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Underwater, everything sounds slower, deeper, fuzzier. Vision blurs with the ripples, the world become thinner and thicker at once. The longer beneath, the more sensations fizzle and blend together, the lighter a body feels, the softer it is to live and remember and be.
Flins knows this because he does not need to breathe.
Still, sometimes he wonders what it feels like for a human to drown. What it feels like to submerge and succumb and find the depths cruel and thieving instead of comforting and kind, and he lays his head against the bottom of the full bathtub and pulls the water in, welcoming it into himself, his hollow shell where nothing sits but his elemental core that kicks and fizzles and fights, because fire isn't made to get wet, elemental or otherwise.
It's pains like these that remind him that he's alive, so after he's allowed in enough to fill a human's drowning lungs, he traps it inside himself, still submerged, senses still blurring together into this comforting haze under which he doesn't have to think, doesn't have to feel, doesn't have to be except for this.
His fae heart kicks and hisses and dims as it fights the water inside him, his energy leeching out, head turning cottony, and with his eyes shut, he feels like he once did. Ice cold, carried by waves, flame as dim as it's ever been, and it reminds him that he's alive.
Sometimes, Flins wonders what it feels like to die.
After seven hundred years, he's watched it happen to others thousands, tens of thousands of times. Other fae, other Lightkeepers, knights and soldiers, children and elderly, as justice, as victimization, killed by monsters or illness or other people who will later die too. But not Flins, old as he is.
Now, his heart thrashes in his chest, in his hollow, empty shell. He won't open his eyes. He won't find the glimmer of the moon above him, blurred by the waves. He won't find the faces of soon to be friends or soon to be family or soon to be lovers. Just this, the edge of the bathtub in the lighthouse at Final Night Cemetery, the old, dilapidated ceiling.
He wonders if this is what it feels like. If death is cold and comforting as this. He wonders, wonders, wonders, and feels so alive. So tired.
And then there's the sound of a voice, near or far, he doesn't know, because it's all blurred through the water filling his ears, deep like whale song, smooth and syrupy. A soft collision, more vibration than noise, and the voice comes again, blurry, sounding almost like Flins. His name spoken by friends long gone. Flins, his name spoken by Lightkeepers lost. Flins, spoken by—
"Flins," comes the voice, strong now. Warm hands find his shoulders and haul him up, out of the water, and sound, sensation, emotion comes back. His chest stings, he hurts viciously, everything in him is achy and weak, pulled from this pseudo-sleep back to shore, back to life, back to...
Varka, brows drawn together, still holding tightly to Flins' shoulders, warm as anything.
Flins doesn't gasp and splutter the way a human might, pulled ashore. He just parts his lips and the water pours out, expelled from the place where his wet embers of a heart sit, dull and dim and cold. Pained as he is, aching as he is, he's alive.
"Grand Master," he says, and it sounds strange to his own ears. The ends of his hair dripping. Varka's breath., his heartbeat, too fast. Water streams into Flins' face. He blinks against it, and Varka's still there, blue-eyed and blond-haired and afraid, maybe. Of what, Flins doesn't know.
△
Dressed in sleep clothes worn soft, a towel around his shoulders, Flins finds himself on the edge of the bed that so rarely sees use. The sheets smell faintly of dust. The only wrinkles are where he now sits.
"I don't need to breathe," he reminds Varka, staring at his own perfectly smooth, pale hands.
A weight drops onto his shoulder from behind. Warmth—even through the towel and his shirt—leaches through. Varka's exhale is shaky. His arms come around Flins' waist, firm and strong and scarred in a dozen places. He presses heat into all of Flins' cold places. His chest, his back. His flame, still struggling to burn.
"You're frozen stiff," Varka murmurs. Tighter, he pulls Flins back against himself. Hot, molten, solid. Flins is still caught on the contrast between them. Cold and hot. Inhuman and human. His lack of details. Varka's myriad.
"My kind are adapted to not need warmth."
"Still," Varka says, and cards Flins' still wet hair over his shoulder, off the back of his neck. He feels cold then. Exposed in a way as the leftover moisture cools. Hot breath on skin. His hair spilling over Varka's forearm around his waist. Again, "Still."
"I'm quite alright," Flins says, but Varka's arms only grow tighter. His forehead against Flins' nape. His breath, his heat, his heart. As always, he's unaware of his own effect. Flins' skin hungers. His teeth ache. "You're acting strangely, Sir Varka."
Varka's fingers, tangled in the ends of Flins' hair. His shin, crossed over the bed, pressed tight to Flins' low back. The inside of his other thigh against Flins' hip. He's too comfortable intruding into a fae's space, completely oblivious to the consequences. But, "You have to know what that looked like from a human perspective," Varka says. A long pause. Flins considers.
"I wouldn't have died from such a thing." On the contrary, he does it to feel alive.
"Even so." Now, Varka's hand climbs to the center of Flins' chest, right over his heart, his core, faint and flickering, fingers still tangled up in wet hair. He doesn't say anything else. For once in his life, the Knight of Boreas is perfectly quiet, but for his breath and his beating heart. For once, Flins isn't sure how to fill the silence.
△
He lights a fire. His hair is still drying. His skin still holds a bit of stolen body heat. Varka looks on, seated on one side of the ancient sofa, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, hands clasped. Quiet. Watching. Strange.
Flins straightens when the fire is going, wiping dustless hands on dustless pants. "Would you care for a drink?" he offers, because that would form familiar ground.
But, "Not this time," is the reply, and it seems, somehow, that Flins has scared Varka for real this time.
Delicately, he sits on the other side of the sofa. Varka's gaze follows him, sticks on his shoulders, his hands, his eyes. There's no neat script for whatever this is, no outlined etiquette for what happens when one is caught pseudo-drowning in a bathtub. Were he human, Flins would have died or been institutionalized. He supposes he can understand Varka's reaction.
"I've worried you," he says.
"Promise you won't do it again," Varka says, meeting his gaze with this stormy kind of intensity. The Knight of Boreas, demanding an oath. He's always been a force of nature. Flins has wanted him terribly for what might pass to some as a long time. To him, it might as well be a handful of moments.
Still. He presses his tongue into the points of his teeth to curb his instincts. What a promise, he's being asked to make. "For your sake," he says, inclining his head. "I suppose I wont." Inside his chest, his core is still cold and flickering, like a flame beneath too strong wind. He's weak and exhausted but alive, alive, alive. He likes the strain. Likes the pull of sleep he finds it so easy to succumb to.
"This isn't the first time, is it?" Varka asks.
"No," Flins agrees. "No, it is not, but I promise you I'm quite alright."
"And you won't do it again," Varka presses, because Flins' first response could hardly pass for an oath.
He holds Varka's gaze, steady and unblinking, and remembers the way it felt to drown. Sighs, a human habit, long ago learned. "No," he says. "I promise I will not."
And Varka deflates. "Good," he says, rubbing his hands over his thighs. He offers a shaky smile now. "That's good."
Again, Flins inclines his head, careful. "You never did name the purpose of your visit."
"Oh, well," Varka hesitates, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. He smiles, eyes scrunching closed as he laughs a little, too loud for the quiet of the cemetery. "I wanted to see you, is all."
△
Something in Varka must be wired wrong to be this warm to a fae. Now, he runs a comb through Flins' hair as he sits on an old, creaky wooden stool. He's careful, starting from the bottom and working his way up for the knots can come undone easily, and Flins is willing to bet his collection that Varka isn't half this gentle with himself.
"I told you about some of the kids back in Mond," Varka says, and the backs of his fingers brush the nape of Flins' neck. It leaves behind the faintest phantom of warmth, and Flins sinks his teeth into the insides of his own cheeks, watching Varka's reflection in the small, dusty mirror that stands up on the vanity. His eyes, lowered and blue. That scar on his cheek, the shadow of stubble on his chin. His myriad details. Human, each one.
Flins' finds himself missing the long sleep. The soft haze of it like a blanket. The gentle rocking of waves. The warmth when he wakes. He's so tired. It's difficult now, to keep his back straight.
"Yes," Flins says. Fingers card through his hair, pleasant, too pleasant. He's so tired, drained of energy, elemental or otherwise. He finds his eyes falling shut. He finds his true form beckoning, but he pulls his threads tight, head and heart and body aching. "You've told me some."
"Razor has hair as long as yours." A laugh, the ha ha enunciated. "Since he was raised by wolves, it gets a little... ah, messy, sometimes. So I'm pretty good at this stuff. Try to be, anyway."
"Yes," Flins murmurs to the black behind his eyelids. "It seems you are." The prongs the comb skim his back. A hand settles on his shoulder, and perhaps he's only imagining it, but Flins can feel Varka behind him, warm where the sea had been so cold.
Those Lightkeepers' faces... it seems he's forgotten them now, but he remembers their voices, their warmth as they pulled him from the sea. Your name, they'd asked, do you remember your name? But he'd left himself behind a long time ago, so he'd looked at them and said in a voice rough from lack of use, Chudo— No. No, he'd said—
"Kyryll."
His eyes peel open. His hands folded in his lap. The dusk blue of these clothes. His back against Varka's chest. The warmth of that, the hand still on his shoulder, the beating heart so close to his ear. He's so tired. He hungers so deeply.
"I apologize," Flins says, and the warmth stays. His eyelids are heavy. "It seems I've missed what you said last." He doesn't look at Varka's reflection in the mirror. He finds that he doesn't want to see it, doesn't want to know what he might be feeling. A little longer, and he'll straighten up. A little longer, so long as Varka doesn't pull away.
What a greedy, selfish thing he is. Oh, but he doesn't care, can't care, is too tired to care. He just wants...
"Are you tired?" Varka asks, and Flins can feel the vibration of his voice through his back.
"I suppose," Flins admits, and finds his voice slurred and murmuring, though he tries to perk back up. Varka stays a warm, sturdy weight behind him, and he finds it difficult to stay alert in any capacity. Behind his eyes, the blurred faces of old friends await. A life long lost, warm as this, coaxes him gently down. "I suppose... I am... somewhat."
A soft laugh. Whose, he isn't sure. A faceless Lightkeeper claps a hand over his shoulder, familiar, familiar, familiar, and it's been a long time since Flins has dreamed. He's forgotten how... Forgotten...
"That's alright," says someone. The Lightkeeper, maybe. Is that right? "Rest now, Flins."
△
When he stirs, he finds himself in his elemental form, flame somewhat recovered. He's been tucked into the bed, leaned up against the pillow, the edge of the blanket pulled over his glass, and something about it strikes him as funny. And then he remembers that Varka is here, that Varka had seen his pseudo-drowning, that Varka had brushed his hair and held him, and... Tucked him in, apparently.
Flins returns to his human form, covering his core with vague approximations of bone and flesh and skin and clothing until he's standing at the side of the bed, careful hands smoothing the faint rumples in the sheets back into place. A bump in the blanket where his lantern had been. Twin dents where he and Varka had sat, earlier in the night. Day? He doesn't know.
He allows himself one more moment of hesitation before he steps out of the bedroom.
Varka's still there in front of the burning hearth, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, reading the book Flins had left out on the table. It's something on the history of coins and currency throughout Teyvat, and he can't imagine anything about it piquing the Grand Master's interest.
"Sir Varka," Flins greets him as he comes out, retaining his composure even as he's reminded of body heat, pressure, gentle fingers and rough skin and details, so many details. A heartbeat at his back, vibrations of a voice, a soft touch sweeping his hair away from the nape of his neck. His teeth, aching. His skin, hungering. "You'll have to forgive me. I've been an inadequate host."
"Flins," Varka says, returning the book to the table and standing up. Standing up like the old etiquette says to when someone eligible enters the room. Foolish human, Flins thinks, and then shoves down the faint, possessive instinct to demand Varka's eyes, attention, time to remain his. Foolish fae.
There's a short, loud laugh. Ha ha, enunciated, flashing white teeth. Flins is quiet. Flins is a selfish, voracious thing.
"I'm glad you're rested," is what Varka says before anything else. "It wasn't so bad waiting around anyway; you've got... ah... some interesting things to read!"
Fool. The thought is fond, then, and somehow that's worse than the wanting, the coveting, the vicious, fae possessiveness he can blame on instinct and shove deep, deep within himself. He's wanted this Knight of Boreas for a long, short time. It wouldn't do to be fond of him too.
He laughs faintly, hiding his mouth behind his collar. "There's no need to lie, Grand Master," he says, "I won't be offended by our differing taste in books."
"Yes well..." Varka rubs the back of his neck, stubbled and messy and smiling, and Flins could swear to any number of things, the Archons, Celestia, the old Tsar, anything. How he craves, how he hungers.
"Are you alright, Flins?" Varka asks, serious now, dropping the hand from his neck, meeting Flins' gaze, his eyes blue as anything. Sky, sea, the thin veins beneath skin carrying blood back to the heart.
"I am, yes."
"And what happened earlier... Can we talk about it?"
A pause. Perhaps it's finally time for Flins to scare the Knight of Boreas away. He nods faintly. "We can, yes."
△
And when it's done, and Varka has wrung out his answers and understands, at least to some extent, what he says is this: "It seems you've got your own scars after all."
"Pardon?"
"Look at me," Varka says, not quite answering, gesturing at his arms, roped with scar tissue, his cheek, his throat, everywhere beneath his clothes where he must've taken some injury or another. "I'm covered in them, but you... What happens when you get hurt, Flins?"
"My elemental energy depletes," Flins says. "I might become... a candle, rather than a bonfire."
"But it isn't visible," Varka says. "It isn't visible at all."
"I..." Flins blinks. "...Suppose not."
"So where does it go?" Varka's warm hands on his shoulders again, drawing him closer until he collides with heat and fabric and a strong, sturdy body beneath. Flins' eyes stay open. His gaze sticks to the azure of Varka's coat. "Where does all that hurt go, if we can't see it?"
Inside, he supposes. Inside his cold, aching chest, where his flames aren't enough to burn it away.
Varka's heart beats, steady. Finally, Flins shuts his eyes, fingers hooking in fabric, mouth pressed to Varka's shoulder behind layers of fabric. Fool, he thinks again, and imagines himself biting down, sinking his teeth in, leaving a mark. Varka has never seemed to know not to get so close. Flins is always having to hold himself back by the throat.
"I'm not as plagued as you seem to think," he says. Varka's arms don't loosen one bit. "I drown. I sleep. I wake. That's the end of it."
"Still," Varka says, simple as that. His voice goes terribly soft, up close. For such a powerful man, he has such capacity for gentleness. "Still."
Flins wants him. Wants him viciously, voraciously. Is so, horribly fond, dangerously fond. He's overly conscious of his teeth in his mouth, the voice in the back of his head whispering mine, mine, mine.
"You shouldn't get so close," he warns, knowing full well he'll be disregarded. Now, he thinks. Now will be the time. Now, he'll finally scare Varka away. But he just finds himself crashed a little bit closer.
"When you have you ever been something to fear?" Varka asks, laughing a little, warm and rich and low, and Flins' fists clench tight in the fabric of his coat.
"You don't understand at all, do you?" He sinks his teeth into his own flesh so he won't sink them into Varka."You don't know what I'd do, if you'd let me."
Now, there's Varka's inhale beside his ear. His hands, sliding up Flins' back to push him gently by the shoulders. They look at each other, Varka's gaze flickering from eye to eye, nose to mouth, searching for something. His laugh is more air than sound. "I don't see what the problem is," he says. "What reason is there for me to stay away?"
It's been a long, short time. Varka isn't immortal. Better scare him off now than think about him for another century. "My want, Grand Master. My greed, my desire. All of the things you make worse each time you get as close as you do."
Varka's mouth parts. He exhales roughly. "...Forward, aren't you."
"I've certainly tried, Sir Varka."
"Well," Varka says. He pats Flins' shoulders now, dusting him off like he'd dust off a rowdy child. He smiles a little, laughs and says, "Well, that's alright."
Foolish, foolish human. What is he thinking, what is he doing? Flins looks at him for a long while, unsure what to make of that easy smile, that easy acceptance. "I'm afraid I don't follow," he says.
"I mean it," Varka says, stilling now, smiling softer. He tucks hair behind one of Flins' ears, and he's always doing that. Always getting close, always touching his hair, touching him, easy and unafraid. "Whatever it is that you want, that you are, I'm alright with it."
"You don't understand what you're getting yourself into." Flins is cold, cruel, craving. He slides his hands up Varka's chest, gripping his lapels.
"So show me," Varka says, shrugging, smiling. "Like I said, I'm not worried, not at all."
And he would say something like that, wouldn't he? Flins yanks him into a hard, biting kiss.