Chapter Text
When she holds Venti's hand in her own, Lumine thinks he feels a lot smaller than he likes to show himself as being. When he stands in front of the mirror for hours at a time, and picks at his skin, shaping and molding it to fit what he thinks it should be, and he stares at the lines of his face, practicing expressions, trying so hard to make himself look like something he is not, has never been- she thinks he looks a lot less... happy. That carefully crafted, perfected grin slips and gives way to cold apathy, and his shoulders slump, and she can practically hear what he thinks of himself in the micro expressions that pass across his face. Lumine thinks he looks more human, like that.
That doesn't mean she likes seeing her friend (was that even the right word, for a bond like theirs?) slipping into a familiar spiral. Down, down, down he sinks into his own mind- and Lumine knows, she knows, that tonight will be another night spent trying so hard just to forget what his own (his own?) face looks like, that tonight Venti will reek of alcohol, and she'll pretend not to hear him sobbing in his room within the teapot, and in the morning they'll pretend it didn't happen, and they'll pretend that Venti is perfectly okay. Venti will smile at her like sunshine, with that familiar emptiness that Lumine has grown so used to seeing on his face, and he'll brush off any of her concerns.
Lumine doesn't want this night to end like that, though.
She may not know the exact feeling- the anxieties that her closest friend faces, the self-inflicted torture of wearing the face of the one person he could not protect- but Lumine knows how it feels to love, and to hate, and to regret. Lumine knows what its like to lose someone and have them run from you- always running, never looking back. It's not quite the same, but it's enough when she tries her very hardest to console her dearly beloved friend.
Of those feelings, Lumine mostly knows regret.
Venti is staring at himself in the mirror again, but Lumine is behind him this time. Her fingers delicately undo his braids, one at a time she expertly unweaves the threads of his hair. Practiced, perfected from all the years, decades, centuries, millennia of having to undo Aether's hair, and redoing it, and combing through the knots and mats. He hated brushing his hair. She'd always done it for him, chiding him and scolding her big brother, the one who shared her eyes, her smile, the dimple on their left cheek, though his was on the right- he'd said she stole his other dimple in the cosmic womb- and with whom she shared all her deepest secrets. She reminisces for just a moment, before drawing herself back up and out of her memories, lightly tugging out a tangle in Venti's midnight-black hair.
"You've let it get all knotted up," she murmurs, "how unlike you." The words are hollow, though his turquoise eyes (the color of the sky in her hometown, she'd told him once) peek out from behind the curtain of his bangs, shifting from his reflection to her own, meeting her molten gaze. A smile, practiced and easy and as fake as they come, crosses Venti's lips, but his eyes are still empty.
"My warrior, your voice is trembling. What troubles you?" he questions her instead, choosing not to respond to her chiding, a teasing lilt to his voice. Though she should be asking him the same, Lumine remains quiet for a moment, thinking over what she wants to ask him, to tell him, to offer him. Her fingers pause, halfway through untangling his second braid. She swallows everything she could've said and instead leans her chin onto his shoulder, peering at him out of the corner of her eyes- not looking into his reflection, but at him. She watches him shake. Tremble beneath her touch, careful to brush aside the hair at the nape of his neck, letting him tense and then relax when his body recognizes she is not a threat.
She offers no words, and just wraps her arms around his midsection. Hugs him tight to her own body, sighs softly and breathes him in. Cecilias, alcohol, and the distinct scent of stardust. He smells good, and she nudges her nose just slightly closer to his throat, even as he tilts his head to let her sink further into him. In that moment, its just the two of them, and Venti's eyes seem to warm up just a small bit- affectionate (he looks at her like she is the Sun and it has been so long since she's known care and love like that). One pale hand reaches up and smooths out her hair.
"I'm here for you." Lumine whispers.
The illusion cracks, just a little, and Lumine welcomes Venti as he turns to bury his face in her shoulder, his shoulders heaving with the effort of restraining unshed tears. Lumine brings her arms back around him, settling into holding his waist, the other hand carding through shadowy locks. She sighs softly, and though Venti's fists scrunch up her dress, she finds that she doesn't mind. When Venti falls asleep in her arms, having exhausted himself with all his crying, she doesn't mind.
Lumine thinks the night has gone a lot better than she thought it would.