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He has never been shy about the mess of his skin.
His scars are part of the life he has lived, history written in ropey white where the healing of mages came too late, or not at all. He does not much mind. A soldier without scars is a bad soldier, they say. If that is true, he must be a good soldier indeed.
He does not expect them to intrigue her so, though. He does not expect her to have her own.
(Of course she has her own, but he has always thought them hidden within her, in the way her hands shake on bad days, in the water’s chill that has settled in her bones. The first time he sees the shiny white lines against the pale of her stomach his heart settles somewhere in his gut and he must pull away, feet on the floor off the edge of the bed, hands shaking on his thighs for anger and disgust.
“Nyx,” she says, curled on her knees just behind him, and he cannot speak for nausea.
“It was long ago,” she says quietly, and her hand is steady and and solid (and cold, always cold, cold like the water and the moonlight and the dark) against his bare shoulder. He leans into it anyways, as though the fire in his skin could warm her, could wash away the memories.
Scars are stories, though; they do not disappear for being past.)
.
“What is this one from?” she asks him one night when they lie in bed, fingers cold against the ridge of his shoulder blade. He lies on his stomach, her hair curled neatly around his finger as he turns to her. Her eyes are luminous in the half-light of the moon.
“A, uh, assignment. Southern border.” He almost smiles to remember it. “I got shot dragging Pelna’s sorry ass back to cover. Then I got chewed out for getting shot.”
“A common occurrence?” she asks at the twist of his lips. Nyx shrugs.
“Never been good at following orders.”
“No,” she agrees with a smile of her own. Her finger drift lower, touch upon a latticework mess of skin at his side, and he swallows a yelp at the cold brush of her hand. It tickles. “And this one?”
“A building fell on me.”
“A building?”
“It may have been on fire.”
She raises her brows but does not push. He is glad for that; it is an old memory, older than the Glaive, and the echo of Galahd’s burning still haunts him. Instead her fingers find the sliver of silver at the edge of his right eyebrow. She has sharp eyes to see it in the dim light. “This?”
Nyx laughs. “Libertus punched me.”
“Truly?” Her eyes shine. “Did you deserve it?”
“Oh, definitely. He apologized afterwards.”
She shakes her head, hair swirling about her face. “I do not understand you and your friends.”
“Not sure we do either, princess.”
She settles into his side with a sigh, eyes closing. He drapes an arm over her, and that old revulsion rises in him as he passes over neat white lines laid across her torso.
“You can ask,” she says quietly, eyes still closed. “It is only fair.”
He swallows. “Is that why you asked me?”
“No,” she says, tone even. Her eyes drift open. “I asked for curiosity. I merely–– If you wish to know, I will tell you.”
She so rarely stumbles over her words; it is enough to make him reconsider. He hesitates and sits up, and a moment later she shifts with him, draws her knees up and rests her chin atop them to stare at him.
His tongue is heavy in his mouth. His own scars he speaks of easily, or as easily as he will speak of any other part of himself (which is to say, not easily at all, except when it comes to her; then he cannot seem to shut his mouth). “Was it them?”
She does not need to ask what he means. “Yes.”
In that moment he wants to fight them all, wants to stand before the whole of Niflheim and tear it down stone by stone. He has not felt such rage since the razing of Galahd.
“It was long ago,” she says. He chokes on his anger, and his voice is rough for it.
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“Perhaps not.” Her fingers splay against the bedspread. “But I have grown beyond them. Surely you have scars you have moved past?”
There is a ragged line up his right wrist, a memory of Selena’s death, where he cut the soft inside of his arm open trying to catch her before she fell. There are two neat bullet wounds in his back where Luche shot him. There is an ever-present crackling heat caught in his left palm where the fire of the gods resides, and one day it will consume him.
It is something of a marvel, he thinks wryly, how often she is right.
“Tell me?” he asks, and she unfolds like a flower, silver in the moonlight.
Her scars are faint against her skin, carefully placed where they will not be seen. It turns his stomach, but he looks anyways because someone must, because she does not deserve to be alone in this. She does not deserve to be alone in anything, not again, not ever.
Her hair tumbles loose around her face as her fingers draw lines against the pane of her stomach. “They are the oldest,” she says. “They were for Ravus more than I. Something to keep him in line. A reminder of the cost of insolence.”
Nyx covers her hands with his own. “May I?” he asks. Her eyes stare through him as he brushes them, first with fingers and then his lips, gentle kisses along the smooth-shiny markings.
“That tickles,” she says with a shiver.
“Sorry,” he apologizes, pulling back, but her hands find the back of his head.
“Don’t stop.”
And he smiles against the cool of her skin, does not sit up until he has pressed his lips to each and every scar. There is pink to her cheeks when he straightens.
“Does this one have a story?” she asks him, fingers against a line scored just above his heart.
“Extraction mission. Things got hot and we had to pull out.” That had been long ago, the early days of the Glaive. Lunafreya kisses him there, lips cool and curved.
Ah. So that is how they are to play it.
“This one?” It is messier than her others, a welt along her shoulder.
“A stray blow during the attack on Insomnia.”
He frowns. He had been with her then, and afterwards. “Why didn’t I notice?”
“I kept it well hidden.”
“Clearly.”
She turns to him so he may more easily lean in to kiss the old wound, and when he pulls back she is smiling.
“This?”
Three narrow marks across his lower ribs, spread like claws. “I don’t remember.”
“Really?”
“What can I say?” he shrugs. “I have a lot of scars.”
She shoves him and he goes over, pulls her with him so he might hold her against him, cool and safe.
“What a mess we are, huh?” he asks into the crown of her hair. She rests her head on his chest.
“I cannot think of anyone I would rather be with, mess or no.”
“Flatterer,” Nyx grins, and in return she tilts her head up for a kiss.
“Never again,” he swears when they part.
She sighs against him. “Never again.”
Perhaps it is not their promise to make, but they make it nevertheless. Impossible promises are something of their thing, Nyx thinks.
Then Lunafreya kisses him again, fierce and certain, and he doesn’t do much thinking for a while.