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The last thing Illuga remembers from his mission before being knocked out over his head is a blindingly blue flash of light and a mind-numbing, soul-scratching pain on the side of his stomach.
And so, those flashes are the first thing to assault his memory the moment his eyes snap open. When he sits up it feels a little alien - his hands don't feel connected to his body and his head is incredibly woozy and there's bandages wrapped around his waist that he doesn't remember there being. Instead of pain he feels disconnection; eyes darting around what should be a familiar room now doused in uncertainty, looking and blinking until one of the doors push open and in steps one of his squad members.
Rollon almost jumps out of his skin when he spots him. “Captain!” He rushes over, eyebrows furrowed and short-cropped hair sticking out in every place as if he's been zapped by some malfunctioning mechanism on his way, and he pushes Illuga down over his pillow and squeezes his arm in a please-don’t-get-up way. “You're awake! Oh, I'm so glad! I-I’ll have to notify Mr. Nikita, and Mr. Flins, and -”
“Sir Flins?” Illuga interrupts, wondering only for a split-second why his voice comes out in the sort of croaky way it does. “Is he here?”
Rollon looks at him with tearful eyes and sniffs a little, as if he isn't a good amount of years older than Illuga. “Mr. Flins was the one who brought you back, Captain.”
When Flins sits by the edge of his bed he does not seem to want to look at him. Illuga chalks this up to being half-naked and unkempt on his bed. Flins chalks it up to something completely different and yet refuses to say what. Instead, he glances at the flooring and clasps his hands in his lap and says, “You are a reckless man, Young Master Illuga.”
Illuga doesn't say anything.
Flins doesn't, either. Usually he is the one to quip at every action, every word, laugh breathily under his skin at a story, speak in the sort of elegant and refined manner odd enough that only the older men at Piramida can appreciate.
A good amount of silence passes before Illuga swallows down the unwelcome tightening of his chest and says, “Thank you.”
Flins smiles as he finally turns his head towards him, and then leans in a little, arm resting less than an inch apart from Illuga’s. “Do I get a reward for my heroics, Master? It wasn’t so easy carrying you back all the way on my own.”
“I’m not that heavy,” the young Captain argues, a little weakly. Feeling self-conscious in his bare skin, he pulls the blanket over his arm and lies down enough for it to cover him to the chest. His hair fans out over his head, forehead visible enough for Flins to easily spot the area he’d been knocked on. It doesn’t look pretty, but it doesn’t look lasting. “Why are you staring?”
Flins blinks. “Ah, was I?”
“Blatantly,” Illuga confirms. He shakes his head til some of his bangs come tumbling back over his eyes, and then looks at Flins with a miffed expression. “Where’s Aedon?”
“Banging himself up against the door to this room,” Flins says a little too straightforwardly, and barely holds in his laugh when Illuga immediately sits back up and stares at him with worry, every trace of self-awareness drowning out of his body. “Ah, no, I said that in mere jest. My apologies - Aedon is with your father. He’s awaiting your return very politely.”
“Politely,” Illuga repeats to himself, before he sighs and his head hits the pillow again. “Good. That’s…good.”
Flins hums in response.
It’s silent again, then. Other than the lingering wisps of wind outside of the open windows to the room and Illuga’s strained breathing, not a trace of sound lingers to interrupt. The Fae simply sits in his chair and thinks about teasing the Captain and the Captain himself simply stares at the ceiling and blinks.
A hundred thoughts pool his body, enough for him to remain lost and rigid enough to not notice when Flins slips away from his seat. He feels the cold of the taller Lightkeeper’s skin press against his own and instinctively moves to give him space on the bed - it’s not anything new for them to share intimate space, having already spent countless nights keeping the other in check after failed expeditions, post-gatherings, post-drinking - so when Flins sits clandestine with his legs crossed and shoulder devoid of his intricately sharp coat it is an easy thing for Illuga to simply lean in and rest his head against it.
“The Wild Hunt has been getting more excruciating to deal with by every passing day,” Flins says, if only to break the uncomfortable silence. “It seems to me that new countermeasures will be due soon.”
“Was I the only one to survive?” Illuga asks, and then for the first time in his six-hundred-year old life Flins wishes he wouldn’t have brought that specific subject up. “Or was it only me that you could bring back?”
The Fae inhales. “By the time I passed the area, you were the only one left breathing. Spared by your abilities, I thought, before coming upon your body and seeing the deathly pallor of your face.” Flins’ eyebrows scrunch up, as if he’s reliving the scene again. “You seemed gone, Young Master. It made me think whether the poor constitution of my mind in the circumstance was affecting my logic.”
“And yet I live,” Illuga breathes, and he doesn’t sound as if he needs to. The taller man notices his expression change, one from horror to grief to acceptance in less than a minute - it’s nothing new, after all, even if it shouldn’t be. “Why should I live?”
“Aedon is smart,” Flins says, slow and gentle even when he knows it’ll do nothing to change the younger man’s perception. “He flew my way the moment I crossed the area. I fear if it wasn’t for - “
“I can’t sound grateful for surviving.” Illuga clenches his fists under the covers, and Flins places his hands over his as if to ease him off it. And it’s no easy thing for the man to accept an intimacy past sitting shoulder-to-shoulder - the action only makes the Captain tense up more. “Not when every single person that counted on me is dead again.”
“Young Master Illuga-”
“I should have died with them,” Illuga forces out, and there's a hint of finality in his tone that Flins doesn't argue back against. He simply sits there and waits.
Waits. For what? Illuga can't tell. His chest feels looser, and his breathing comes more easily as soon as he says those damning words. He looks away from the Fae.
“It's always when I'm acting like a petulant child that makes me think about how incomprehensibly patient of a person you can be,” he murmurs, and then moves off of Flins’ shoulder to lie down on his pillow instead, shutting his eyes almost forcefully. “May I have a moment to myself.” It's not a request.
“Of course,” Flins replies, and the lantern he's always carrying on his person flashes into existence. Carefully extracting himself from the bed, he whisks himself inside the purple-blue firelight and stays, anyway, leaving no room for Illuga to argue back or kick him out.
The Captain can only stare in barely-concealed mirth.
It was supposed to be an easy, low-risk scouting mission - his first venture since making Captain that hadn’t been with the Nightmare Orioles. It had given him a little bit of anxiety. The thought of new people. Having to build up a new synergy between a new group of Lightkeepers - a group that hadn’t gone easy on him either, in retrospect; having already come to their personal conclusions of Illuga’s constitution as a barely-fresh recruit having been handed a title on a silver platter. Having never been there to see why, having never given him the chance to do anything to earn a modicum of respect before they’d all walked off to their deaths, laughing and arms around each others’ shoulders all the while. Leaving him to carry the rear, Aedon perched on his lamp, crowing fractured lullabies in the night to keep him company.
So why should it matter? Why should he care?
It’s not the first time. It certainly won’t be the last. It’d be easier to disregard his overwhelming emotions down to being young-blooded and inexperienced and yet he feels it all down to stomach, down to his legs, catching blood in his throat, and it’s not enough that every single time he seems to lose someone he himself only gets away with the easiest of it.
Just a happenstance. Just a bad day. Just a single knock to the head and suddenly he is not the light he wants himself to be. Needs himself to be. In the overwhelming purples and blues of corruption, he has to himself only a small, single vow.
But Flins has already told him how hard it is to become a Sun in those passing, listless days in Piramida, much less the small golden moon clutched in only the shaking palms of his hands.
When he wakes up the next day Flins is sitting next to his bed on a low stool, dressing his stomach with a new roll of bandages, specks of blood that are most definitely not his own coating his long, gloved fingers. When he brushes over his skin Illuga takes in a sharp inhale at the cold plastic, and the Lightkeeper turns to look his way.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice small and gentle. “Did that hurt?”
“I nearly kicked you out last night,” Illuga says, eyebrows scrunching up a little, avoiding his question entirely. “Why are you being nice to me?”
Flins cocks his head as if he’s been asked a very thoughtless question. “That you would ask something as such from a friend feels like a grievance I cannot overlook, Young Master.” There’s a small smile playing at the edges of his lips, and Illuga feels a blazing red hotness pool into his eyes at the sight so suddenly he looks down.
For some unnamed reason, friend stings a little. “I…I apologize. For last night.” Illuga watches him from the corner of his eye as he finishes wrapping him up, taking off those accursed gloves and tossing them with the older bandages before he places one hand under his chin, tilting his head up. “Flins, I-”
“All is forgiven.” As quick as he’d touched him, Flins takes his hand away and stands up. “Come - Mr. Nikita will have my head if I keep him any longer from you.”
The Nightmare Orioles - and by extension, his father - only let him go back into his room only after they’re done personally examining him, and it feels nice to be fussed over in that moment - the lingering anguish in his chest persists, and yet it dims itself down a considerable amount by the time he’s lying in bed again.
Flins takes his rightful place, sitting next to his bed, helping the Captain take off his sweater before he lets him tuck in. Places a hand on his chest, right above his heart.
“You heal fast,” Flins observes, feeling his heartbeat jog a little faster under his palm. “Perhaps youth is good for only that.”
“I’m not that young anymore,” Illuga says wearily, placing his hand over Flins’. “Do you like younger men, Sir Flins? Is that why you enjoy teasing me?”
“Ah, Master Illuga, ‘tis a bold claim to assume that I would not like you either way.” He bats a suggestive eye at him, and Illuga cracks into a smile - the first one this whole week. ”There you go.”
“You…” If Illuga’s heartbeat feels even faster, Flins doesn’t comment on it. He simply moves closer, making the Captain inhale in a quick breath. ”Flins, I-”
“If I may be so bold, Young Master,” Flins murmurs, “Being this self-sacrificial, does it not scare you?”
“Why should it?” Illuga asks, softly. “Saving people has never been a strong suit of mine, as you can see. Being self-sacrifical…it feels like a long, overdue duty.”
Flins looks as though for once in his life, he has no answer. Doesn’t know what to say. He’s been here every single time to see Illuga fall, get back up, fall again. This feels like a turning point he has never prepared himself for, and yet-
“Flins,” Illuga says. “I want you to watch me bury our comrades.”
It’s the first time he’s buried his own failures. The shovel feels heavier in his hands than it should be, but he can chalk it down to his tiredness and general state of being. The dirt raking under his fingernails feels as though it should have always belonged there. Under his skin, a constant reminder to wear inside of himself.
Aedon circles over this head, only really coming down to press warmth into Illuga’s chest and force him into continuing. Flins watches him from afar, hands reverently clutched behind his back and still.
It’s only when he’s kneeling down in front of the gravestones that he comes forward, if only to help him stand back up again. Not a single word is spoken on their way back to Piramida, and yet it feels as though a thousand burdens are lifted off of Illuga’s shoulders. The guilt lingers like a forgotten lover, and the more hopeless ideas loosely inhabit the back of his mind. These he will never let go, and yet never try to think of again - it’s a fruitless promise from the get-go, Illuga knows. But he can try.
It’s the only thing he knows he can do.
He’s barely closed the door behind him when Illuga speaks. “Sir Flins.”
Flins turns to him, tipping in a mock bow. “Master Illuga.”
“Thank you for taking care of me these past few days,” the Captain says, a tone so monotone, as if he’s granting his subordinate leave. “You’ve done much more than was ever necessary, and I will do my utmost to pay you back for it all eventually. I-” And then he stops himself, shaking his head.
“You, what?” Flins tilts his head, walking towards him with a purpose in his gait. “To suddenly treat me this formally - there must be a reason, yes?”
“None whatsoever,” Illuga says, and it feels forced. “We’ve always bantered this way. I…must recover on my own for the rest of it.” He shakes his head again. “Feels wrong.”
“Wrong?” Flins repeats, nearly spitting the word out, and the sudden shift comes off strong - Illuga freezes in his place. Flins takes one look at him and stiffens, too. He drops his hands to his sides and turns towards the door, and -
A hand grabs him by his sleeve, pulling him back. “Flins.”
Flins. No title, no tease. Just his name. The Fae inhales.
“I keep messing up,” Illuga says, the tremble of his voice devolving into a huff of laughter so out-of-nowhere that Flins nearly snaps his neck in looking back at him again. “I keep messing this up. I keep bringing doubt into this, I keep thinking that you’re just being you. I keep-” He pauses, as the laughter finally dims down and dissolves into a hot pool of tears, dripping down onto the sleeve of his coat before the young Lightkeeper can force it all back. “I don’t want this to be wrong.”
“What is so wrong?” Flins whispers.
Illuga lets his sleeve go, in favor of waving his hands around fruitlessly. “This. Whatever this is. I wish to be your friend, and my selfish heart wants more. I wish to have you stay, and yet-”
“Illuga.” Just Illuga. No honorifics, no title. “Illuga, I am here.”
“Of course you are,” Illuga nearly spits back. “Making things difficult all the more for me. Can’t even let me grieve in peace. Can’t let me sleep it all off, can’t let me self-destruct even a little bit.”
“Is that supposed to be bad?” Flins asks, and then Illuga’s grabbing him and pushing him onto his bed as if he’s suddenly gained an iron will, and the action itself is so surprising that the Fae can only let it happen - watches Illuga climb over him, forcing him down on his back, breath hot and heavy in his ear:
“You won’t let it be bad. It pisses me off.”
Despite everything, a crooked smile forms itself onto Flins’ lips. “Oh?”
It’s here that Illuga finally cracks. “I think I love you.”
Flins feels like putty under him. “It took you a considerable time to come to that conclusion,” he says, teasingly. “Are you quite sure?”
“I want you by my side,” Illuga presses a kiss to his pointed ear, and Flins shuts the hell up. “I want you to keep calling me Young Master, if that makes you happy.” Another kiss, to the skin of the neck under his earlobe. “I want to know if I can be selfish, if only with you.” A third kiss, to the edge of his mouth - and this is where he stops.
Flins looks at him with blue fire and red warmth all at once, the crescent of a moon against the backdrop of a star-less night sky. “You have always had the option to be, Master Illuga. I fear that you simply just did not see it.” He wraps his arms around Illuga’s neck, forcing him close. “It is a hard thing for me to love someone.”
“Will you let me choose, nevertheless?” Illuga asks this as if it’s a prayer, a plea.
“I’ll watch you die, one day,” Flins murmurs, as Illuga begins to pepper kisses down his jaw. “I adore you so, Master Illuga, that I cannot even manage the thought. And yet, you'd put me through it even so?"
“I can never truly die,” Illuga mumbles, almost jokingly, taking one of his arms away to place at his own waist, where the injury is now scabbing over. “You know this. I’ll be with you, through Aedon, through the sun in the sky, through the dirt under my nails.”
Flins runs his hands reverently over his skin, careful and holy. “Ah, so you finally realize it?”
“Hm?” Illuga’s too busy, now.
“That you have always been that - the Sun.” Flins sighs when Illuga’s teeth catch onto his neck for a split second, and then he’s finally unlatching himself from the fae’s skin and leaning over his face. “All golden light and warm.”
Illuga catches his lips. Bitten through with years of anxiousness, snarling right down into Flins’ body with new assurance. And the Lightkeeper kisses him back just as fervently - the arm on his waist making its rightful way back around Illuga’s broad shoulders and holding him there, rooted between his legs and over his chest and tongue snaking into his mouth.
It feels real. It feels alive. It feels like everything Illuga did not know could be real.
And somehow, it all amalgamates into familiarity.