hopeful and alert, only to shy away and flee the moment she realized he was not her favorite human.

His life had become, unmistakably, a tapestry of small absurdities. Like the puppy, he too felt a flicker of irritation, followed by mild disappointment, whenever footsteps approached the lighthouse and the visitor turned out not to be Varka. At some point, he had clearly lost the plot. He wished to understand humans better, not to have so much in common with a dog.

It wasn’t like Varka ignored him or anything. He was the same Varka as before. Friendly, relaxed, open in all the ways that had Flins like and hate him with the intensity of thunder. If anything threw him off balance, it was the stillness and staleness of it all, the sense that something had settled into place and refused to change. That was what drove him to pull back from assisting the Knights so much. Matters were not the same for him, and he had no desire to pretend otherwise.

Just like Varka, Flins was not particularly in love with Nasha Town, even less so when he knew that he could run into Varka at The Flagship out of the blue. But as the commercial center of Nod-Krai, Flins could not escape it forever.

He needed supplies. Nothing too interesting or eye-catching: gloves, since he found a lot of them chewed over on the beach by the obvious culprit, sealing wax for his reports that had to be sent on a ship to Piramida, and repair patches for his boots after tearing them open from so many night walks.

He had wrongly believed that the buzz around the scholar died down when he booked a room for himself at The Flagship.

It came as no surprise that she had become the center of attention at the tavern. Give proud smugglers, bounty hunters, and dockmen the time of the day, and they would gather at once, drawn in like moths to flame.

She also had Mora to spare and treated them to drinks.

In the end, Flins resigned himself to the idea that his storyteller reputation had come to collect its due. The scholar recognized him from Illuga’s descriptions and approached his table with the zeal of a hundred warriors.

“Illuga told me that,” she started, leaning on her elbows and getting closer to him. “‘Mr. Flins is one of the only ones keeping the stories of the fallen Ratniki alive.’ I find that fascinating.”

Flins inclined his head, showing that he was listening.

She went on with a delighted smile on her face. “I’m trying to determine whether the Ratniki mythologize the Wild Hunt to make it survivable or whether they strip it down until there’s nothing left to misunderstand.”

Her fingers traced an idle circle around a droplet of spilled wine, absent-minded, too close to his sleeve. Flins moved his hand further away.

“In Sumeru, we map The Withering by stages. The Nascent Zone that begins the corruption, followed by growing Fetid Boughs and Withering Branches that start to affect the environment and also the people,” she ticked them off on her fingers, then let her hand fall next to her glass. “But none of that language works for Nod-Krai. It resists taxonomy.”

She leaned back, then forward again, as if unable to stand still. “What interests me isn’t how the phenomena kill,” she said. “It’s how it’s remembered. The wrong memory gets people killed. Although, of course, the way it hunts shapes the memory of survivors and creates the specific mechanism of protection through memory cues…”

Flins liked people like her, so enraptured in their own world that they could not stop talking, which, consequently, allowed him to only pitch in from time to time with an affirmative nod or word.

“I’m sorry. I know I talk too much,” she said, catching herself mid-thought. Her fingers brushed Flins’s sleeve as she reached for him, tugged lightly, and left her hand there. “It serves me well when I’m writing for the Akademiya. Less so in conversation. I can be… a bit overbearing.”

“I admire enthusiasm,” he said. “It’s good to see someone invested in their work.”

Flins thought of retrieving his hand from the table and curling it around the handle of his tankard. For the rest of the evening, he would keep it there safely occupied. He had no wish to embarrass her or invite offense, but his stories weren't nearly as good or reliable to elicit any sort of touch from her.

His timing came seconds too late. He’d been caught off guard by a familiar laugh and an energy that rolled through the room as if it owned it, turning heads towards the door.

Varka entered with Nefer first, an unusual pairing for the regulars, though not one that surprised Flins. He knew they got along.

When Varka caught his eye almost instantly across the room, with his disarming and unburdened smile that showed no care in the world, Flins stiffened on the spot.

A faint buzz travelled through his spine in an ambiguous and contradicting way. Seeing Varka was like an amiss piece of jigsaw snapping into place, shooting warmth across his body, and alongside it came the sharper awareness that nothing about Varka had changed.

Flins rarely sought after change as it fell short of meaning for his prolonged lifespan. He had finally got the chance to see how ugly and overbearing it could be.

If he could feel a change towards Varka, how could Varka, so in touch with life and with himself, carry on unbothered?

So he hesitated and remained unmoved until the table got a little crowded with Nefer and Illuga taking the chairs at the corners of the table, and a couple of Knights slipping into the bench across from Flins.  

Flins only noticed Varka’s slight waver in his otherwise collected bearing when the scholar rose and invited him to sit, drawing his attention to the position of her hand next to Flins’s.

“Sorry, let me make some space for you,” the scholar said, rising to her feet and rounding the table to sit next to Flins. “I will go get some drinks for us.”

Varka did not comment on it, which had only made Flins frown harder. He sat in front of him and cracked his fingers one by one.

“Seems like no one in Nod-Krai can escape her educational pursuits,” Varka smiled sharply. “She finally got you, too.”

“Did you meet before?” Flins asked no one in particular, but his eyes stayed on Varka alone.

“Oh, yes,” he exhaled a sigh. “What was her thesis about? Mythopoesis… entropy… something.”

“Between Entropy and Intent: A Dialectical Inquiry into Abyssal Corruption, Cultural Mythopoesis, and the Failure of Unified Explanatory Models,” Nefer piped in.

“Right,” Varka said. “Thank the Gods we have someone from Sumeru to remember that absolute load of—“

“I’m back!”

The scholar returned with a tavern worker in tow, holding a tray brimmed with ice-cold drinks. She slipped into the empty seat next to Flins, scraping her chair closer to him so the waiter had more space to move about, placing the drinks on the table.

“I got you a special drink from Sumeru,” she told Flins, placing an earthenware cup pressed with geometric designs in front of him. “It’s frigid snake wine! I carried it all the way here for a special occasion.”

Flins scrunched his nose a little, looking up at Varka again. He held his chin with a hand, blinking so slowly as if he could fall asleep on the spot.

“I guess you won’t be needing this,” Varka said, picking up Flins's tankard. “I’ll take it. Thank you very much.”

Flins frowned deeper. “Do you wanna try some frigid snake wine?”

Varka’s eyes flitted between the two of them, pursing his lips. “No. Enjoy yourselves.”

It had sounded non-confrontational enough to the untrained ear, but Flins picked up on the tight strain in his voice, as if his vocal cords were pulled taut by something unpleasant.

Then, he latched on to something else.

“Did you get hurt?”

The slashes on Varka’s face, the ones that had always been closed and healed since he arrived in Nod-Krai, were scratched and swollen.

The question seemed to surprise Varka, who was more interested in the foam covering the tankard than in Flins. He lifted a hand to his face, touching the scar as if trying to understand what Flins meant.

“Nothing to worry about.”

“A Wilderness Hunter was getting close to town, and Mr. Varka jumped in to disarm him without even grabbing his weapon first,” Illuga said, more than happy to fill in the gaps for Flins. “The hunter slashed his face. You don’t really see anyone trade blows with the Hunt like that. It was incredible to watch…”

Then he stilled, hands coming up in hurried defense as he looked at Varka. “N–not because you got hurt! Just the way you fought. It was incredible.”

“Careful with the praise,” Nefer cut in, sloshing the drink in her glass. “He might start going around fighting bare-handed all the time.”

Flins waited. He waited for Varka to laugh it off like it was nothing remarkable, or to fully say something audacious like ‘Hey, if the result’s the same and I still kick their ass, I don’t see the problem’, anything that would lift up that uncanny energy surrounding him.

Varka said nothing.

“Here?” The scholar’s brows knit, attention snapping to Varka. “Close to Nasha Town?”

She was already reaching for her notebook, chair scraping softly as she rummaged through her robes for a pen. “Incursion proximity, deviation from established range…”

She glanced up at Flins, eyes bright. “Do the Ratniki record distance as a factor, or do they only note outcome?”

Nefer bumped into Illuga softly, jutting her chin toward Flins, who seemed not to follow the conversation at all. He straightened and cleared his throat. “Distance is always noted. It’s a way for us to recognize potential patterns more easily.”

Varka leaned back against the backrest, arms folding loosely across his chest. He watched her write for a moment, lifting an eyebrow.

“And you,” she said, “intervened immediately.”

Varka shrugged. “That’s what I’m there for.”

“So,” she continued, tapping the page, “from your perspective,” she looked back to Flins, “does the Hunt test boundaries intentionally, or does it react to opportunity?”

Flins forced himself to find the will to enter this conversation, although he was more interested in why Varka was strung out like a cat on a hot tin roof.

“Both. They perceive themselves as warriors hunting trespassers. Anyone who enters their range becomes legitimate prey.” His gaze remained steady on Varka’s cheek. “In that regard, they are not unlike common ghosts, bound by resentment that prevents them from passing on.”

“Resentment?” she echoed, already scratching the paper with her pen. “So they act on memories and unresolved past states.”

“Yes and no,” Flins said. “There is something deeper setting them in motion. Most ghosts can only manifest themselves as talking shadows of the past. They do not have a will of their own.”

“They adapt,” she said, thinking aloud. “They respond to new conditions, new resistance…”

She looked up, then gestured vaguely toward Varka’s face. “Which makes this more than an isolated incident.”

Varka was entirely unfazed, smacking the table with the butt of his—Flins’s tankard. “Glad my face is contributing to science.”

Flins saw Nefer shake her head, puffing a laugh behind the rim of her glass.

The scholar’s attention shifted smoothly back to Flins, as if the conversation had always been all about him and not her thesis.

“What about you?” she asked, leaning in closer, just enough that her voice dropped without conscious effort. “Did you get hurt fighting the Wild Hunt?”

Her gaze swept all over his body, searching for any patch of uncovered skin that might give her a hint.

He could feel the attention at the table tack on him, interest carefully concealed. Perhaps it was because most of them had tried, at one point or another, to ask him something personal, and had walked away more confused than before.

Varka drummed his fingers against the table, “Well?” he asked. “I’m curious too.”

Flins shot him a glare.

Varka gave him a quick, unrepentant brow-flick.

The scholar hesitated only a moment before her curiosity had her leaning towards Flins. “May I—” she began, her hand lifting to hover near Flins’s arm before she tried to unclasp the strap at his glove.

Flins went very still.

Varka’s knee jerked up, sending the drinks on the table tipping over each other and spilling over. He had not even tried to mask it as an accident.

“Sorry,” he said flatly, shrugging with one shoulder. “Post-battle tremors.”

His leg continued to wiggle beneath the table, interrupting Illuga, who tried to clean it up with napkins. But something else had already claimed Flins's attention, and it was not the spilled drinks.

“Varka,” he said, low and careful, meant for no one else. Varka met his eyes. “Your cheek is bleeding.”

Thin spots of blood seeped out from the cut, quickly forming fine lines sliding down in red streaks to his healthy skin above the jaw. Flins’s words alerted the Knights, who scrambled to find clean napkins among all the wine-soaked ones to press them to his face. They looked disturbing, as if they were already dripping with blood.

Nefer sighed, unmoving. “I told you to stop clenching your jaw so hard.”

Varka had no patience for Nefer’s irony or the hands pressing in on him. He straightened in his seat, broadening his shoulders and arms to protect his personal space.

“Enough,” he said. “You’re fussing too much over something so trifling.”

Flins frowned. “A bleeding wound is not something trifling.”

“It is this time.”

His eyes narrowed to slits, struck by the brittle, clipped edge of the voice used against him. Varka did not look at him, picking Flins’s unclasped glove strap as a more interesting thing to watch.

It was then that it clicked with Flins that Nefer was not taking a humorous jab at Varka, and that he was still clenching his jaw hard enough for a vein in his cheek to tremble lightly under his skin, pumping more blood out of his cheek.

“Grand Master,” one of the Knights started tentatively, “I think you should see one of our medics, just in case? They already patched up that cut today. It wouldn’t be a big deal if it happened to anyone else, but you usually heal so quickly…”

“Right, and above that,” the scholar cut in, stealing a glance at Flins. “The Wild Hunt can cause corruption, no? Better safe than sorry.”

Varka looked like he was about to say no. After taking in a deep, exasperated puff of air, he locked his eyes on the scholar and seemed to prepare to say a lot more than a simple no.

The chair screeched against the floor as Flins surged to his feet. He cleared his throat as a last measure of stopping Varka from causing an unnecessary scene and looked at the Knights. “Can you call a doctor and ask them to come here?”

They nodded slowly, still looking at Varka as if they waited for him to confirm that it was allowed. Varka ran a hand over his face, blood disappearing into the material of his black glove.

“Varka,” Flins said, adding more gentleness to his voice, trying to strip away some of his impossible, sudden stubbornness. “Come with me?”

Varka rubbed the bridge of his nose, but did not protest. He told the Knights to do as they pleased before slipping away from the table, not before Nefer craned her neck to wink at him. “Have fun!”

“Oh, keep it.”

Flins unlocked the door to his room, his fingers stiff and uncooperative, while Varka stayed behind him, too silent for comfort.

“You’ve always seemed quite at ease being in the spotlight,” Flins said, finally getting the door open. “But you were dreadfully uptight tonight."

Varka did not want to enter the room, opting for propping his shoulder on the doorframe. “Happens when you’re in bad company,” he said easily. “You’re staying here tonight?”

Poking around the desk facing the bed for some stripes of linen and clean water, Flins did not turn to answer him. “Yes.”

There was a beat of silence as Flins wrapped the linen cloth around a frost-kissed bottle from a bucket packed with ice.

“Well, have a good night,” Varka said. “I’ll take my leave now. Thank you for not letting me make a spectacle out of myself. You shouldn’t have, now I feel pretty clogged up mentally, but thank you.”

“Then stay with me and unload your thoughts,” Flins said, closing the space between them and pressing the bandaged bottle to his cheek. “While I look out for signs of corruption.”

Varka’s eyes drifted up, then closed as he made a sound of displeasure. “You’re really going to listen to some nobody spewing nonsense? Nothing’s wrong with me.”

“I just want to make sure,” Flins pulled Varka into the room and closed the door behind him. “It is a low probability, but I still want to check.”

Varka removed Flins’s hand from his face, holding his wrist and pulling the bottle away. “Is it easier to believe her rather than me? I’ve told you already. I am fine.”

“This is not about believing anyone,” Flins said, jaw tightening. “The Knights are right. You’re strong. You’re a Vision holder. Wounds should not reopen all of a sudden while having a drink.”

“It still has nothing to do with corruption or the Hunt.”

“Then what is—“

“We’re not doing this,” Varka said, letting go of his arm and grasping the door handle.

Flins’s patience buzzed at a high pitch as he reached for the handle to block Varka’s hand.

“I am worried about you, and you want to leave,” Flins said, feeling crackles behind his eyes. “You always know what to say, and this is when you decide to be quiet?”

For the first time, Flins saw how Varka could be cornered into full-on animosity, and it came in a form reminiscent of his better moods, but stringed with mockery. A derisive laugh escaped his throat, brief and humorless, and he clicked his tongue as he tapped his foot, never looking directly at Flins.

“What do you want me to tell you? That it’s your fault?” he said. “It’s not that complicated, Nefer called it already. I was clenching my jaw because seeing you be so chummy with some random lady when you’re usually reserved and cautious ticked me off. I want to have a good drink after a long day, and I walk on you holding hands with someone you don’t know.”

“… We did not hold hands.”

“Sure seemed like it,” Varka huffed, holding the handle tighter. “You know I hate looking stupid, and now not only do I look like an idiot, but I also look goddamn crazy, too.”

Flins took a step back, peeling his hand away from Varka’s. It burned with a static itch.

“That day on the beach,” Flins said, curling his hand into a fist. “Did you also mean to ask me if I feel crazy for having feelings for you?”

Varka squinted, eyebrows coming down together, as if the words did not fit together.

“I believe you were crazier back then,” he added, locking their eyes together. “You gave me the impression that you wanted something more from me, and then you stashed me away as something unimportant. So, forgive me if I failed to understand that you hated seeing me with someone else.”

Someone shouted behind the closed door, followed by the sound of a table being overturned, overlapping with someone else laughing and asking for a different song from the jukebox. The tavern was rancorous and paradoxical as it always was, but Flins felt Varka’s silence louder in that moment, in the way he let his head tip against the door and covered his eyes with his arm.

“Can I check your scar now?”

Varka was unable to get a word out as Flins knelt in front of the bed, setting down a bucket of water and strips of cloth hanging over the edge. He had Varka keep the cold bottle against his cheek again while he focused on cleaning the blood stains from his fingers and jaw.

Flins worked slowly on Varka’s throat, carefully wiping away the dried blood that ran down throughout the evening. He could feel the thrum of his pulse there, fluttering unsteadily when his fingers lingered there for no reason other than his need to feel Varka come alive under his touch.

He wondered if this was how Varka felt when he played with his lantern and watched the flame struggle to ask for more when it didn’t know how to do it.

Slowly, he folded his fingers around Varka’s own on the bottle, pulling it from his and holding his jaw to take a look at the cut. It was not bleeding anymore, and he could not sense any abyssal corruption seeping out. If it weren’t for the delicate buzz holding him together, he would’ve found it exceedingly amusing that Varka was so jealous that he popped one of his scars open.

“Back then,” Varka said softly, wrapping his fingers around Flins’s wrist before he could pull away, bringing his hand close to his cheek. “I wanted to ask you if you also felt miserable when you were with me.”

Flins’s hand stiffened against Varka, hovering without quite touching. Varka continued, “It was like I was stuck in an air current pushing me towards you, and when I finally got close, the wind passed right through me. I could not reach you.”

“I was always there.”

“Mhm, I know. I noticed you.” Varka nuzzled into Flins’s palm for a moment, then peeled it away. “You were suddenly everywhere,” he tugged off Flins’s glove and used his fingers to count, “You stood closer than usual, you appeared when you shouldn’t have had, you even started to take care of a dog because it reminded you of me.”

With Varka playing with his fingers like that, a rush of warmth flared under his skin, spreading to his ears and down to his feet. Flins could survive in warmer temperatures without a hiccup, even though ice and frost gave him a homely comfort. He submerged his free hand in the bucket, seeking out that familiar relief.

“And you did nothing about it,” Flins said, eyes trained on the way the water bent his fingers into unfamiliar shapes.

“Some things are very tempting. I’m just good at stepping back when I need to.”

The water hissed as thin lines of purple skimmed over the surface. Flins drew his hand out.

“But,” Varka said, threading their fingers together and pulling Flins closer. He barely had the time to feel and see their hands together before Varka’s thumb tipped his chin up, forcing Flins to look at him. “I’m also terrible at trying to stop once I start something.”

Flins gulped down a gasp that almost escaped his throat, and he felt dizzy from the way he scanned Varka’s face for a sign that he was messing with him. Varka’s eyes dipped to his mouth and up again, his hold tightening on his chin so slightly that it nearly evaded him.

“Show me,” Flins said, giving Varka’s hand a squeeze with a little electrifying spark.

Varka closed his eyes and shook his head with a quiet huff of laughter, and some of the needles of blue light that had been charging Flins that night turned against him, ready to prick his insides with something less pleasant and almost painful.

The dull ache in his bones faded away as Varka’s fingers hiked to the back of his head and closed the space between them, covering his mouth with his own. All of that stiffness, second-guessing, and composure thinned out to a snuffed candle’s smoke, which gave him the final push to loop his arm around Varka’s shoulders and kiss him back.

Flins was a very deliberate person, and it terrified him to see how fast he melted against Varka’s mouth the moment he felt his fingers thread in his hair and tilt his head back so he could kiss him better, running his tongue just inside his lips, sending white flames to every crook of his body. Even the lamp at his hip, the chilling and unforgiving flame that had led the way of the dead, seemed to reorder itself to something more primal, like the white fire that burned everything to ashes.

One of Varka’s arms found the middle of his back while his other hand curled under his thighs, and without breaking the kiss, he lifted Flins up in his arms and tossed him in the bed on his back.

He grew up at the palace, and he internalized some of the ridiculous, genteel customs of carrying himself with gracefulness. The nobles place their wine glasses on the table with so much consideration and benignity as if their empire depended on it.

Of course, life stopped being so gentle with him a long time ago. Flins was no stranger to being thrown around, especially during particularly rough meetings with the Hunt, but he never enjoyed it—until now. It wasn’t as much about seeing Varka’s strength dismiss his weight as featherlight; it was more about him just doing it like he did all things. Like it was the most normal thing in the world.

His fingers worked futilely to pull Varka's coat off his shoulders, scrambling for purchase in the fur whenever Varka nibbled at the skin of his throat, gently biting and sucking and taking great enjoyment in the way Flins squirmed under him.

“You’re so hot,” he said, planting another kiss on Flins’s lips. “Is it normal for you to be so feverish? Should I call a doctor?”

He drew his finger along the shape of his jaw, then slipped it under the collar of Flins’s shirt, pulling at the material until the first button flew open. Varka couldn't bite back his smile when Flins’s throat bobbed against his touch.

“It’s your clothes,” Flins said, rising to a sitting position and grabbing at Varka’s coat until it pooled around his waist. “They hold too much heat and burn my skin.”

Varka laughed, but did not stop himself from fully unbuttoning Flins’s shirt. “If only there was a way I could help you with that.”

Resting his palms against Varka’s arms, Flins tried his hardest to control the dizziness and warmth creeping to his head. He should not welcome that kind of heat, should not be so comfortable under Varka’s mouth, leaving open-mouthed kisses on his chest, briefly grazing his nipple with his tongue, causing Flins to dig his fingernails into Varka’s biceps and to arch into him with a half-swallowed moan.

When Varka undid the fly of his pants with his teeth, Flins was already straining in his pants beyond anything considered to be proper, and that simple motion sent him over the edge, his cock leaking completely untouched.

A shiver spread from his limbs through his body, having him shake for Varka’s touch. Flins raked his trembling fingers through Varka’s hair, gently pulling at the strands to get him to look up.

“Come here,” he said, his voice cracking a little.

Varka did, and Flins did not hesitate to tug him down and kiss him again and suck on his tongue for no reason other than wanting to do it. His hand slid under Varka’s top, his fingers splaying and dipping into the lines of his abdomen without much calculation. Varka let out a rough sound against his mouth when his fingernails scraped his skin there, biting down on his bottom lip until Flins could feel blood on his tongue.

Without a second thought, Flins removed Varka’s shirt and reached for his face again when an intrusive knock bounced off the walls. His gaze flew towards the door.

“Grand Master, are you in there? The doctor just arrived.”

Flins sighed, resting his forehead against Varka’s. “You jinxed it.”

“Me? Must I remind you who insisted on having a doctor see me tonight?” Varka said. “Just ignore them.”

“We can’t do—oh.”

The words died in his mouth as Varka sat back on his heels, shirtless and sweating and rugged. Flins had seen naked men before, but he did not remember if any of them could get his mouth to dry up and wipe his mind clean so fast. He really, really, wanted to run his tongue across his chest at that moment, and the only thing keeping him in place was the way Varka unclasped his leather thigh straps and threw them on the floor.

“Mr. Flins?” another knock. “Do you know where the Grand Master left?”

Flins looked at the door with the awful realization that it was unlocked. “Varka—“

Varka gripped his cheeks, pulling his face away. “I told you to ignore it.”

Soon enough, any interest he might have had about answering the door was stripped away from him because Varka gave his cock a few rough tugs, swiping his thumb over the head. Flins’s vision diffused at the edges as if snow fell into his eyes and he could not wipe it away.

His hips thrust forward, seeking more friction, but Varka held his waist down. “Don’t move.”

Flins covered his mouth with his arm just in time to smother a seamy moan from reverberating in the room just as Varka dipped his tongue into the slit of his cock, lapping at the leaking precum before he took Flins’s cock into his mouth and worked his way down to the base.

His teeth tore through the skin of his arm, and he struggled to shove his moans back into his mouth and to stop his thighs from squeezing around Varka’s head too tightly. Varka hollowed his cheeks and sucked him off so hard that the frost in the corner of Flins’s eyes melted into tears falling off his cheeks.

He grabbed Varka’s hair again, unsure if he wanted to help him bob his head up and down or to pull him off completely before he lost his last ounce of self-control.

The knocks continued to come, and Flins started to have a difficult time telling them apart from the wet sounds coming from Varka’s mouth. His hold on his hair tightened, and Varka pulled off his cock just in time to see Flins spurt all over his stomach and shirt.

“You’re so cute,” Varka planted a kiss on Flins’s flushed thigh. “Get on your knees.”

Another knock on the door followed by someone calling their name.

Flins tried to swallow down some of the sand in his throat. “Can’t we just tell them to leave first?”

“No,” Varka said simply, scooping some of the cum on Flins’s stomach and licking it off his finger. “Come on. Hands and knees.”

Something crackled above his skin as his eyes tracked Varka’s movements, and he shouldered off his shirt and did as he was told. If there was a possibility of Varka fucking him from behind, he at least wanted to feel his chest on his back directly.

Varka kissed the spot between his shoulder blades, using his fingers to collect his cum from Flins’s stomach. Flins spared no effort in keeping himself up, focusing as much as possible on Varka biting and licking his skin and not on the way he could feel his clothes cock pressing on his ass. He didn’t even need to grind back against it to feel himself go hard again.

“You are so well behaved,” Varka hummed over a mark he had made on his back, nudging his slicked finger against Flins’s hole. “Were you always like this, or did the court teach you manners?”

With a tunnel vision of simply wanting—no, needing—to push back on Varka’s finger, Flins could not find enough brainpower to tell if Varka wanted an answer or if he was speaking just for the sake of it.

“Both,” he managed to say, the rest of the sentence swallowed by a high-pitched whine when Varka pushed his finger inside of him. “Gods, this is…”

“Interesting,” Varka said easily as if Flins wasn’t shaking and barely holding himself up. “Did someone discipline you there?”

Flins fully collapsed on the mattress face-first when Varka shoved a second finger in without any warning. His body instinctively tried to contract to something smaller, safer, and hastily had a change of heart as Varka continued to finger-fuck him, puffing out a laugh when Flins mustered up enough willpower to push against his hand.

“Not exactly, I—,” he began, hoping that speaking might spur Varka to move faster, perhaps more harshly. “I can’t remember.”

“Aw, I find it hard to believe,” Varka cooed with an undercut of taunting those at court. “Did no one try to get their way with you either?”

He combed his fingers through Flins’s soaked hair with slow and gentle movements, a jarring contrast with the way he rammed three fingers inside of Flins, and Flins wanted to lean into both touches at the same time. Pushing his hair to the side to expose his nape, Varka ghosted his lips over the sweaty skin there.

“You can tell me,” he followed the path of the bruises he marked into his skin earlier, gently kissing the faint bruises left by teeth and lips. “I won’t be upset. Actually, I would think they’re the biggest bunch of losers if they didn’t.”

A laugh rose in Flins’s throat, but it was violently stripped away from him when Varka withdrew his fingers, his amusement being replaced with the feeling of being empty prematurely. Truth was, he didn’t even need much, if any, preparation to begin with. He just liked the sensation of being filled up so much that he didn’t want Varka to stop.

“Ask me again later,” Flins brushed his bangs out of his eyes and pushed his hips against Varka’s crotch, cursing in an ancient language at how desperately he wanted to be split open right away. “I do not wish to think of others when you are on top of me.”

Varka clutched his hips and held him in place, earning a huff of protest from Flins. “You don’t want to or you can’t? That’s a very significant difference.”

Really, in that exact moment, Flins could only think about Varka’s cock fucking him into that mattress until he could not think anymore; he wanted to be rammed into incoherence. He was catastrophically close to telling Varka just that when he could hear some rustling and metal clinking on metal behind him. The next thing he knew was that Varka’s hold on his waist became firm and unrelenting, and he pulled him flat against his pelvis, the head of his cock catching his hole without quite pushing in.

All that speech melted to a pathetically frail, “Please.”

When Varka buried himself to the hilt inside of him, he had set his forehead on Flins’s shoulder and took a second to catch his breath, and for a short moment, Flins was so content and warm and full that he believed they could just stay like that for the rest of the night and it would be enough to send him over the edge.

“Gods, you’re a sight to behold,” Varka said, thrusting his hips tentatively and punching out quiet gasps from Flins. “You’re usually so pale, and now you’re blushing all over.”

Elbows giving out under him again, Flins reached for Varka and locked their fingers together, looking for something that could provide some grounding between the relentless snap of hips and pointed whimpers and moans.

He had long stopped caring that The Flagship had thin walls and that there was always a keen ear listening for something that could be used to intimidate and gain blackmail. But he could barely recognize the sound of his own voice, and even if someone worked it out that it was him getting his back blown, he really did not care. Those were thoughts for later.

Varka coiled his arm around his middle, hauling Flins up to his knees with his back flat against his chest. In that position, he could feel Varka’s cock reaching deeper, and just the thought of touching his stomach to feel it there made Flins delirious.

“You’re still so hot,” Varka groaned, biting the tip of his red ear. “I’m starting to think I’m not good for you.”

Flins squeezed his fingers, lolling his head to the side to give Varka access to his neck in case he wanted to kiss or bite or suck or just breathe there—anything to get closer. “You are.”

Varka smiled against his throat, guiding their joined hands down Flins’s sweat-soaked chest. “Yeah?”

As if his cock leaking and spurting on his stomach wasn’t enough proof, or the way he arched his back whenever Varka slammed particularly deep inside of him, Flins turned his head toward him to catch his lips into a short kiss, “This is perfect… You make it feel so good because you are just…”

His brain lagged as he clenched around Varka, feeling him sway at his back and pierce the skin of his shoulder with his teeth. “Fuck, don’t do that. You want me to stop?”

Flins was not doing anything; he did not even hold much control over his body’s reactions anymore, but there was no chance under the moon that he wanted this to ever stop. He shook his head too enthusiastically. “Please don’t,” he tripped over his words, “Don’t pull out. I like feeling you inside.”

The short fraction of a second that Varka stopped altogether to make sense of his words was interminable for him, and he could not stop himself from grinding his ass back to get that drag and deepness back.

“You’re not real,” Varka said. “There is no way you are.”

Before he could finish the words, Varka brought their hands to Flins’s stomach and pushed down just as he slammed his cock into him hard enough that he could have fallen forward instantly. Varka kept him upright, but he could do nothing about his vision whitening and the feeling of having his breath knocked out of him, which was his first time experiencing something of that magnitude because he did not even need to breathe, and yet it was as if the life force holding him together vanished, and he came all over their hands in thick spurts.

Varka pushed him back on his stomach again, kissing his back and whispering words that Flins could not quite understand as he continued to fuck him through his orgasm and seeking his own release. Flins tried to move his head, to prick his ears and catch all the words and their meaning because he was dying to know everything about Varka in that state. But everything was too loud, starting from his own little sounds, to the blanket rustling under him as his body undulated from Varka fucking him, and to his interrupted need of having Varka fill him up entirely.

And when it happened, Flins could only close his eyes and let that warmth overtake him entirely. It was so absurdly cathartic to have Varka fill him up with his cum, thinking that they cannot get closer than this, that it would probably send his sex-sober self reeling into embarrassment. So many years just to be reduced to a puddle.

But he was happy, and Varka smiled on his skin, now lying down next to him, pulling his hair away from his already burning skin.

When he tried to pull out of him, Flins took his hand and tucked it under his chin. “Not yet. I want to stay like this for a while longer.”

Varka groaned exaggeratedly, hugging Flins closer to his chest. “Don’t talk like that. The night’s still young, and I have stamina that can rival the Gods themselves.”

“Try me,” Flins said, placing a kiss on Varka's knuckles. “Stamina is a foreign concept to me.”

Unfortunately for him, Varka did move eventually and helped Flins turn around to face him. He forgot to complain about it, even to himself, as he finally got to see Varka’s face again. His features were softer under the weak light of the room, and there was something else there, too. An unguarded tenderness that arrived from letting go of self-restraint entirely. Flins did not know if it was present on his face too, but the mellowness under his ribs was unmistakable.

“We should probably clean ourselves up,” Flins said, stroking Varka’s cheek with his thumb.

“Probably,” Varka replied, showing no sign of attempting to get out of bed. “I should go and find the others before they get too worried.”

The scar on his cheek went back to normal,  just a healed line of past battles. Still, Flins was afraid it would hurt if he touched it. “Do you think they heard anything?”

“No. They’re not the kind to eavesdrop,” Varka said, wrapping one arm around Fins’s waist. “And even if they did, they won’t say a word to me or anyone else.”

“Oh? It sounds like you’re speaking out of experience,” Flins tried to ignore the way Varka drew idle shapes on his hip, sending jolts up his body. “Does this happen often?”

Varka did not look at him, too busy trying to reach Flins’s wrist and kiss him there. “Sleeping with a fae? No. Can’t say it happened before.”

“You know what I mean,” Flins tugged lightly at his earlobe, “Somewhere else, or maybe back home.”

Home just made him bitter against his better judgment. Thinking of Nod-Krai as home was already difficult for those who had no choice but to settle there. Flins did not need to overexert himself to realize that someone like Varka, unbound by necessity or ties, would never stay in a place like this.

“It never happened in Nod-Krai if that’s what you’re curious about,” Varka trailed off and frowned before he spoke again. “And Mondstadt is just… It’s a small place. Everyone knows everyone, and they all have a connection to knights in one way or another. It’s unwise for me to be with anyone.”

Flins knew he was balancing on a thin line there, and that he should stop before the thread snapped and ruined whatever fragile thing they had going on. “You told me once I reminded you of someone from Mondstadt.”

“I did?” Varka asked as his face tightened, searching for that specific moment. “Oh, yeah!” he laughed. “I was talking about one of the nuns from the church. She’s nocturnal, just like you, and she always appears out of nowhere.”

Flins lifted an eyebrow. “I resemble a nun?”

Varka gave him a once-over, scrunching his face in fake consideration. “Maybe not in this exact situation,” he said. “You’re always prettier, though. Always.”

And when Varka locked their lips together again, Flins did not want to push the subject further.

Flins had fully expected things to gain a sense of normalcy after that night. Perhaps they would share a moment here and there, but they would never cross the line again. But he had underestimated Varka’s ingenuity in cornering him time and time again.

Truly, it had become difficult for him to drink anything at the tavern, for his bitten and swollen lips hurt whenever alcohol touched them. Outside of Varka, who was going blue from trying not to laugh, Nefer seemed to be the only one to notice that something changed.

Flins liked it that way. Instead of having to give explanations to the few people in his life, or worse, see Varka stolen from him by these explanations, he very much preferred to be in this position: on Varka’s lap, hand under his shirt, and kissed senseless.

He did not have the opportunity to touch Varka that night, and getting more alone time together with an idolized man proved to be difficult even when said man was on Flins’s side.

Flins grinded down on Varka’s lap, his hands roving under his shirt and counting all the hard lines running across his abdomen, gasping softly when Varka slipped his fingers under his waistband and tried to push his pants down.

“Wait,” Flins said against his mouth. “I want to do something for you.”

He sensed it in the way the ghosts whispered and fizzled outside the lighthouse before the confirmation of a ship landing on the island came in the sounds of waves splitting harder near shore and boots breaking on wet planks.

“I need to see what’s happening,” he said, hiding his displeasure under a mild tone.

“Do you?” Varka looked up at him and squeezed his waist. “Can’t even get some peace and quiet on an island full of ghosts.”

Outside, Flins approached the strangers as he always did; lamp lighting the way, steady steps, and a deadpan expression. Although he would ordinarily have questions for them or offer his assistance in guiding them toward Nasha Town, he found himself at a loss before the group. He recognized the uniform of the Knights, but not their faces.

“Greetings, esteemed stranger,” a lady with blonde hair said, giving the flame in his lamp a concealed, wary look. “We seem to have lost our way in the fog, could you—“

“Hold on! Are my eyes deceiving me?” Varka appeared from the lighthouse, stepping in front of him. “Jean Gunnhildr actually left the borders of Mondstadt for once?”

“Varka?” She frowned as if the fog of the island impaired her vision. “Is that you?”

“Oh, come on… I can’t be that forgettable. I haven’t even left for that long.”

Every fiber of his being told Flins that he should relax, that he did not need to keep his guard up against this group of strangers, that nothing in the air promised anything bloody. Yet, the hand on his lamp tightened like he was ready for battle, although the flame flickered weakly at the bottom.

“This is the last introduction I ever thought about making.” Varka turned to look at him, and he placed a gentle hand at the small of his back, pushing him forward. “Flins, this is the Acting Grand Master, Jean. Although I guess she’s not acting on my behalf now that she’s here.”

His tone was light and teasing, but Jean visibly flinched at the words. “I apologize profoundly… I had to ask you before coming here,” then, she turned to Flins. “Nice to meet you! You are one of the Ratniki, are you not? Varka mentioned you in our correspondence.”

“Ugh, you are still so serious…” Varka grumbled, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’m glad you took some time off for once.”

“You are supposed to allow me to take time off,” Jean pointed out, then she let out a self-deprecating sigh. “My mother returned and told me she and the other Knights would handle Mondstadt while I came here to attend to something she asked of me. Still, you’re the only one who should be delegating matters like this.”

“Your mother told you to come?” Varka laughed and quickly cleared his throat to stop himself. “Did Barbatos spike all of your drinks? I can’t believe I’m alive to see this day.”

Even if he wanted to join the conversation, Flins could not open his mouth to say anything. It was as if he stood outside the borders of conversation, listening to words that made sense separately and never together. Why was such a big deal for Jean to take a vacation? Was her mother someone part of Varka’s company in Nod-Krai? If so, did he meet her before?

He stood rooted in place and listened to them talk for a while longer until Varka told her he would accompany her and the other Knights back to their meeting point in Nod-Krai.

Before joining Varka, who had left to get his coat, back in the lighthouse, Flins bowed to Jean and told her to enjoy her time in Nod-Krai. She was surprised by the sudden display of courtesy, but inclined her head and smiled. “Thank you.”

Inside, Varka already had his coat on, and Flins averted his gaze to attach his lamp back to the chain around his waist.

“Hey,” Varka said, striding up to him and holding his face. “I’ll see you later, okay? I’ll find you.”

He kissed him, and Flins felt some of the tension steaming off into the mist outside.

Seeing Varka started to hurt him. Not because he did anything wrong; in fact, he scaled back on his touch-oriented approach since they slept together. He was more selective with it, and although nothing else really changed, Flins noticed it all the same.

What hurt him was the striking realization that in this story, he was temporary. In all those seven hundred years, he had not conceptualized the beginning and ending of something. His time at court was temporary, his hibernation was temporary, his relationships with the Ratniki were temporary, but he never was. He would endure the changing of a thousand winds.

But with Varka? He was the only temporary thing. Perhaps it was because he had never been close to anyone after leaving Snezhnaya, and he never dwelt on the role he played in other people’s lives. For sure, he was just a passing traveler. Someone saw waiting in line, but never approached.

Varka’s life had a heart of its own, with countless people who waited for him at home, who saw him as a pillar of their day-to-day life.

They were waiting for Hunajatta to prepare their sugar sculptures with Varka making it explicitly clear that he wanted his to be in the form of a lantern.

“This would make Klee an absolute beast to deal with.”

“Isn’t she always?” Jean heaved a sigh, holding a hand under her sculpture so the honey won’t spill on her clothes. “She keeps asking when you’ll be back, because she has this experiment in mind that only the tallest Knight can survive, and she doesn’t want to do it if she’ll be alone in solitary confinement.”

When Hunajatta handed Varka his sculpture, Jean turned to Flins and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want one? My treat.”

Flins stole a look at Varka licking the lantern. “I’m certain. I don’t get along well with sweets. Thank you.”

“I’ll share with him if he wants,” Varka winked at him, and things should have been much easier after that.

In Nasha Town, Flins inspected the worn spines of the volumes at Mimisbrunnr Books, too aware of Varka’s presence at his side. He was minutes away from falling asleep, his only source of entertainment being Flins’s lantern.

“You said you would get it fixed,” he said, tapping his finger around as the flame followed it. “It’s still acting up.”

“Don’t touch it, and it will behave.”

“That’s like the complete opposite of you.”

Flins shook his head lightly, picking a random book from the shelf in an attempt to look casual. The small smile dancing on his lips told Varka all he needed to know. 

“Shouldn’t you help the Acting Grand Master look for souvenirs?”

“I want to stay with you,” Varka said, pinching Flins’s hand. “Actually, what’s that book about?”

Without thinking too hard, Flins opened the book to the chapter index page and showed it to him. Varka quickly used the cover to pull his head down and kiss him on the lips.

Too stunned to look around, Flins kept the book hovering in the air. “Are you not afraid she will see?”

Varka shrugged. “No. I don’t care if anyone sees.”

Later, Jean came up to them at the counter with a stack of books and a few trinkets on top of it.

“Lisa told me to remind you that you’re late with returning a book,” Jean said as they waited.

“Since when do I check out any books from the library?” Varka flipped through what seemed to be a coloring book, not looking at her. “She has the wrong person.”

“It’s from the forbidden section. There aren’t many people with access to it.”

“…Fine.” He closed the book. “It might be me after all. Just take it from my room and give it to her.” 

Staying a few steps away from them, Flins kicked a pebble with the tip of his boot, hurling it under a shelf stacked with second-hand books. He would never get the chance to see Varka’s room back in Mondstadt.

“I don’t think you’ve ever tried Dandelion Wine before,” Varka said, carelessly slinging his arm over Flins’s chair. “Our supplies usually dry up so fast when they arrive from Mondstadt.”

“So much for allowing it to breathe for twelve minutes,” Jean said, sipping on a glass of her own.

“Like I’d bring silver goblets with me here,” Varka clicked his tongue, then turned his attention to Flins again, softening up. “Is it too sweet?”

But Flins was so unbearably bitter inside that he could not feel the aroma of the wine at all.

“This is a special batch from Diluc and Kaeya. It should be premium quality, definitely more refreshing than sweet.”

“They did this together for me?” Varka burst out laughing, placing his hand on Flins’s thigh under the table and keeping it there. “Please, don’t scare me like that. I’m starting to think you really love me back there.”

If Flins did not control the crackle in his veins, he would’ve smashed the glass to pieces with his bare hand. He didn’t know what upset him more: that Varka never told him about all these people, or that his silence meant that Flins was never important enough to know about his family back home.

Of course, he had no reason to toot his own horn and pretend that they were more than two men having some fleeting fun. Here today and gone tomorrow. These people were his forever, and Flins was a brief, transitory presence.

It didn’t get better as the days passed by, and he started to feel guilty about it. Varka was clearly making an effort to be there for him, inviting him into all the stories about Mondstadt, filling in the gaps about the new figures mentioned daily.

He was alone when a metal crate washed up on the shore of his graveyard. It was the old dog barking at it and alerting him early in the morning of its existence. The coat of arms of the Knights of Favonius was plastered on all sides, glaring at him. He told himself he would pass it on as it was.

He opened it up anyway.

When Illuga came to visit him that afternoon, he asked him to pass a message to the Knights to come and pick up their belongings. Flins did not expect to see Jean come alone, without at least one other Knight accompanying her.

“I had to throw away most of the contents. It was full of soaked food and smashed bottles,” Flins said, walking with her towards the lighthouse. “But some of the books survived.”

Picking up a stack of three books from where Varka’s puppy chewed on the leg of the chair, he halted in his steps, taken aback by Jean’s blushing cheeks.

“Oh, I wondered where I might have put them,” she said, making the conscious effort not touch him as she took the books. “It was a long journey. I wanted to occupy myself with something.”

He could not get to the bottom of her strange reaction before he returned to Mimisbrunnr Books to scavenge for any of the titles. There was only one title available at the small bookstore. The book had seen better days; the spine was cracked, and the edges warped up from humidity, but all he needed was one look at the summary to get it.

Flins heard Varka before he could sit down on the stairs of the lighthouse and skim through the chapters. He was somewhere on the shore of the island, roping the dog family into some sort of running contest, promising them a big reward if they could beat him.

The Day the Shining Knight Chose Me, My Heart Learned to Hope was nothing less than what the title implied. A knight in shining armor. A young lady who needs rescuing from her evil father, who is trying to marry her off to a different land. There was even an immortal cat-like creature who helped the Knight and disappeared somewhere in the middle of the book.

There must have been a deeper allegory that flew over his head, but his surface-level reading told him all he needed to know: the Knight saves the day, he gets the woman, and they live happily ever after, while the immortal cat advances the plot until it is not needed anymore and falls into obscurity.

A simple story always had the quality to be rather prophetic. Things were never as complicated as they seemed.

The golden puppy buzzed up the stairs of the lighthouse before Varka, who materialized in front of the stairs a few seconds later, out of breath and bent in half with his hands on his thighs.

“I think I did twenty sprint laps around the graveyard,” he said, sniffing his nose a little. “What have you got there?”

Ripping his eyes off the way his soaked shirt clung to his chest, Flins showed him the cover. “A book about a Knight going on a mission to save a maiden.”

The puppy, which already had an aversion to Flins, seemed to dislike him even more that day. He leaped from the stairs and did some laps around Varka’s feet before biting his boots and trying to pull him away from Flins.

“You have a Knight in the flesh in front of you,” he plucked the book from his hand and used it as a fan. “You don’t need this.”

“Perhaps not today, but who can speak of the future?”

Varka stopped in his tracks. “What?”

“I meant to say that this place can get lonely,” Flins said, pulling nonexistent lint from his pants. “I have to keep busy somehow.”

For a moment, only the chattering of the ghosts drifted in the air between them, incoherent voices rambling about unpaid dues and forgotten promises. Varka crouched down and detached the puppy from his boot, then walked to Flins until he was close enough to touch him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you too much lately,” he said, tipping his head up. “But I thought about you.”

Flins cast his gaze downward, unable to look at the glint of worry in his eyes. “I know. Don’t worry.”

He must look like a petulant child, full of offense and grievances. To make matters worse, even a child having his candy taken would have been more justified in throwing a tantrum. Varka was still there, still trying to placate him, and Flins still felt like the sky could collapse on him.

For how ridiculous that book was, it had managed to drive Flins into the ugly parameters of his reality. Varka’s life was supposed to look like that. He was supposed to choose a nice Mondstadtian woman, give her his heart, and settle there forever to take care of her and their beautiful children.

What was he even doing in that gloomy, forlorn graveyard where the sun never shone, with him? His place was in the land of wine and song, where dandelion seeds fluttered in the air, their only sin being that they could land on the nose of someone and force them to sneeze.

Not between ghosts. Not in a frosted-over land with outcasts and death looming at every corner, forcing children into clans to survive. Not with him.

Flins had every intention to talk with Varka about everything. Although he believed it did not require a conversation at all, because he did not want any false guarantees from Varka, he did want to lay the truth about their relationship out in the open. Clarifying some things and shooting down some of his melodramatic overthinking.

Such long connections with a single human were never meant for him. Humanity as a whole was fine, pedagogical even. There was distance, and a choice of how much he wished to close it, depending on his current predisposition. With just one person, there were too many variables to accommodate, some of them coming from his own demand.

Varka did not place any expectations on him, but he placed them upon himself alone. And who was to say he would not start having expectations for Varka, too?

When he set out for the Knight’s meeting place, he committed himself to having that conversation. But he happened to chance upon something that ticked him fancy.

Outside a meeting room, Flins came to a standstill just before the tips of his boots crossed the threshold.

“… doesn’t understand why you’re delaying your return,” Flins heard Jean. “She thought that since you sent Mika back to the city, and then her and several others to Dornman Port, you’d follow suit soon.”

“Did this really warrant an intervention, though?” Varka said, and Flins could hear the weariness in his voice. “Returning to Mondstadt was never in doubt.”

One of them paced around the room, their steps closing in on the door. Flins faced two possibilities then: either he knocked on the door and announced himself, or… There was an unassuming bench next to the door. He could shift to his candle form and listen in.

It should be an easy decision, and it was. In the next second, he extinguished the flame and placed himself under the bench, squeezed in between a pair of boots.

The sound of Varka’s small laugh faded into a quiet breath, “Maybe your mother is more concerned about when you will be promoted to being the Grand Master.”

“That’s not how it is at all,” Jean said, words coming quickly. “People miss you. They’re waiting for the next festival to see if you’ll come back.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Varka blew out a long breath of air. “How long have you been doing my job? It started long before this expedition. You know it’s just a matter of time before you become the Grand Master.”

“Varka.”

“This isn’t about me not coming back. I’ve told you already that I won’t stay here.” The sentence broke off midway, followed by a soft, but abrupt pause. “I just don’t know if I’ll come back alone or with someone.”

Flins wobbled then, crashing into the leather boot at his side, his flame flashing momentarily before dimming to darkness again.

“… I really hope he did not misunderstand me because of those books,” Jean said. “I love knights, but those who look like a witch, not a wolf.”

After Jean stepped out of the room, Flins did not hang back for long and shifted back into his human form. Courtesy and manners aside, he pushed the door open and entered without allowing any second thoughts to hold him back.

If there was something that could have stopped him in his tracks, it was the way light gathered in Varka’s eyes upon seeing him. Flins did not stop, opting for tackling him into a hug and staying there.

“Whoa, what do I owe the pleasure? Not that I’m complaining,” Varka said after regaining his balance, wrapping his arms around Flins’s shoulders. “…you’re stronger than you look—you’re crushing my ribs…”

“I’m sorry,” Flins said, adjusting his head so his ear would be poised over Varka’s heart.

“You’re still holding me too tight…”

Flins took a step back, but did not let go entirely. He kept his arms looped around Varka’s waist and looked up at him. “Not about that. I might’ve listened in briefly. Purely by accident.”

A small frown crossed Varka’s face, more surprised than displeased. “You don’t make it sound very accidental.”

“Were you honest with what you said?” Flins asked, his voice falling off softly toward the end. “Did you consider taking me to Mondstadt?”

He was taking a leap of faith there, choosing to believe that Varka talked about him and not somebody else. But with the way Varka smiled softly at him and caressed his jaw with his thumb, Flins knew he had nothing to worry about.

“If you want to, then yes,” he said. “Mondstadt is very warm, but there’s a snow-capped mountain so cold even the grass won’t burn. We don’t usually let people go there, but I doubt the weather would trouble you. It can’t be worse than Snezhnaya.”

“I didn’t expect you to think so far ahead.”

“Is it off-putting?”

Varka tucked a strand of hair behind Flins’s ear, cool, calm, and collected, aware of the way Flins’s lamp flashed with the jubilee of a child.

“No, I am just…” Flins trailed off, lifting onto his tiptoes to be a little closer to Varka. “Delighted that you would want to keep me around for longer than I expected.”

“And here I thought I was being too obvious about it,” Varka said, brushing their noses together once, twice. “We’ll make it work. Neither of us has to give up on anything.”

Flins closed his eyes and nuzzled into Varka’s neck, taking quiet delight in the hands moving up and down his back. Yes, he would not mind more of this. More of him.