Chapter Text
Flins is very seriously considering interring himself back into his own grave again when there comes a series of knocks from his front door, each one more frantic and uneven than the last, like their owner is doing their level best to break down the door.
He bites his tongue; goes as far as to clap his hands over his mouth as panic rises like bile in his throat. There’s no need; no question had been asked, but Flins still fears his own imaginary response like cold iron fetters around his neck.
He’s not sold on whether or not he’d prefer those iron fetters to his current predicament— he’s pretty sure he’d be rendered speechless or incoherent by the pain, which he wouldn’t mind right now, so that’s a plus— when the knocking starts again, more insistent this time.
“Flins!” A voice shouts, and oh God, that’s not good, that’s Illuga whom Flins can hear, and he sounds panicked. “Flins, are you in?”
Panic swells within him; the reply exits his mouth without his own permission: “Yes!”
The knocking ceases. “Flins? Fuck, are you— are you alright? The Traveller wouldn’t give me details, she just mentioned ‘Ley Line disorder—’”
“I am actively fighting a panic attack as we speak,” Flins blurts, and God, he wants to cut out his own tongue. Wants someone to pin him down and stitch his mouth shut like they did one of Illuga’s old gods; they could use an awl or a needle and Flins would get down on his hands and knees to thank them—
“What? Flins, let me in—”
That’s not a question and Flins wants to weep; he’s never had the same freedom of speech humans were entitled to as much as he’s never felt it to be a cage, but right now he feels like he could fly with his stupid vestigial wings for the freedom that very fact allows him.
“That— That would not be a good idea, Young Master Illuga—”
“Why?” Fuck, that was a question— “Is it contagious? Are you alright? What happened?”
The words bubble up so quickly that Flins is impressed and upset that his answering sentences are at all coherent: “Because I do not wish to converse with you while I am like this. It is not contagious, I am not alright, and there was a Ley Line Disorder.”
There is a long beat of silence and Flins has no need for air in his unreal lungs, but he feels like someone has pried open his ribcage and has just started squeezing whatever unreal organ they could get their hands on. Like they’ve taken measures of rope and have just strung him up by his throat to the ceiling— hanged by the neck until dead, God, please— and Flins wants to cry.
(He can’t remember the last time he cried.)
Illuga sounds afraid when he speaks next, which makes Flins feel so much worse: “What happened?”
Flins feels like a robot: “There was a Ley Line disorder. I was caught up in it.”
(Is this what lying feels like? Never before has an untruth passed his lips in his life, but God, Flins feels like he’s going to be sick.)
“What kind of Ley Line disorder?” Flins automatically begins to reply, but Illuga cuts him off, likely unknowingly: “Flins, I don’t—” Illuga pauses abruptly; Flins can hear him taking deep breaths on the other side of the door. “Please let me in. I’m— I’m worried about you. The Traveller wouldn’t tell me anything, but she— she seemed worried, and I don’t— God, Flins, please?”
(There are no direct rules about “please” where fairies are concerned— there’s no hidden connotations a fairy could take advantage of the way they could with “thank you” or “sorry.” But God, Flins wants to take Illuga by his shoulders and shake him because hasn’t he learned by now that it’s not safe to tell a fairy how much you want something?)
After a moment of excruciating silence, Flins uncurls himself from the compact ball he’d squeezed himself into and meanders across the floor to open the door. His joints don’t crack or wheeze because they aren’t real; he’s a flame at his core and flames don’t have joints and ligaments and bones but he feels so very aware of his unreal ribcage in that moment and the way it feels like it’s curling inwards, piercing unreal lungs and strangling him into silence.
He thinks, absently, that perhaps being waterboarded would hurt less.
He cracks open the door a smidgen; sees Illuga and immediately feels terrible. His Young Master looks a right mess; eyes wide and panicked, hair windswept like he’d run the entire way here— and he seems a little out of breath, too; Flins wonders if he’d sprinted up the old beaten path to the lighthouse— and he’s so, so pale.
Flins closes his eyes and inhales a shuddering breath that he doesn’t need. “Hello, Illuga.”
He’s unprepared for Illuga to suddenly rush forward and envelop him in a hug, squeezing him so tightly that for a moment, he rivals the vice around Flins’ unreal lungs. It’s a pleasant sensation; easing the knot of anxiety that had settled somewhere around Flins’ sternum, but it’s gone all too quickly when Illuga suddenly pulls back, red-blue eyes too calculating as he scours every inch of Flins as if he’s looking for injuries.
“You’re not injured,” he says. He states it like a fact, like he’s testing a theory. Flins shakes his head.
“I am not injured physically,” he assures, because his nature demands that he specify, because unfortunately, he does consider himself injured, even if it’s not a flesh wound. There’s no blood or viscera, but God, Flins almost wishes there was. Blood and viscera can be cleaned up; flesh wounds can be taken care of, careful rows of stitches holding hurt flesh together. Even better would be Illuga’s careful needlework holding Flins together; he doesn’t think he’d mind that, at all. Were he in a more shattered state of mind, perhaps he’d long for it.
As it is, though, Illuga cottons on far too quickly to his unnecessary specification, and it’s not that Flins regrets telling Illuga about his nature (though isn’t it odd, that he hasn’t put two and two together? Flins may use the term ‘a certain nobleman,’ but Illuga is no idiot, surely he knows who that ‘certain nobleman’ is? Flins is not kind about his stories of the Fair Folk, is what he’s trying to say—) but he notices his tells a little too quickly now that he knows what to look for.
“‘Not physically,’” he repeats, and holds Flins at arms’s length as he looks over him again. He seems to have calmed somewhat since Flins has assured him that he’s not about to drop dead, but there’s an anxiety in his voice that Flins wants to be rid of. “What— What do you mean by that?”
A devastated sound tears its way out of Flins’ throat, followed very shortly by a reply he doesn’t want to give: “It is an affect upon my very nature, the way in which I conduct myself and interact with the world. It alters that nature in an undesirable way; therefor, it is an injury.”
He clasps his mouth shut and resists the urge to do something stupid, like bend double and wail. It’s looking very tempting, but Flins isn’t reasonably certain that he has air enough in his unreal lungs for that sort of behaviour, regardless.
“Affect upon your very nature— oh motherfuck,” Illuga says, and his eyes go wide. Normally, Fins would find a measure of amusement in his Young Master’s foul mouth, but all he can feel right now is a mounting sense of dread as the questions come again: “Are you hurt? Is it— is it something to do with the Fae thing? It’s not permanent, is it? Can I help?”
“I am not physically hurt; however I feel like there is a Sumpter Beast standing on my chest,” Flins blurts, and actually goes as far as to clasp his own hands over his mouth, but it’s no use; the words just keep fucking coming. He backs away as he keeps talking, and he wishes he could choke on the words, somehow. Anything to get them to stop. “It is not directly linked to my heritage though undoubtedly it is made worse because of it; I do not know if it is permanent but I hope that it is not; I do not know if you are able to help, Illuga, please, stop asking me questions.”
His voice breaks on the last syllable.
Illuga just stares at him, visibly shocked, and Flins breaks eye contact first. He flees, even, back to the kitchen at the other end of the lighthouse, and he starts boiling water, for some fucking reason. He lights the fire with his own Fae abilities, too, which isn’t something he likes doing, and asks Illuga what sort of tea he wants without registering what the hell he’s doing.
Illuga blinks at him. “Hibiscus, if you have any.”
Flins gets the hibiscus down from the cupboard.
“Flins,” Illuga says softly, and Flins closes his eyes. There’s no question asked; Illuga seems to have taken his impassioned plea to heart, but it’s starting to feel cruel, keeping him in the dark like this, and God, Flins tries so hard not to be cruel.
“The Traveller, Paimon and I stumbled upon an exposed Ley Line,” he explains. “It was… well. It was not in the best of health, shall we say: its energies were extremely disordered. This, of course, attracted every monster in a fifty-mile radius, so I was… distracted—” He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “I noticed the buildup of chaotic energy too late, and was only able to get the Traveller and Paimon to safety. I myself was caught within the blast radius, and thereby ‘afflicted by a Ley-Line disorder,’ as the Traveller put it. Don’t ask me what that entails,” he adds suddenly, sharper than he’s ever spoken to Illuga before, and he immediately feels bad. “No. I apologize. That was… poor.”
Illuga stares at him with wide eyes, and Flins looks away, pulled along on an unwilling trip down memory lane. He considers the speed at which he’d moved to pull the Traveller and her floating companion away from the blast zone, but he’d not been quick enough, and now he’s paying the price for it, with a tongue that can’t lie and lungs that give him no rest.
He feels like layers of his unreal skin have been pulled away, and while he’s no longer on the verge of tears, his chest still feels far too tight for comfort. “‘Don’t apologize,’” Illuga says suddenly, and Flins pauses. “Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?”
Human customs are funny, because they contain things called ‘rhetorical questions,’ questions that don’t necessitate or even really want an answer. For that reason Flins supposes that they don’t really qualify as ‘questions’ to most of the populous, but an answer still forces its way out of his mouth, regardless: “Yes. I am always telling you that.”
The band tightens a little around his chest.
“As you can see, I am uninjured,” Flins says. “My body and mental acuities remain unharmed, though I confess that I am in no fit state to entertain guests. I shall… ask you to depart upon your finishing of your tea—”
“It’s compulsion,” Illuga says suddenly, and Flins freezes. “That’s it. It’s compulsion, isn’t it?”
“It is a compulsion,” Flins answers immediately, and that band tightens so suddenly and so viciously that he grabs at his chest for a moment before forcibly stilling himself.
He adds, almost begging: “Please don’t ask me questions.”
Illuga looks genuinely contrite, which doesn’t help the mess of emotions swirling around Flins’ head, nor the knot of anxiety in his chest. “Fuck, sorry—”
“Don’t apologize,” Flins says, and pushes the mug of tea towards Illuga. He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore, and feels a little too close to a— a precipice of some sort for comfort. He fears that his unreal lungs will burst inside his chest, painting his unreal ribcage in very real and very vivid shades of red. “Drink your tea.”
Illuga takes the mug, wrapping his hands around it. “I thought— I thought you were in trouble,” he mumbles, like he needs to justify his presence there. “Like— flesh wounds, that sort of thing. The Traveller— she wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“I know,” Flins says softly. “I asked her not to.”
He wishes he liked tea. It would be good, he thinks, to have something with which to occupy his hands.
“Oh,” Illuga says suddenly, emphatic, which is how Flins knows he’s clued into the specifics of his current predicament. He looks away. “It’s a compulsion, of course. God, I’m an idiot.” A pause, and then he goes pale. “Oh, fuck. That’s— That’s really bad, holy fuck—”
It’s not good, no, is what Flins thinks wryly. Compulsion to answer is one thing, but compulsion to answer when one cannot tell an untruth is a special kind of cruelty which Flins would not force upon his worst enemy.
“My seclusion makes sense, now, doesn’t it?” he asks.
Illuga looks terribly upset. “How many questions have I asked you since I’ve been here— fuck—”
“I didn’t keep count,” Flins answers, to which Illuga doesn’t reply. He looks quietly shattered in a way that Flins hadn’t expected to see from him, which— in a weird way, it loosens the knot in his chest. “Unfortunately, rhetorical questions are among those which I am forced to answer.”
Illuga takes a few deep breaths, an expression of keen concentration on his face, and then he says, very slowly, very carefully: “I would… I would like to know if I should stay, or leave. I would like to know which is better. For you. Please.”
Flins freezes for a half-second, then realizes that his lungs aren’t seizing in his chest, wound around an answer he doesn’t want to give, and it’s because Illuga hadn’t asked a question.
It’s not unusual for fairies to alter their speech in odd ways— working around a tongue that can’t lie, it’s the sort of mental gymnastics that are expected. For a human to go to such lengths, though, and for Flins’ comfort alone…
He doesn’t know what to do with such quiet care and attention— his first thought is έγνοια, as it happens, and it’s almost funny how perfectly one little word can sum up the absolute mess that constitutes his being, but then and there all Flins can focus on is how that damned band is tightening ever-further.
He’s more honest than he means to be when he replies: “I don’t know.”
Illuga nods very slowly, and a bolt of fear shoots through Flins as he wonders exactly how many of his emotions are painted upon his face for Illuga to see. He chastises himself for the worry— how on Earth would Illuga weaponize that knowledge? Better yet, why would he bother?— but old habits die hard and Flins dearly wants to disappear into his lantern.
“I won’t ask you questions,” Illuga says softly. “I promise.”
“Don’t make promises to a Fae, Young Master,” Flins croaks. He feels his nature very keenly, in that moment. “They will hold you to it, and they will take the skin off your bones as penance if you fail to follow through.”
“I don’t think you’d do that,” Illuga says, ever-stubborn. He hesitates for a moment, like there’s more he wants to say, but a moment later his expression clears and he shakes his head. “Do you— err,” He freezes for a moment, panic caught on his face, then shakes his head, and says: “I… would like to know if fairies are required to go on cleaning-sprees after being given cream, or if it’s an optional thing.”
Flins just stares at him. Illuga begins to turn red.
“I… listen, I didn’t know what shape you’d be in,” he says hurriedly as he begins rutting through the rucksack he’d brought with him. “I was— I was preparing for the worst, but I— people don’t like to eat when they’re injured, Sir Flins, and I know you’re— I know you’re different, but I didn’t— I didn’t want to leave anything up to chance, so I— I brought a bargaining chip.”
He places a full container of cream on the table. Flins’ eyes go wide.
“I… might’ve gone a little overboard,” Illuga mumbles. Flins thinks he’s referencing the size of the cream container he’d brought, but then Illuga goes back to his rucksack and pulls out a jar of honey and what can only be porridge, and he rapidly reevaluates his assessment. “I just— I kind of started grabbing whatever I could find, but, uh— it’s the sort of stuff móðir left out for the húsvættir, but you’re— hah, you’re hardly a húsvættr, are you…”
“I could be,” Flins says softly, because Illuga looks near afraid, and he understands, in a way. It’s never easy to give a memory tangible form, and harder still to place that memory into someone else’s hands and trust that they won’t break it. “If it was something you wanted.”
Illuga goes red.
Flins won’t say thank you, because like it or not he is Fae and every Fae that walks the face of Teyvat has been burned before for such an utterance, but he stands to put every offering away somewhere safe and somewhere chosen, and he hopes that Illuga understands, regardless.
(The cream gets left out, though, and Flins pulls a glass from the cupboard and tries not to notice Illuga’s smile.
He fails, of course. Flins is so very attuned to Illuga’s presence— like a light in the dark. He’s impossible not to notice.)
“Well, I’ll— I’ll just… leave you too it, then,” Illuga says awkwardly. “Since you’re not— actively dying, or bleeding out, you’d— well, it would— probably be best if I… let you be…”
He lingers, uncertain, and there’s longing on his face, something wistful and guilty all at the same time, and Flins thinks he understands. He tends towards a secretive nature, and while Illuga has always been fiercely respectful and protective of his right to keep those secrets, even an idiot could see the hunger for knowledge written across his face.
It’s very Fae of him, and Flins knows himself well enough to admit it’s one of the things that had drawn him to Illuga in the first place. But for all his fairy-like traits, he’s so painfully human at the same time— full of bleeding emotions and a bleeding heart to match, steadfast resolve and determination to do the right thing even when it hurts— God, he makes Flins’ unreal heart ache.
He studies his cupful of cream as he considers his answer— “I… would like to know if fairies are required to go on cleaning-sprees after being given cream, or if it’s an optional thing—” and says, voice barely above a whisper: “If the Young Master wished to stay, I would not be opposed.”
It’s terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time, and selfishly, Flins hopes that Illuga doesn’t know exactly what he’s saying, with a request like that. Hopes that Illuga somehow doesn’t know enough to read between the lines and understand what Flins is really saying— the implicit trust he has in Illuga, not to take advantage of him in the state he’s in— but like always, he senses he’s taken a losing bet.
Old habits die hard— he remembers the Belyi Tsar’s court all-too well, full of cruel fairies hungry for secrets and misery— but Illuga is good above all else, and the quiet realization Flins has when it clicks is enough to force a startled, slightly hysterical laugh from his throat.
Illuga looks up. “Flins?”
He shakes his head. “Just a… passing thought,” he says evenly, and finally looks up. He’s met with Illuga’s red-indigo eyes for his efforts, that devastating combo that never fails to rob Flins of breath and words all at the same time, and his voice is slightly strangled when he says: “Did you— wish to— to stay, Illuga?”
(The fairies in the Belyi Tsar’s court would have ripped a certain nobleman to pieces for such an obviously unsure and longing question. Illuga, comparatively, only goes red before ducking his head.)
“Aren’t you— err, isn’t…” Illuga looks acutely frustrated for a moment, then shakes his head and closes his eyes. “Hang on— fuck, you make this shit look easy…”
He’s quiet for a moment, then says, almost lamely: “I might ask you questions. By accident.”
“As long as it’s not on purpose,” Flins murmurs, “then I find the prospect… less daunting.”
Illuga stares at him like he doesn’t believe him, and Flins huffs a laugh. “Eigi má mín tunga ljúga,” he says, just to mess with him a little, and enjoys the way Illuga’s ears turn red.
He watches him for a moment longer— he idles for a moment, wondering exactly how red he could get Illuga to turn, and how far down that blush extends in turn— and then he adds, almost offhandedly: “Nóttljós.”
“‘Night-light,’” Illuga replies, almost automatically as if he’d translated it without a second thought, and squints at him. “I don’t— I’m— what—” Another frustration noise follows, and then Illuga just deflates and goes: “Hmm?”
Flins laughs, and feels more like himself than he has all day.
“Are you familiar with nicknames, Young Master?” he teases. “By-names, kennings, they were very popular among both your people and mine.”
He tilts his head to the side, waiting to see if Illuga gets it.
“It’s certainly a kinder nickname than I’ve had in the past,” Illuga says, and Flins huffs a laugh.
Perhaps next time, he thinks, and asks Illuga if he’d like another cup of tea.