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Kaeya is more frigid than the wind.
"What is it you want me to say, Tartaglia? That I love you, too?" His hair whips like the ocean tide at his back, and even as he speaks in sheets of ice, he is magnificence worthy of worship.
Tartaglia swallows the declaration on his tongue, and Kaeya's stare pierces cleaner than a blade.
"You are a fool."
"And you are infinite," Tartaglia says.
His lips curl around a razor-thin smile as Kaeya flares like a storm. "No, I don't need you to lie to me; I only want you to believe what I say. Every moment that we're together, I feel your influence. You push me to grow stronger."
A pulse of energy shines in Kaeya's cryo vision. Tartaglia can feel the cold.
His smile stretches in earnest. "And I love you."
Kaeya ruptures. He vanishes in a blink.
Tartaglia bubbles a delighted laugh. “Excellent!” He spins on his heel. Kaeya reappears centimeters from his face.
The kiss of sharp steel at Tartaglia's throat is a rapacious threat.
"Your love means nothing," Kaeya snarls. "You mean nothing."
Tartaglia can't hide his blazing excitement. He leans into the sword and relishes the sting as it glides through his flesh. Blood trickles down the column of his neck, effortless.
Tartaglia's eyes flutter shut at the tip of pleasure and pain. "Would you end me here, just like this?"
"Well now, isn't that an extraordinary idea? Would you allow it, or would you beg for mercy?" The way Kaeya smiles, Tartaglia can envision his teeth like jagged fangs.
"Beg? Haha, my love, if you were to defeat me, you'd deserve to spill my blood where I stand." Tartaglia draws his hand down the length of Kaeya's forearm to orbit his elbow.
Kaeya doesn't flinch.
"Still, although you're a worthy opponent, I would surely overpower you, and I suspect you wouldn't beg, either."
With a press of Tartaglia's thumb, Kaeya begins to lower his sword, and in that starry stare, Tartaglia can see emotion rise like the sun.
"Would you accept your fate, Captain?"
The calculation in Kaeya's eye is wondrous. It happens quickly; an unseeing, repeated back and forth while he seems to weigh his response. Beautiful, Tartaglia thinks.
His fingers paint a path to Kaeya's wrist, to the hem of his glove, and Kaeya's stare focuses on his own. Flawlessly fatal.
"Tell me something," Kaeya says. "Would you really kill me moments after confessing your love to me?"
"If anyone should get to defeat you, wouldn't it be fitting if it were me? Wouldn't you rather fall to someone who would truly cherish your memory?" He draws Kaeya closer.
The brush of the blade is a whisper.
Kaeya stiffens, and all at once, his expression eclipses in violence.
"Ah, did I strike a nerve?" Tartaglia launches backward. Water bleeds into solid twin edges in his hands, but Kaeya needs no time for recovery. He blinks out of sight, and Tartaglia is ready.
Kaeya reappears. Their swords clatter on impact.
In the heat of battle, they are synchronized in heartbeat and weapon.
They dance until their lungs burn––until they're beading sweat down their temples, backs, and chests. They dance until the shining tip of Tartaglia's arrow glints pink with the rising sun.
Kaeya lifts his hand to summon a shield.
Tartaglia is quicker.
The arrow leaves his bow with a sigh. It sails as Tartaglia opens his eye, but it's the scream that makes the wind tremble.
Tartaglia smiles.
Kaeya's thrown back. His hand slams into the bark of an old tree. The arrow's tooth embeds into his skin. It marries Kaeya there.
Tartaglia lowers his trigger finger, and with a smile, dismisses his bow.
Kaeya bleeds one thin line down the cleft of his palm.
"You know, I'm not one for hunting for sport," Tartaglia says, and his voice is deceptively lighthearted while Kaeya grits his jaw and wraps his free hand around the arrow's base. It doesn’t budge.
"But I do love the thrill of the chase."
As Tartaglia draws nearer, Kaeya tries to free himself with sweet desperation, bracing the sole of his boot on the tree for leverage. Yet, when Tartaglia's shadow eclipses his vision, Kaeya starts to laugh. It's bitter and disordered, and Tartaglia grins with all his teeth.
"C'mon. Don't tell me you're afraid, Captain Kaeya."
"This is your idea of love?" Kaeya asks around a hysterical giggle.
Tartaglia thinks of a story Kaeya had shared one late evening, plunging to the bottom of a bottle: Two teenagers playing dress-up, one outfitted as a promising Calvary Captain and the other as a knight, as a shadow.
The rain––or perhaps tears––descend the shadow's face as he stares at the captain, stained red with anger and the spatter of their father's beating life.
Pyro swallows the sky.
Kaeya is alone in the mud. He loses the only love he'd known.
The curtain falls.
Kaeya is pinned to a tree.
Is this Tartaglia's idea of love?
"No," Tartaglia says. He catches Kaeya's jaw and forces that celestial eye to focus. With his thumb, he smudges Kaeya's lower lip to reveal a line of pearly teeth.
"You need to get stronger, too." He wraps his fist around the arrow and leans beside Kaeya's ear.
Kaeya's breath catches.
"I have a world to conquer, and you must keep up." Warm lips coast against the cartilage, and Tartaglia can see the goosebumps rise on Kaeya's neck.
"I won't let you lose until I say it's over, and, love, I'll be the only one to take you down." He runs his nose against Kaeya's sweat-soaked temple. "But you have to promise me the same."
Kaeya's strains. "That––"
"We were made to push each other, don't you think?"
Tartaglia crowds in, and as Kaeya chokes in shivering agony, he taps his finger on the entry wound. The arrow is stiff. "We'll keep going until the very end." He leans back to smile. "Now, brace yourself."
"What––"
Kaeya shrieks. Their lips crash. In an arc of red, Kaeya's hand falls heavily to his side.
Kaeya's kiss muffles Tartaglia's laughter.
« ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ »
"Childe, what was it like in the Abyss?"
Silence, and then a quiet, "shouldn't you know?"
"No."
"Unrelenting," is his answer. "Vicious."
"Hm..."
"And I don't regret it."
"I see. Then tell me this: Who were you before the Abyss?"
He huffs a laugh. "No one."
"Is that what you honestly believe?"
"Yes," he answers. "And without it, I wouldn't be here.
"I wouldn't have met you, Kaeya."
« ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ »
Tartaglia presses his lips beneath Kaeya's jaw, mouths his way up to Kaeya's ear, and nips around the earring with a quiet clatter.
Kaeya throws his head back. He licks his teeth and murmurs, "We're terrible for each other."
Tartaglia doesn't respond with words. He smears his lips down, down to the juncture of Kaeya's neck, and kisses the soft skin with warm reverence.
"Mm, Childe. Why do we keep doing this?"
"Because I love you," he answers.
His hands carve a path across Kaeya's back to push into the divots and fill the spaces between his spine.
"And I think," Tartaglia whispers as he kisses Kaeya's throat, "that you love me, too."