Chapter Text
For a single terrifying moment, Cor was certain he would be burned alive. The fire swallowed them up, catching on his clothes, writhing around him to welcome him into an embrace from which he had no hope of escape.
The fire didn’t burn him. It danced around him instead, just as it did with Ardyn, his magic protecting them both. Within the fire like this, despite the death and devastation it had already caused, he could see, for the first time, what it was that made the blaze beautiful.
It was the same thing that made Ardyn beautiful, of course: the same ethereal quality of the flames, the way their light flickered a hundred colors at once, just as his hair did. Light and heat and the feel of magic and power that flickered in the corners of his eyes, the touch against his skin like an embrace, beautiful and soft and…
Cor looked at Ardyn, at his whole body full of light, coming apart at the seams to reveal what lay beneath. His skin was translucent and revealed embers banked where he should have had muscle, his hair had become a flaming halo, his eyes sparks, and he laughed smoke and steam out his open mouth. When he let go of Cor’s hand, Cor grabbed reflexively for his shoulder, and held on as the other man raised both his hands up to the fire. It came to him when called, wreathing around his arms and sinking into his skin. It made him brighter, until his whole outline glowed.
“Hello, little one.” Ardyn’s voice was soft, his whisper warm like returning home at the end of a long, cold day to find a fire lit to dry your feet off. “You got very out of hand, didn’t you?” Whatever the fire said, he understood, and Ardyn shut his eyes. “I know, darling.” He sounded...kind, like he was coaxing some wild animal to come closer, to bind its wounds. “There’s so much you could do and see, but it’s time to stop. It’s important.” Kind, but hard. Like the old healer who took care of the children training in Shang, whose voice would go low and hard when they were ignored, who would make the kids take their medicine even if it tasted terrible. A hearth fire, of course, healing and safety but the insistence of doing what you must. “Are you ready?”
Ardyn’s whole body was unravelling one flicker at a time, turning into fire and starlight and smoke and embers, his nails black coals as the inferno raging inside him started to fight its way free. Cor could barely hang onto his shoulder, but he hung on tighter, as if to say without words please stay.
Ardyn took in a deep breath, and the fire began to contract. At first, it was just paler, and then all at once, as if reeling in a rope, it began to tighten, curl, condense and fill Ardyn’s body like water being poured into a jug. It filled him up, topped him off, and still it grew brighter, until he was just the faintest outline of shadow against the blaze of magic and fire that he was swallowing up.
“Ardyn,” Cor finally begged. His voice was hoarse, his throat dry, his whisper paper-thin against the storm around them. “Please.” Ardyn turned toward him, the fire still coiling back bit by bit into his embrace, and he reached out to take Cor’s face in his hands. They were barely there, more a memory of touch than actual contact, a promise of a presence rather than the totality of it.
“I’m right here,” the fire said in Ardyn’s voice, laughing as his eyes turned to cinders and his mouth to lava and he fell apart, piece by piece shattering into the fire. “Why are you worried?” His voice was less human now, more like the howl of flames and the crackle of firewood.
“Do you...” Cor trailed off. It almost hurt to speak the fire was so hot; his tears burned away instantly on his face. “Do you really want to stay?” If Ardyn had still had a face, Cor was sure he would have furrowed his brow. As it was, he was just a slightly-brighter outline against the ever-decreasing fire that had maybe once been shaped like a man. “Do you want to go back?”
“Of course I want to stay.” Ardyn sounded shocked that Cor could even ask such a thing. “Why would I not want to stay?”
Cor wan’t sure what made him do it. If it was terror, or the feeling of being helpless, or the desire—the helpless, crazy desire—to at least do it once. He grabbed the outline of Ardyn’s face in his hands and with the panic of only the truly insane or the truly desperate kissed him square on what he hoped was the mouth.
Ardyn made a noise like thunder, and popped fully back into life between Cor’s hands, his eyes wide and astonished. Cor stared at him. Ardyn stared back.
The fire had gone out completely, nothing around them but for charred wood. There weren’t even any embers, no coals. Ardyn stared at him, still blinking, seemingly astonished. Completely speechless.
“Oh,” he said at last. “I,” he began. Stopped. “Is it supposed to feel like being on fire?”
“You are on fire.”
Ardyn looked down at himself, puzzled. “No I’m not.” He wasn’t. They were, in fact, no longer on fire. They were standing there, the both of them, naked. Ardyn looked up at Cor, his brilliant eyes burning as the last smouldering, banked coals of the fire. “Can we do it again, so I can double check?”
“Sure?” Cor wheezed, and when Ardyn kissed him—
It really did feel like being on fire.