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The wind off the bay had a way of needling through even the best fur mantle.
Varka didn’t mind the cold; it kept the docks honest. But he minded the box he is bringing right now. It was too pretty for Nod-Krai's specialty. Too pretty for his hands. Pale lacquer, stamped with a gold coin of a moon and a plum branch so fine he was afraid a fingerprint would smudge it.
The Liyue merchant had pressed it on him at the end of a long conversation about ore, ballast, and spring deliveries. Goodwill, the man said. Festival, reunion, sweetness after the dark. He had bowed with his hands together, palms lifting as if offering incense. Varka had bowed back a fraction too deeply, unused to gifts so delicate they made him feel clumsy. He had been given blades, medals, signed papers, a fur cup that smelled like smoke. Never something that looked like you should whisper to it.
Maybe he should share it with someone.
Then here he is.
The lighthouse rose out of the fog like a rib of bone. Brass pipes clung to its spine, hissing. The glass room at the top glowed where his lover tended the slow, steady flame that made ships keep their distance from the teeth of the coast. Varka took the iron steps two at a time, boots ringing. The box was tucked against his ribs. It had not cracked. He had checked it three times.
He found Flins had a quill in hand when Varka entered his work room. A thin line of ink trailed from the point where he had paused, head turning toward the heavy door, hair catching lamplight until it looked like frost suspended mid-fall. The flame in the lantern burned a muted blue, tempered for calm weather. Shadows moved softly over the glass.
“You’re back early that I've thought.” Flins’ voice was even, composed. It warmed at the end without permission.
“Oh, wind turned,” Varka said. He set the box down on the worktable beside a bowl of thin shells, offerings from the shore. His hands looked wrong around it. The box belonged to smaller palms and tea chatter. “And I was given something, love.” He touched the lid with a knuckle as if to prove he hadn’t crushed it on the way up.
Flins’ gaze flicked to the gold stamp. He studied the plum branch as if memorizing a face. “Is it from Liyue?"
Varka grunted, half a laugh. “You know everything.”
“I read the trade slips you leave under my wine glass." Flins set the quill in a glass and leaned back, arms loose atop his ledger. “What is it?”
“Well..." He lifted the lid. Inside, the pastries lay like coins in a chest, each round puck pressed with a design. There were lotus, rabbits, a stylized cloud. The smell rose quickly, richer than he expected. Warm sugar, something nutty, something that wanted tea. He turned one in his hand, careful as if he were palming a songbird.
“They said it’s called a mooncake,” Varka explained, turning the delicate pastry over in his hand like it might crumble beneath his thumb. The thin crust glimmered faintly under the lamplight, gold against the scarred breadth of his palm. “I immediately thought of you, somehow. Pale, round, too pretty to eat.”
Flins went very still. The faintest breath fogged the air between them. His lashes fluttered, silver catching the light, and for a moment he only stared—like he wasn’t sure whether to be offended or flattered. A heartbeat passed, then another.
He blinked, slow, deliberate, the corner of his mouth tugging up like he refused to give the smile more than a thread. “Did you just calling me round?”
The question was quiet, but the faint edge of amusement in it made Varka’s throat tighten.
“N-No!” Varka said, grin spreading, slow and unhurried as sunrise over frost. “I—I mean…” His voice tripped, flustered despite himself. “I’m calling you my mooncake.”
For a breath, the room was only the sound of the lantern’s wick sighing.
Flins’ composure wavered as if a small wave had slid under it. He glanced at the pastry and then at Varka, and something in his eyes unfocused, softer than candle wax. “You cannot keep kidnapping terms of endearment from passing merchants.”
“I can,” Varka said, lethal in his steadiness. “And I will.”
Flins’ laugh cut short and bright. He pushed his ledger away. “If you are going to name me after a cake, you will at least eat it correctly.” He rose, the long lines of his coat falling clean around him. When he stepped to the table, his shoulder brushed Varka’s sleeve. The contact was small. It unfolded in Varka’s chest like a map he had been trying not to read.
Flins reached for a small knife used to trim wick ends. “I think you do not bite into it like bread,” he said, as if instructing a child. “You cut it and share it. That is the point.”
“Sharing, huh." Varka repeated. He did not move away. “I understand that.”
Flins cut with precision, a cross that gave four neat quarters. The filling showed, deep and glossy, a brown so smooth it reflected light. In one of the cakes, a yolk sat like a coin of amber, perfectly centered, as if someone had hidden the moon inside. Flins’ face softened almost imperceptibly at the sight. “Lotus seed paste,” he said. “And the yolk is salted. It is supposed to be the moon.”
“Fitting,” Varka murmured. He did not say for whom.
Flins picked up a quarter and held it out. Varka did not take it. He opened his mouth a fraction, too lazy to lift his hand or too curious to test the way Flins would react. Flins huffed, a single amused breath. He lifted the cake to Varka’s mouth anyway, careful not to brush his lips, but close enough that warmth built between sugar and skin.
Varka bit. The crust broke like a quiet secret. Sweetness spread slow, fuller than he expected, less cloying than it smelled. The filling clung to his tongue, smooth as silk. Salt came a beat later, a small amber burst that made the sweetness sensible.
"Well? Does it meet your grandmasterly standards?” Flins asked softly.
Varka swallowed. “It's warm.... and dense? You take it slowly or you regret being greedy. Sweeter the longer it stays in your mouth.” He let the point land. He watched Flins catch it. "Yeah, I'd say it's pretty good."
Color rose in Flins’ cheeks like a private frostbite. He did not look away.
Varka reached past him for the knife. The brush of his forearm to Flins’ ribs was accidental in the way a tide is accidental. He grab another quarter, fingers precise despite their size. This time he held the piece to Flins’ mouth. Flins did not lean in. He lifted his chin slightly and let Varka set the pastry on his lower lip. A crumb clung to the corner. His tongue caught it. Varka felt the catch more than he saw it, like the faint click of a lock.
The Lightkeeper chewed, eyes on Varka’s throat. “Do you know the festival connected to this?” he asked when he had swallowed. His voice had lowered without his permission. “It’s about reunion. Families who cannot be together look at the same moon and cut cakes into even portions, so they can imagine the distance is as short as a slice, not an entire ocean.”
Varka blinked, caught off guard by the ease of Flins’s knowledge. He’d expected a polite thank-you at most, not a story. “You’ve read about this before?” he asked, voice pitched low, as though speaking too loud might disturb the small, warm silence between them.
Flins gave a faint hum, wiping a crumb from his lip with his thumb. “Yes," he said simply. “I used to read anything that spoke of light. Lanterns, fire, stars, festivals—humans are always searching for the same thing, aren’t they? A way to make distance between them bearable.”
Varka’s gaze lingered on him, on the calm curve of his mouth, the faint glow from the lantern painting his hair silver. “You make it sound like you’ve lived it,” he murmured.
“I’ve lived long enough to miss many things,” Flins replied, and for a heartbeat, his smile faltered. Then he looked back to the mooncake between Varka’s fingers.
Varka did not move. The room’s sounds grew loud in the pause. Brass breathed. The wick cracked. Somewhere far below them, the sea threw itself on stone and fell back, stubborn as ritual.
He took another quarter and lifted it to Flins again.
“Then… may I call you that? My mooncake,” he asked, voice low enough that it barely crossed the distance between them. “From now on.”
Flins’ lashes lowered with an artist’s arrogance. “Slow,” he said. “If I am to be your mooncake, you will not eat me in a mouthful.”
Varka’s mouth curved, heat lazy in his blood. He lifted the piece, and this time he did not avoid brushing his thumb over Flins’ lip. Sugar dusted the pad of it. Flins breathed in, shallow. He held Varka’s gaze and closed his mouth around the cake. The crumb on his lip stayed. He made no move to take it with his tongue.
That leaving him a crumb in the corner of his lips, then Varka's pressed his thumb lightly to that corner, not quite inside, just there on the soft part that no armor could cover. He took the sugar back. Flins’ breath hitched as neatly as a knot.
“You’re making a mess,” Varka said, so calmly it felt like a dare.
“I know you will clean it for me, gladly,” Flins said, calm.
Flins’ yellowish eyes deepened, a dark lake under moonlight. He reached without thinking and caught Varka’s wrist. He brought the thumb to his mouth once again with ceremonial slowness and licked the sugar away. His tongue was deft. He did not have to be; he chose to be. The touch was nothing. It rewrote Varka behind the ribs.
“Sweet,” Flins said. “Too sweet.”
Varka did not pull his hand back. “You said the yolk was salted.”
“I'd say it's balance,” Flins murmured. He didn’t release Varka’s wrist, only traced the faint pulse there with his thumb, idle, deliberate. “Liyue people have a sense for symbolism. Sweetness and salt, reunion and parting.” His tone shifted—half curious, half amused. “Do your soldiers get something similar when they return home?”
"Hmmm...” Varka’s voice surprised him with how low it had gone. “We have meat pies, beer, and bad songs.”
Flins’ mouth curved, elegant and cruel in its softness. “How charmingly barbaric.”
“You’d like the songs.” Varka slid the last quarter toward him. "They're honest."
Flins regarded the piece but didn’t take it. “I’d like to see you drunk and honest,” he said lightly. “Perhaps then you’d sing for me.”
“Haha! Greedy.” Varka’s eyes drifted down to Flins’ mouth and back again. “Finish your cake first, love.”
Flins leaned in to where's Varka is standing, like the tide erasing a footprint. He did not reach for the pastry. He reached for Varka, the front of his coat brushing the commander’s belt, the small of his back aligning with Varka’s palm as if the hand had been meant to be there all along. Varka closed his fingers just enough to say yes.
“So, you named me,” Flins said, almost conversational, as if discussing harbor taxes. His breath touched Varka’s cheek. “Be careful. Names have consequences.”
“I am careful,” Varka said. He wasn’t. He never was, not with this. “My mooncake.”
Flins’ laugh folded into something softer. He lifted the remaining quarter, and instead of feeding it to Varka or to himself, he raised it between their mouths. “Share,” he said, as if the lesson mattered. Varka obeyed.
Their teeth met the crust at almost the same instant. The pastry broke cleanly into a fault line that left crumbs on their lips. Flins did not step back. He chewed, eyes on Varka’s, and the salt arrived a moment later, waking the sweet. They chewed and swallowed together.
The taste lingered longer than it should have, sweet clinging to salt, warmth to breath. Neither spoke. The space between them tightened, not closing but drawing taut, as if the next word, the next inhale, might pull it shut. Flins’s gaze flicked to Varka’s mouth, then back to his eyes—a movement so slight it might have been imagined, if not for the way his pulse shifted in the hollow of his throat.
Varka leaned in until the world narrowed to sugar and breath and the outline of Flins’ mouth. He could have taken. He had never lacked for force. He waited. The waiting made the heat banked, purposeful. Flins’ fingers curled against his coat, delicate and ruthless.
“Still too sweet?” Varka asked.
Flins tilted his head, the faintest hum slipping from him as if he were tasting the air rather than the memory of sugar. “Ask me again after the second cake,” he murmured.
“There is a second," Varka said. He should not have sounded so pleased. “And a third. The merchant was generous.”
The words hung between them, soft. Outside, the wind dragged across the shutters; inside, the lantern hummed, patient and gold.
“Then we should write him a thank-you letter,” Flins said, thumb moving in slow, absent circles on the table where his hand had rested. The gesture was thoughtless, but it drew Varka’s eye all the same. “For international diplomacy.”
The corner of Varka’s mouth curved. “Sure, later,” he said. His voice was even, but something in it had changed—thicker, lower, softened by the gravity that filled small spaces when both hearts knew what they were pretending not to name.
He did not lower his voice further. He did not need to. The room had already learned them, their silences, their rhythms, the way one breath always followed the other.
The last of the crumbs were gone. Flins slid the empty box aside and tapped the worn couch near the window with two fingers.
“Sit.”
Varka obeyed without the friction of a second thought. The couch gave a quiet complaint under his weight, leather warming under fur and steel. He rested his hands on his knees and watched Flins consider him the way a careful man considers a map—already knowing where he intends to go.
Flins came close. He did not ask. He gathered his coat behind him with a deft flick and settled himself across Varka’s lap, one thigh braced along each of Varka’s, knees snug to the outside of his hips. The fit was exact, unhurried, deliberate. Heat moved through the layers of cloth as if the room had taken a breath. Varka’s hands rose of their own will and found Flins’ waist, wide palms spanning it, thumbs resting near the fine line of his spine. He held as if the position were a law of the lighthouse rather than a choice.
For a few seconds neither of them spoke. The lamp hummed. Brass ticked as it cooled. Flins’ pupils were enormous in the low light, drinking him in.
“About the name,” Flins said at last, voice soft enough that Varka felt it more than heard it. “I think, I might like it.”
Varka’s eyes brightened boyishly in spite of everything else he knew how to hold back. “Right?!” he said, slow, as if this were a victory he wanted to taste. “I knew you would! It’s… kind of cute.” His mouth tipped into an unarmored smile. “Perfect for you.”
Flins’ lips curved, small and entirely ruinous. He shifted a fraction closer, the slide of his thighs over Varka’s making the couch whisper. His hands climbed Varka’s shoulders, fingers settling at the collar where fur gave way to skin. He leaned in until their breaths mingled, tea-warm and sugared.
“Say it again for me,” he whispered.
"Huh?!"
Varka’s grip firmed, not possessive so much as steadied by something larger than himself.
“Hmm... My mooncake.”
Flins’ eyes dropped to his mouth. “Good boy.”
The kiss landed like a seal pressed into wax—clean, decisive, claiming by craft rather than force. Flins kissed sweet, the composure still there, shaping the pressure, making Varka feel each detail: the soft give of his lower lip, the brief catch where sugar had dried, the patient opening that followed. Varka tasted lotus paste first, smooth and mellow, then the quick bright line of salted yolk that made the sweetness right. It was exactly what they had just eaten, transformed by breath and tongue into something far more specific.
Varka chased the taste without moving too fast. He let the kiss lengthen, let it gather small new angles. His thumbs stroked once, slow, along the narrow bracket of Flins’ waist. Flins hummed, not a sound so much as a pulse against Varka’s mouth, and deepened it by a careful degree. His knees pressed in tighter at Varka’s hips, a quiet claim of leverage that turned height into balance.
When they parted, it was only far enough to breathe. Flins kept his forehead close, temple brushing the line of Varka’s brow as if they had always been measured to fit.
“Again,” Flins said, barely above the lamp’s whisper. “Properly.”
Varka’s smile reached his eyes and warmed there. “.... mooncake.”
This time Flins met him with a kiss that was softer at the start and heavier by the end, like a tide settling into the shape of the shore it prefers. Varka tasted the last ghost of sugar; Flins tasted the clean heat lifted from Varka’s mouth and made a quiet, pleased noise for it. One of Varka’s hands left Flins’ waist and cupped the back of his head, fingers threading into pale hair with a care that did not match their size. The other hand stayed at Flins’ middle, a promise of steadiness rather than a restraint.
Flins drew back by a breath. “It will stick,” he said, tone composed but eyes unguarded. “Names have a way of doing that.”
“I want it to stick,” Varka answered. There was no space in his voice for anything but truth.
Flins settled his weight a little heavier on Varka’s thighs, a comfort disguised as a test. The couch took it. Varka did too. Outside, the sea worked at the rocks with endless patience. Inside the circle of lampglow, Flins let his eyes close and leaned in again, the faintest smile still on his mouth.
“Good,” he murmured. “Then keep using it. I don't mind."
“Okay, mooncake,” Varka said into the kiss that followed, and the word didn’t feel borrowed anymore. It felt like it finally knew where it lived.
Flins was the first to draw back, breath light and even again, though his mouth still carried the soft shine of warmth. He studied Varka for a long moment—the broad-shouldered commander seated beneath him, still dazed from sweetness and proximity, eyes bright as if the kiss had lit something inside. The corners of Flins’ lips curved, almost shy, almost smug.
“Are you staying the night, Mr. Varka?” he asked, voice quiet, more invitation than question.
Varka’s answer came with a low hum, simple and sure. “Sure, if you’ll have me.”
Something unguarded flickered across Flins’ face—relief, tenderness, maybe both. He leaned forward just enough that their foreheads brushed, silver hair ghosting over Varka’s cheek. “Of course,” he whispered, a smile blooming against the hush. “Then don’t move. I’ll turn down the light.”
"Wait a minute... what are you planning this time, Kyryll?" he titlted his head, eyes tracking Flins' movement.
Flins rose, reluctantly, and the lantern dimmed under his touch until the room held only the golden afterglow of evening and the faint scent of sugar. When he returned, he curled back into Varka’s lap without hesitation, resting there as if the whole lighthouse had been built for this one quiet night.
While Varka exhaled and thought of the word again—mooncake—how it meant reunion, how it meant coming home, how it meant this: sugar on his tongue, salt in the air, and a reason to stay.