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“Don’t you think this is enough?” Lumine chides, only slightly amused at how the wine wobbles in Scaramouche’s cup as he helps himself to another shot. If the liquid could even be called wine—Nahida sure brewed up something awfully foul.
“Not”—he hiccups, dilated pupils shining in the glow of the bonfire—”drunk yet.”
“Huh. Are you sure about that?” Lumine says, but he only bats her hand when she tries to take the bottle away.
A little experiment, Nahida had said, with all the confidence of a cocky scientist who’d blow herself to pieces one day trying to replicate a nuclear power plant in her bedroom. In their shared house, nonetheless. Mr. Scaramouche says he isn’t able to become intoxicated, so I wanted to test the limit of that theory.
Lumine would have thought Nahida more responsible than distilling moonshine in her kitchen. Certainly more than Scaramouche, Mr. I-like-to-blackmail-people-for-fun.
…Is what Nahida did even legal?
Whatever the case, it was a mistake to let Nahida test out the strength of her homemade spirit at their nighttime picnic.
And it was another mistake, indulging Scaramouche in his cocky assertions. He’d gulped it down like water, as if to prove something. Lumine should have cut him off long ago. The scent itself is enough to make her nose wrinkle—his breath, when he’d tried to land a kiss on her lips in a fit of nonsensical mumbling, had smelled more like lab-grade ethanol than anything close to potable.
Too bad Nahida dumped the problem on her. Paimon and her had left long ago, pleading some secret project—the two of them never get up to anything good, unfortunately—and left Lumine with a lapful of violet-haired man, intoxicated enough to rub his cheek against her collarbone without any semblance of shame.
If Kabu-chan saw, he’d be jealous enough to meow up a storm. Their cat was always competing with Scaramouche for… anything, really. Lumine’s attention, mostly. Not that Scaramouche won often, which may make her a bad girlfriend, but how can she help it with Kabu-chan’s large, pleading eyes and weak little mews when he paws at her ankle for pets?
A drunk Scaramouche certainly isn’t as cute as a cat high on catnip. Unfortunately for her.
Then again…
She looks down at him, ponders how unusually docile he’s being, seated in her lap. No hissing, no rude comments, just curled up against her, seeking the intimacy he says he dislikes. Usually, she’d have to be the one to initiate anything; not that he doesn’t want to hold hands or anything, but he absolutely hates asking—despite craving it so desperately, underneath his attitude—so Lumine resigns herself to putting on a little show for him, acting like a needy girlfriend in public just so he can look satisfied with himself when she tugs his sleeve, wraps herself around his arm, whines for a kiss. The works.
It’s a lot of effort on her part, this relationship of theirs. But it’s not as if he can’t say the same.
Lumine gazes at him, eyes soft, heart softer, and sighs. “What am I supposed to do with you?” she says as she tries to pry him off her, dragging him by the collar like she does with Kabu-chan.
Unfortunately, he only clings harder, wiry limbs encircling her. Always has been stronger than his lithe frame implied, his embrace almost tight enough to hurt. The incoherent grumbling resembles his usual surly self, despite him being anything but.
At least the distraction gives her room to pluck the shot glass out of his hand. She does her best to be surreptitious as she sets it behind her, the bottle along with it, and then turns her attention to dealing with the bundle of drunken boyfriend in her arms.
“Saw that,” he slurs.
“Saw what?”
“Saw you take th’ bottle,” Scaramouche accuses, syllables mashing together, sticky and nearly unidentifiable. “Shouldn’t hav’ done that. You’re belittling me.”
“With how drunk you are,” she says, “I’m surprised you still remember how to use ‘belittling’ in a sentence. Correctly, too.”
“Could drink more,” he mumbles, and oh gods, he’s nuzzling her chest now. Maybe his tendency to collect blackmail material on other people is rubbing off on her, because she suddenly wishes it wasn’t so dark; a clear video of this would be enough to embarrass him for the next twenty years.
“We have to go,” she says gently. “Nahida and Paimon will be waiting.”
“Don’t care. They’re sleeping anyway.” He clings on tighter. “Want more of tha’ stuff.”
“No more for you. Definitely.”
“Not up to you.”
His hands are behind her back, fingers tapping along her spine, as though considering mischief. Lumine pushes the bottle and glass even further behind her, keeping it out of his sly fingers. She rests her head over his head, breathes in the cold night, charred wood and acerb ethanol. The slightest hint of his shampoo, like a quiet lotus blooming in the dark, a hidden secret.
“Let’s go home,” she says.
“Dun wanna.” One thing hasn’t changed: his sheer stubbornness.
“Please,” she coaxes. “I want to cuddle.”
He slackens, but only slightly. “Can do that here,” he mumbles.
“It’s too cold.”
“‘M not warm enough for you?”
It’s supposed to be arrogant, menacing, but it just sounds bitter and resigned. His nails dig into her back through the sheer silk of her top, sudden pinpricks of painful heat in the ocean of swirling autumn breeze.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Sure is what it sounds like,” he glowers.
Lumine rolls his eyes. As ever, his old disease is flaring up again. Whenever she expresses a desire that he can’t fulfill, he takes it as a slight against himself. As though he could see to her every need, and when he can’t, she’ll regard him as useless. Toss him aside like a music box that no longer plays any notes.
Old trauma isn’t so easy to untangle, Lumine thinks ruefully, running her fingers through his hair. The strands part like a gentle waterfall, and for a second she thinks about it: running away, the both of them. Away from the city, a cottage nestled in a mountain valley. Swaying blades of grass, flowers as far as the eyes could see, and she’d braid them into a crown of petals for him, tell him that he’s the king of her world—everything, just to see him scoff, but he’d have the tiniest smile afterward, the whole way home. Genuine, too, unlike his trademark smirks.
She could convince him, she knows. Has always understood, the absolute power she has over him, the entirety of his life in her hands when he’d said, You can’t leave me. I won’t allow it. Persuading him to leave wouldn’t be difficult.
But Paimon would get sad. Nahida too. They’ve grown their roots here, and she likes it here. So she closes her eyes, and considers how to get them home. “Come on,” she says. “No more drinking. I want to go home and cuddle.”
A hiccup, then: “I wan’ be the big spoon this time.”
At the absurdity of his demands—it’s dark, he’s drunk out of his mind, she’s tired out of hers—Lumine wheezes in laughter. “But you like being the little spoon!”
“Do not,” he says stubbornly.
“You do,” she says. “You always move around in your sleep unless I’m spooning you.”
“Nuh-uh.” Even without seeing his face, she knows he’s sulking. Can feel the pout of his lips against her collarbone, though he’d get doubly insulted if she called it that to his face.
“You’re right, you’re right,” she says sweetly, giving in—doesn’t she always? “Can we please, please go home so you can spoon me like you always do, my dearest boyfriend?”
“...Fine,” he says, but it’s hard not to hear the note of triumph. “I guess. Since you want it so bad.”
“Bless you, my lord, for your magnanimity,” she says. “You are too kind.”
“Exactly. An’ don’t you forget it,” he says firmly—as firm as he can be, almost about to topple as she pushes the both of them up. Lumine bites back another laugh. Without her to hold onto him, he’d be a millisecond away from crumpling on the floor.
The next few minutes is a test of her patience and maneuverability, trying to deal with a clingy boyfriend while folding away the picnic blanket, putting out the campfire with the water left in her water bottle, and ignoring Scaramouche’s sly suggestion of using Nahida’s alcohol to put out said fire instead.
“That’d burn down the entire park. I’m not in the habit of becoming an arsonist,” she snorts, giving him a gentle flick on the ear. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s still so uneven on his feet, he could almost pass for sober with just that comment alone.
“Neither am I,” he says.
“With that comment?” Lumine teases, presses a smiling kiss to his temple. Heavens, he still smells like liquor. She pulls a face, and says, “You’re a terrible liar when you’re drunk, did you know?”
His protests go in one ear and out the other as she shoves the bottle into her tote bag. She pauses for a second, Scaramouche still leaning on her shoulder. He’s a terrible distraction, especially when he’s close enough for her to feel the sweep of his lashes on her skin, the brush of his lips. Lumine shakes her head to refocus. Digs out the jacket from the tote bag she’d brought. It’s his, but she’d been planning on wearing it. But with the dropping temperature, the sun setting a while ago, it’s better that he wears it. Besides—
“This is so undignified,” he grumbles, chin resting on her shoulder as his arms sling around her neck. She can smell the alcohol on his breath like this, him on her back. “We could just hail a ride.”
“It’s fine,” Lumine says. And besides, she likes being under the crescent moon on a soft night like this, his comforting presence on her back. “It’s a walkable distance.”
“Then set me down and let me walk the rest of the way.”
“I don’t trust you to walk properly.” He grunts, and she continues, “And I don’t want to worry about catching you when you inevitably stumble.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“It’s either this or the princess carry,” she threatens.
“Tch.”
“Don’t worry. Not long now,” she says, jostling her arms to readjust his position. He’s light, thankfully. Not that she was going to tell him that; his pride has been hurt enough as it is.
“I should be giving you a piggy-back,” he sulks, “not the other way around. ‘S dangerous. What if we get mugged?”
“I know how to defend myself, Scaramouche,” she says, amused. “Did you forget?”
“I’d be an idiot if I did,” he mutters.
Lumine can’t help but smile. He’d been such a villain when they’d first met in high school, trying to terrorize her on her first day when she’d transferred. And look at him now: curled against her back like a sloth, brooding about her not letting him protect her. “It was your fault,” she reminds him. “You were really annoying, you know that?”
“Didn’t mean you had to be so vicious.”
“I got suspended for a whole week after, thanks to you.”
“You were the one who attacked me,” he huffs. “I ended up in the hospital with two broken kneecaps. Two!”
“Let’s not dwell on the small details—”
“—small?! Two kneecaps, woman, when I only have two, and you call that small—”
“—besides, don’t I kiss you enough to make up for it?” she croons, and he falls silent.
“...Could do with more,” he allows.
“Duly noted,” she says cheerfully.
“You’d better. Especially when I’ve given you the privilege of dating me,” he says. “You’ll have to spend the rest of your life making it up to me.” His voice sounds far away, a quiet murmur in the night. He’s a solid weight on her back, breath tickling her chin like a sun-touched feather. Ridiculous, Lumine thinks fondly. He’s so ridiculous.
“Take a nap,” Lumine says. “It’ll be a while before we get back.”
“Can’t. If that two-faced whale bastard catches me like this—”
“I’ll kick his teeth in,” she interjects. “Hard enough that he’ll get retrograde amnesia and forget it ever happened.” She’s not even going to try to follow his messed-up logic of why Childe would suddenly appear in front of them in the dead of night, when he should be at home with his siblings. “Promise.”
“With that vicious roundhouse kick of yours?” he says sleepily. “Definitely possible.”
Lumine hums, waiting. His breath falls slower now, softer. Ah, he must have fallen asleep.
“...Don’t you know, idiot? I can’t get drunk,” Lumine mimics, raising her voice in a haughty whine. “I could outdrink you any day, even with whatever weird concoction this is.”
No response, but Lumine doesn’t mind.
She slows her place, taking in the familiar, feeble streetlights. How the yellow incandescent bulbs flicker in a way that had scared her when they’d first moved, but feels comforting now, its rhythm. One-a, two-a, three-a, repeat, to an invisible metronome. Everything reminds her of him. The ambience of the night, whistling wind tugging at her hair like Scaramouche is prone to do when he wants her attention. The milk-grey cobblestone beneath her feet, where she’d almost tripped on its uneven texture and he’d caught her. Scolded her for being distracted, not knowing that it was because strands of his hair had been caught by the wind, shone under the afternoon sun and struck her like stormless lightning.
And now, that same boy is sleeping on her back, arms hanging loosely off her shoulder, head lolled against her neck, the warmth of his skin seeping through her blouse.
The way home is an unconscious thing. Memories pooling behind the heel of her sneakers, dripping with each step, swallowed by remembering stone, and when Lumine turns the corner, she blinks, surprised—
At the windwheel asters lining the path of their front garden, petals spinning like miniature windmills, planted suddenly by Scaramouche one summer because they were her favourite flowers; at the teru teru bōzu hanging from the window, hung this morning when they’d nothing to do, her sitting on his shoulders to tie the string because he hadn’t wanted to get the stepladder; at the glow of diffused lamplight over their door, yellow incandescence highlighting the golden metaled number, ‘13’, chosen by her because it matched his birthday even though he’d complained that it was unlucky—relented anyway, because she said, You have me around to balance out the bad luck, right?
Everything here, memories. Every memory, theirs.
Lumine blinks again, and then breaks into a smile, pleased. When she takes her first step onto the gently curving garden path, it’s familiar. It’s known.
It’s home.