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Childe, Eleventh of the Fatui Harbingers - Tartaglia to his friends and colleagues, Ajax to those whom he loved - is gone.
Scaramouche always knew that it would happen, of course. Ajax was a human. And humans are disgustingly fragile creatures, he thinks, regardless of what any of them have to say on the matter. They fall ill. They deteriorate. They age. And eventually… they die. Scaramouche was not fool enough to believe that there could be exceptions to the Great Rule. He was not so disillusioned as to think that Ajax would outlast death just because he’d meant something to him. No; if anything, Scaramouche had expected him to be among the first of the Harbingers to die. Somewhere between his insatiable appetite for battle and the Delusion he wore like a badge of honor, his volatility and his utter lack of self-preservation - Scaramouche knew it would catch up to him someday.
He just hadn’t expected to be so affected by it when it had.
Ei had called him too gentle , once upon a time, back when he was new and naïve and knew what it was to cry over something he couldn’t explain. Scaramouche had never thought the words to apply to himself after he had left Inazuma and joined the Fatui; but he supposes that somewhere deep down, maybe they’ve always held some truth.
After all; he wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something soft still breathing within him.
A violent storm lashes the sky above Serai Island, lightning striking against the peaks ruthlessly and whipping the waves into a frenzy far below. Scaramouche stands, still and fearless, with his toes hanging into open air over the crumbling edge of the tallest cliff he could find. He holds his hat loosely at his side as he tips his head back, watching passively as the sky churns above him in a swirling dance of cloud and light. The bells hanging from it chime every so often when the howling winds manage to lift them from the grass, and the fabric brushes against his calves like a whisper. Even as lightning crashes into the earth mere meters away, threatening to tear him down, he does not flinch. He does not blink.
Scaramouche has changed very little over the many years he’s been alive. He does not age. He does not grow. His face does not weather. He has cut his hair, and he has gained scars - but even those are few and far between, his viper-quick reflexes and Archon-like power keeping danger well at bay.
The only thing that is different about him now from ten years ago is what he wears.
There’s a tattered old scarf wrapped around his neck, hung like a noose and with all the same weight. The fabric, once a soft and vibrant red, is now faded and thin with age despite Scaramouche’s best efforts to preserve it. A broken red Delusion is pinned to the scarf by his shoulder, and a dead hydro vision sits just below it, painfully void of the bright shades of blue it once held. These are the only pieces that Scaramouche still has of Ajax apart from those he holds within his memory.
It never feels like enough.
Scaramouche secretly dreads the day the fraying fabric finally rips, or the scuffed glass finally shatters. He doesn’t like to think of how he would react to losing another piece of Ajax. He’s already lost so many.
Scaramouche breathes, and he grits his teeth in frustration when the air stutters in his lungs. His vision blurs for a moment, and his face twists with anger. He’s too old to cry over something like a scarf, he’s been through too much for an empty vision of all things to be what gets to him, but…
It has been many, many years since Ajax’s death.
And with every passing day, he feels himself grow weaker. Scaramouche feels his resolve bowing out, bit by bit. He feels himself falling away like sand through the narrow tunnel of an hourglass, and there is so precious little of him left that he knows he has no hope left of holding onto it.
Without Ajax, something within him has fundamentally changed. It felt as if he’d only just found some crucial piece of himself in the other man when he’d died, and when it was taken back out of him, even more fragments of himself had gone with it.
It had left Scaramouche empty.
It made him achingly aware of the truth of his existence. It was a cruel reminder of his position as a useless puppet that had been thrown aside like a broken toy; a misstep of morality, an experiment; an imperfect vessel denied anything to hold. Not even the gnosis could satiate the ever-growing, ever-darkening crater in his chest anymore. It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough.
Scaramouche blinks as if shaken from a trance as thunder rumbles over the island once again, loud enough to thrum against his bones like an earthquake. Slowly, Scaramouche brings his gaze down to the dark, choppy waves below, watching as they thrash against sharp spears of stone like wild beasts against the bars of a cage.
He’s never liked the ocean all that much. He feared drowning, once upon a time. Scaramouche was thunder incarnate, after all - and when lightning struck the water, however powerful or brilliant, it was bound to sizzle out in a matter of seconds. He knew the dangers that those dark waters held.
But Ajax had loved the ocean more than he loved most anything else. He found comfort in the salty breeze that rolled off of it; beauty in the shapes moving in the water, however large, however dark; familiarity in the starconches of Liyue’s beaches, as if he’d found himself a second home there. Scaramouche had never understood his near-magnetic draw to the ocean; he’d always blamed it on Ajax being a Hydro-wielder. But he’d tried a few times. He’d walked with Ajax on the beaches north of Liyue Harbor when he found a moment between missions, scoffing when Ajax would jog ahead to pick up shells; but Scaramouche never threw aside a single one that the Eleventh had handed to him. The knowing grin on his face, the playful gleam in his blue eyes had infuriated Scaramouche to no ends.
Scaramouche had lost all but one of the shells over time. He isn’t sure how; maybe he’d misplaced them, maybe they hadn’t survived the many moves he’d made between nations over the years. Scaramouche digs his hand into his pocket just to be sure it’s still there, and he doesn’t deny the rush of relief he feels when his fingertips brush the cracking surface of it. He’d been so afraid of breaking it on his journey here.
He still remembers when Ajax had given him this one.
It was smaller than the others he’d been gifted, a few shades closer to indigo than the usual bright blues. When Ajax had plucked it from the sand, he’d looked ecstatic. He’d run back to Scaramouche like a dog with a stick in his mouth; but before he handed it over, he had paused, holding the shell up and squinting one eye closed as if he were trying to line something up. Scaramouche had snapped something at him - he doesn’t remember what - but Ajax had just shrugged easily and tossed it to him. “Not quite,” was all he’d said at the time. “Guess I’ll have to keep looking.”
Scaramouche would come to realize years down the line that he was looking for a shell that matched his eyes.
He’d never found it.
Neither had Scaramouche.
He lets the hat slip from his fingers languidly; the bells sound one last time before the long veils of fabric smother them. Scaramouche doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there, staring into the nothingness like there’s anything left for him to find. It could have been hours, minutes, weeks. It makes no difference to him anymore. The passage of time is meaningless when one has lived so long and seen so much.
… but it’s been long enough now, he thinks.
He isn’t scared. He isn’t really sure that he ever was. All he feels is a halcyonic stillness in his heart. Scaramouche draws in a deep breath that he won't be needing, takes one last look at the sky, and closes his eyes.
And then… he falls.
Scaramouche does not jump. He does not slip. He simply allows himself to drop, collapsing in on himself like he’s been trying so hard not to ever since he had watched from a distance as some nameless Fatui grunts bury Ajax back in Snezhnaya, so far under the ice-bitten earth that Scaramouche had to accept all at once that he would never see or hear or touch him ever again. It had broken him in ways he hadn’t been willing to admit to back then, watching them lower the casket into the ground, knowing irrefutably that he was gone. He couldn’t even stand near enough to say a final goodbye to him. He’d long since defected from the Fatui, and they’d have had his head if they caught him there.
But… now, he’s more than willing. Scaramouche knows that there is no denying what has been broken within him. Because if he hasn’t recovered from that blow by now - Scaramouche knows that he never will.
The humidity is no less stifling as he plummets towards the sea in a free-fall than it had been at the top of the cliff. It presses in around him like it means to suffocate him before he ever reaches the water; and maybe it’s the heat of it fogging Scaramouche’s brain, maybe it’s the thinness of the air that makes him ask himself about asinine things like regrets he might have, as if there’s anything he can do about them now, any point in dwelling on what’s already been said and done.
He’s never been the sentimental type.
And yet, he decides, as he approaches the water; nothing could ever weigh as heavily on his conscience as the knowledge that he had not been honest with Ajax. That he had never told Ajax he loved him; had never even trusted him wholly enough to tell him his name. To the very end, he’d kept Ajax firmly at arm’s length, even as the other tried so desperately to get through to him.
That’s why he’s here.
This is his atonement for all the mistakes he’s made.
An eye for an eye, or something like that, he thinks. If someone like Ajax wasn’t allowed to live out a full, happy life - then what fucking right did Scaramouche have to one?
The salty water rushes up around him eagerly, devouring Scaramouche like it’s been starved. His eyes squeeze shut reflexively, and he struggles against the urge to gasp, knowing it’ll only pull salt water into his lungs and catalyze the process. He doesn’t deserve quick. He doesn’t deserve merciful. This should hurt him. It should be as prolonged and as terrible as he can possibly make it. Part of Scaramouche is nearly disappointed he didn’t find himself bashed across the stony spires when he fell.
Yet for as vicious and voracious as the water is… Scaramouche can’t help but to think it isn’t as cold as he'd expected it to be. It’s cold , sure; but it isn’t frigid like sea water tends to feel on darker days, and it doesn’t sting his nerve endings or burn against his skin. It doesn’t hurt in the way he wanted it to.
It isn’t cold as ice; but like the first snowfall of a mild winter.
It’s cold like the water brought forth by a Hydro vision. Alive. Energetic. Gentle, for all its overwhelming power. It knows where Scaramouche begins, and where it should end. It does not press in ways that it knows it shouldn’t, even as it swallows him whole. It does not overstep. It takes only what Scaramouche is willing to give to it.
And Scaramouche has never been the superstitious sort, but - as he sinks like a stone into the depths, he swears for a moment that he feels someone reaching for him. He hears something, for just a fraction of a moment; a whisper forming around something like his name through the deafening roar of the waves as they pull him under, sad and frightened and so horribly familiar that Scaramouche can’t help but to open his eyes and look.
The salt water stings against his eyes, and he lets the last of his breath slip through numbing lips. He sees nothing but the fading flashes of violet above him, growing farther and farther away as the seconds drag by, pockets of bubbles rising from where he has released them. And still, he feels something; some unseen force demanding that the water relinquish its hold on Scaramouche, return him to the land. He feels for a moment like something is spurring him on - that if he just fights, he’d be able to reach the surface.
He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t. With a ferocity he has never known, he wishes to sink to the bottom and never return.
Scaramouche has no intentions of surviving this. He will not allow the waves to turn him over to the sand until he’s just as cold and lifeless as Ajax had been when he’d found him lying in that Archons-forsaken field, the shattered remnants of enemies and his Foul Legacy armor alike scattered beneath his broken body like rose petals, surrounded by torn earth and the scent of blood and death and loss .
Scaramouche closes his eyes again as if he’d be capable of crying so far below the surface, and before the cold can sap the mobility out of his joints, he reaches for the starconch in his pocket. He holds it as tight as he dares without risk of damaging it any further.
He remembers still how he’d grieved.
He had never cried like that before. Not even when Ei had created and discarded him. The loss of a lover was a soul-wrenching pain that he would not wish upon anyone, however they had slighted him.
Scaramouche had always been proud and stubborn; always vain, aloof. He hadn’t been, that day. He had run to Ajax as if there was any use in rushing to his side at that point, shouting and swearing like if he just said the right fucking words, he’d have opened his eyes and laughed it all off. The desperation that gripped Scaramouche when the reality of the situation had begun to truly set in was something awful.
He had thrown himself onto the ground, pulling Ajax across his lap, clutching him against his chest like he hadn’t already been stolen away from Scaramouche. His blood was already cold and coagulating. It stuck to his chest, to the bare skin of his arms, and it awakened something primal in Scaramouche that he never wanted to know the name of. He had screamed at the sky until he’d lost his voice, threatening every Archon he knew the name of, cursing to Celestia itself, demanding that they bring Ajax back, and how fucking dare they, how fucking dare you, how could you, he was so fucking young, he had a family! Why didn’t you take me instead, I was right here, you goddamn cowards!
And when that hadn’t worked, Scaramouche had settled for curling around his body like if he just warmed him back up, if he just shared his body heat with him, Ajax might come back to him.
He hadn’t.
Of course he hadn’t.
Scaramouche would have given his own life in exchange for Ajax’s back then. He would’ve done anything.
But now that he knows the ceaseless anguish of losing one’s other half, the desperation, the helplessness - he was almost glad that Ajax had been the first of them to die. At least it meant he would never know this particular kind of suffering. At least it meant he’d never have to mourn a lost lover.
Scaramouche takes his first pull of seawater.
It rushes into his lungs like gravel, sharp and unforgiving, burning the whole way down his throat, and he coughs uselessly against it; every inhale just drags more of it in. Scaramouche clutches the shell to his chest. His pulse is already dying from a frantic flutter to a sluggish thump. A sense of all-encompassing calm comes over him, and while he’s never felt it before - he knows just what it means.
It won’t be long, now.
He tries to get out one final sentence, even if there’s no air left in his lungs, even if no sound will escape him. Scaramouche—no, Kunikuzushi tries to form the shape of an I-love-you he had never had the courage or the grace to share with Ajax in life on his lips with the last of his strength. He’s been too numbed by the cold of the ocean by now to manage it, his body quickly growing unresponsive. Kunikuzushi gives a bittersweet smile. Of course the universe wouldn’t let him off so easily. If he hasn’t said it by now, it will make sure he can’t absolve himself of it at the last second.
Even as death sweeps up to meet him like an old friend whom he’s dearly missed, Kunikuzushi holds stubbornly to the starconch. It comes to him with a familiarity he is not at all surprised by, and he welcomes it as it wraps its way around his throat.
Love is a cruel thing, Kunikuzushi decides, as the last fragile threads of his awareness bleed away into the bottom of the ocean.
But he does not regret having loved.
He would never regret having loved Ajax.
It was worth the heartache. It was worth death to have known him at all.
That night, the thunder on Serai Island quiets to a faraway rumble. The lightning fades, and the waves calm from their frenzy. It is as if the land itself has gone into mourning, though none of the locals or the fishermen seem to know why, or even know what it has lost. It stays that way for nearly a week, and all of Inazuma wonders at the strange phenomena. They’ve never seen anything like it before, they say, and no matter how many adventurers go to investigate, they come up empty-handed.
The Traveler will find the hat on the cliff, some days later, after hearing of the strange turn the weather had taken and picking up a related commission.
They’ll put aside whatever differences they may have had with Scaramouche in his life, and for lack of a better course of action, they will bring it back to Liyue with them, held like some delicate artifact, where they hand it off to the Northland Bank - Childe’s associates - and ask that it be placed alongside his grave. The aging woman at the desk, Ekaterina, will wear a solemn, sad look on her face as she accepts the hat, holding it so carefully it’s as if she fears she’ll harm it somehow. She will then vow to the Traveler that it will find its place by Childe’s grave, and that she will see to its delivery personally.
The Traveler will not respond. They will have to leave before they shed tears on two crooked men with blood on their hands whom they’d never known closely; and still they will hope, to the very bottom of their weary heart, that the two of them are together again - even if only at Tartaglia’s gravesite.
Paimon will float just a little closer to the Traveler’s side for the rest of that day.
They will not speak of it again.
Kunikuzushi’s eyes snap open as a blind panic grips him, and he pulls in a sharp, ragged gasp like he’s woken from some unspeakable nightmare. For a long, terrible moment, it’s all he can seem to do - gasping and struggling to breathe like he’s desperate for it, like he’s trying with every fiber of his being just to catch up. From what, he… can’t seem to remember. He doesn’t remember much of anything at first.
Disoriented and doing all he can not to outright panic at the glaring gaps in his memory, he tries to level out his erratic breathing, and looks around carefully. It takes a moment for his eyes to focus; they burn, for some strange reason, like he’s somehow rubbed salt into them. Eyebrows furrowed, Kunikuzushi blinks until he manages to clear his vision enough to get a read on his surroundings.
The sky above him is soft, painted in shades of lilac and peach and periwinkle like the summer mornings over Inazuma; it looks like home, and his heart aches with it for a moment. But - no, he isn’t in Inazuma. He can’t be. The grass he’s lying on isn’t the same deep green as that of his homeland, nor is it the otherworldly violet found in certain areas; it’s a soft, pale green, speckled with little blue flowers that Kunikuzushi does not have a name for. Birdsong fills the clear air, but he does not recognize their melodies.
He looks up again, hoping to tell by the position of the sun or the moon what time it is; but instead, he’s met with something bright and almost jarringly orange. If it were not such a particular shade and shape, Kunikuzushi might’ve lashed out at it on pure reflex.
Ajax is leaning over him, Kunikuzushi’s head cradled by his hands and his folded legs alike. His ocean blue eyes are foggy as he stares down at him; the smile he wears doesn’t quite reach them, and for a moment, Kunikuzushi can only wonder why. Did he say something? Has he done something cruel? Did he get himself hurt somehow and cause him to worry?
Ajax’s thumb rubs feather-light against his cheek, and he huffs out a humorless laugh as Kunikuzushi’s eyes widen, the last decade of his life rushing back in like a tidal wave over a coastline as he realizes just how long it’s been since Ajax has touched him like that. All at once, Kunikuzushi remembers how he’d lost him. How the grief had eaten him alive, slowly but surely.
How he’d…
“I think I’m supposed to say ‘you shouldn’t be here yet’,” he jokes, sounding so horribly sad that Kunikuzushi feels for a moment that he’s made a terrible mistake by coming to him.
But he knows that he hasn’t. Because as Kunikuzushi looks at Ajax, taking in the curve of his jaw, the fiery color of his feathery hair, the freckles on his pale cheeks, the little white dashes of scars on just about every visible inch of skin that he’s always worn so proudly, no matter how he got them or from what… Kunikuzushi can do little more than stare up at him in awe. He’s beautiful; even more so than he remembered him being. He’s perfect. He’s… he’s Ajax.
It’s Ajax. After all this time - it’s him.
Kunikuzushi had always been so proud in life of his ability to detach; his strength, his control over himself when his emotions dared to get the better of him. But in that moment, knowing that he’s found his way back to Ajax’s side - something in his heart snaps.
He has no pretenses to uphold here, wherever it is that they’ve found themselves; no one to defend himself against, no one to hide from. Nothing left to hurt him. So when Kunikuzushi feels a telltale wobble in his breathing - he doesn’t fight it like he used to. All this time - all these years - he’s done nothing but berate himself for how he’d never let Ajax in, how he had never allowed Ajax to know him as he could’ve. So when the tears spring to his eyes and a hiccup of a sob catches roughly in his throat; he lets it happen. He isn’t going to make the same mistakes all over again. Not if he can help it.
The wistful tilt to Ajax’s lips slips away like it had never been there to begin with, his eyes going wide and a startled look on his face; for a moment, he just hovers, hands pulling back from Kunikuzushi’s face as if he fears he’s done something to hurt him.
Kunikuzushi doesn’t grant him the time to ask stupid questions like what’s wrong or did I say something?; he scrambles to get himself upright and turned around, and launches himself bodily into Ajax’s chest, face buried in the crook of his neck and fingers fisted in his hair as he cries, tears streaking down his cheeks even as he closes his eyes tightly, doing everything he can just to savor the closeness.
Ajax yelps at the collision; but he doesn’t bother trying to catch himself, arms coming up immediately to catch Kunikuzushi by the waist as he hurtles into him like a comet. Ajax goes flat onto his back without a fight, more concerned with keeping Kunikuzushi held close than he is trying to keep them upright. You couldn’t shake me off if you fucking tried, Kunikuzushi thinks, but he doesn’t trust his voice enough to speak just yet.
Ajax buries his nose in Kunikuzushi’s hair, pressing a kiss against the top of his head and all but crushing him into his chest for a moment. He takes a ragged breath, and Kunikuzushi shakes his head, a silent warning that if Ajax starts crying, too, he’s going to be so fucking mad at him for it.
“You weren’t supposed to follow me, Scara,” he breathes out shakily, combing one hand through his dark hair before it slips down to cup the back of his neck. They’re pressed together head to toe - but Kunikuzushi keeps shifting, keeps nuzzling into him like he’s going to get closer somehow, and Ajax lets him. “Not so soon. You had so much time left, sweetheart.”
Kunikuzushi shakes his head as he gives a pathetic sound somewhere between a scoff and a sob, reluctantly freeing one arm from under Ajax’s back to hold himself up enough to look at him. He means to argue; to tell Ajax just how many years had passed, just how many he’d been alive for; but it all falls short of his tongue. None of it is important right now. All that’s important is that, somehow, they’d found one another. So he leans down, and drags Ajax into one of the most desperate kisses they’ve ever shared.
He tastes like clover honey, and while his lips aren’t warm like they used to be - at least they’re moving. That’s more than Kunikuzushi could’ve asked for. It feels almost too kind for him to have been returned to Ajax instead of the nothingness that he’d been born of. But he isn’t about to question it; isn’t about to tempt fate to pull them apart again.
No; he’s going to make up for lost time. He’s going to make up for all the mistakes he’d made over the years that they had spent together, however short they had seemed in hindsight.
Kunikuzushi breaks away finally when the weight of the words on his mind become too much to bear, propping himself up on one elbow, and he smiles - not unkindly - as Ajax chases him up a few inches, whining a wordless complaint at him.
Kunikuzushi cards a hand through his hair, gentle as he can manage to be, and Ajax looks up in something like wonder at him. “No,” Kunikuzushi says, his voice raspy for reasons he doesn’t want to admit to even himself. He leans down, resting his forehead to Ajax’s, and cups his face in one hand. Ajax reaches up, hesitant, and brushes the tears from under his eyes. Kunikuzushi tips his head into it graciously. “No, Ajax, I’ve kept you waiting for too long. I couldn’t stay away any longer.”
“Scaramouche,” he argues, a frantic sort of hopelessness coloring the edges of his voice like he just wants him to understand, and Kunikuzushi sits up fully on Ajax’s hips with a faint, watery smile on his lips.
“That isn’t my name,” he says softly, “it’s Kunikuzushi. And I…” Ajax stares at him, wide-eyed and awed at what he’s just learned, and Kunikuzushi smiles crookedly at him. He brushes his fingertips over Ajax’s jaw, and for a long, painful moment, the words get stuck in his throat. Kunikuzushi hates himself for it. He’s finally getting the second chance he never thought he’d be given - a second chance he isn’t even sure that he deserves - and he’s still being a spineless coward about it.
He swallows around something sharp and thick, and with a deep breath, he pushes himself through it. “I love you. I’m… sorry I’ve never said it before now. It should’ve never taken me this long. I shouldn’t have…”
Kunikuzushi trails off there, and his traitorous brain fills in the blanks for him. Shouldn’t have shut him out so often. Shouldn’t have given him any reason or room to doubt his importance to Kunikuzushi. Shouldn’t have taken him for granted. Shouldn’t have treated him so callously when Ajax was actively showing him compassion and kindness. Shouldn’t have let him die. Shouldn’t have let him die alone.
There are too many to count, and the longer he lingers on it, the more it hurts.
Kunikuzushi lifts his gaze to meet Ajax’s, and all at once, the storm clouds of his thoughts are cleared away. Because Ajax is looking up at him like he’s the reason the sun rises in the morning, the reason the flowers bloom in the spring; and Archons, it’s almost too much for him to bear. Ajax’s eyes start to water, and he grins, and Kunikuzushi almost cries all over again, because fuck, he missed him, he missed his smile, how could he have ever been so stupid as to find it irritating back when they’d first met?
“I love you, too,” Ajax says warmly, bringing himself up onto one elbow to reach for him. He pulls Kunikuzushi closer by his shoulder, kissing his forehead, and it’s such a tender gesture that something in his chest lurches. The trust and adoration that this man has for him is almost overwhelming. “So much more than you know, ‘mouche.” Ajax pauses there, eyebrows pinched, and a look of deep concentration comes across his face. “Sorry, wait. I mean - shit. Kuni - Kunika… Kuna - uh…”
“Kunikuzushi,” he reminds him with a laugh, thumping his knuckles against Ajax’s sternum harmlessly. He doesn’t even pretend to be winded by it - no, Ajax just laughs with him, loud and boisterous as always, and it’s like that sinkhole in the bottom of Kunikuzushi’s chest fills all at once. “You’re the worst. I allow myself to die so I can tell you that I love you, and all that you can do to thank me is butcher my name.”
The little brat doesn’t look sorry in the slightest, eyes twinkling in a way Kunikuzushi wishes he saw more often; in a way that is uniquely Ajax. Not Childe; not Tartaglia. Just his Ajax, through and through.
“That’s alright,” Ajax says airily, pulling him down into another kiss to distract him. His hands are on Kunikuzushi’s hips and his thumb traces languid little circles against his bare skin under the edge of his shirt, and he hates how well it works. “I’ve got time to learn it.”
Kunikuzushi means to argue that it isn’t hard, or maybe make a jab at him about being an uncultured cretin between his mispronunciation of Kunikuzushi’s name and his frankly dismal handling of chopsticks, but - he feels himself relax at that little reminder from Ajax, shoulders draining of a tension he hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying.
Perhaps eternity wasn’t such a foolish ideal to chase, after all.
“Yeah,” he whispers, a softness he hasn’t felt in ages coming over him as he allows Ajax to roll them, one of his hands cradling the back of Kunikuzushi’s head as he lays him out on the grass almost delicately. Ajax’s bangs brush against his cheek faintly as he leans down, smiling, to press a kiss to his jaw. He rests there for a moment, leaning into Kunikuzushi with his eyes closed and lips pressed to his neck, and somewhere between the sunlight and the warmth of Ajax’s hands on him, Kunikuzushi melts entirely.
“We’ve got time.”