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“I need you to babysit Tartaglia for me,” Arlecchino declared to Flins with the same intensity as she had when she had vowed vengeance against Dottore for Columbina’s disappearance.
The Lightkeeper in question blinked at her from the doorway of his Lighthouse.
“Tartaglia, as in… the Eleventh Harbinger?” he tentatively clarified. Due to the entirely unexpected nature of her visit, he hadn’t had time to put on his Ratnik uniform to look presentable, and instead stood in front of her in the pressed lavender shirt and matching waistcoat he usually wore beneath it, his lantern still resting inside on the small table he used to examine the gemstones in his collection or assemble a new bone puzzle. “Is he not… an adult?”
Flins had never met Tartaglia, but he was under the impression that, although some had been inducted at young ages, all of the Tsaritsa’s Harbingers were currently adults - adults that did not require babysitting.
“Yes, he is. He is also a holy terror in human form,” the woman in front of him stated with the utmost seriousness. A strange emotion glinted in her red-cross eyes - something that, if Flins didn’t know better, he would pin as desperation. “Normally, I would not ask such a favor of you, but I have just gotten word from my children that they need assistance with an urgent matter, and you are the only one here that he cannot break by the time I return.”
Flins had questions about this very alarming requirement. Many questions.
“Are you certain that someone else would not be more suited?” he ventured to ask. “Perhaps Miss Nefer? Or Grand Master Varka?”
Flins and Arlecchino were no more than acquaintances. They had both been involved in the defeat of Dottore, and that was the extent of their relationship. Before this moment, he could count the words exchanged between them on one hand. Surely, he was not her only option.
“Miss Nefer and the Grand Master do not have the durability and patience that you possess.” Arlecchino did not blink, her tone unwavering and solid with certainty. “I will only be gone for the day. Whatever recompense you wish for this favor, I will grant it.”
Moons above, she was desperate. An offer like that from a Harbinger was no trivial thing.
“I shall think about it,” Flins replied faintly. “… Babysitting Tartaglia, you said?”
~
When Flins approached the Nasha Town Adventurer’s Guild the next morning at the time agreed upon with Arlecchino, he wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it certainly wasn’t the lanky redhead he found lounging back against the counter, who greeted him with a grin and a casual wave.
Each of the Harbingers Flins had met at that point - Sandrone, Dottore, Arlecchino - always held some air of authority and intimidation, their tongues sharp and their gazes hard, clothing pressed and tailored to perfection, everything one would expect from a ruthless governmental authority.
Tartaglia was none of those things. His auburn hair had been cut short and left that way, tousled and wavy, no hair gel or meticulous styling in sight. Faint freckles spattered across his features, giving him a boyish sort of charm that his laid-back demeanor only highlighted, his uniform a simple thing of grey with red accents, both light jacket and the maroon shirt beneath unclasped at the bottom to reveal a sliver of pale skin at his waist and the Hydro vision attached to his belt. The only thing that visibly denoted his Harbinger status was the silver emblem that pinned his scarlet scarf to his shoulder, signifying his position and rank.
“Hey! You must be the Ratnik Arlecchino told me about - Mister Flins, right?” Tartaglia’s easy grin didn’t falter, even as something flashed in his dull, blue-eyed gaze, something that set Flins instantly on guard.
“And you must be Tartaglia,” the Lightkeeper in question replied warily. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“Call me Childe.” Tartaglia - Childe - straightened up, an air of false casualness to the way he stepped away from the counter of the Adventurer’s Guild and stretched his arms to loosen the muscles there. “So, what’s the plan? Fixing streetlamps? Tracking down lost hikers?”
A muscle in Flins’s jaw twitched a little at the subtle mockery of his job, but he chose not to react, instead responding with a measured, “I have business in Piramida. It may be a long walk.”
Tartaglia’s grin grew.
“Sweet. I love walking.”
~
Arlecchino was right.
Tartaglia was insufferable.
“You sound like a grandpa,” the young man cackled in Snezhnayan, after Flins made the fatal mistake of automatically replying to one of the Harbinger’s rhetorical mutterings in that same language. “When was the last time you were in Snezhnaya, the Cataclysm? Holy shit, I didn’t know those words existed outside of history textbooks.”
Flins, who had indeed not visited his home country for several hundred years, felt the blue flames of his lantern flicker in irritation.
It had been hours. Hours of Tartaglia and his persistent inability to be silent and still for longer than a few seconds. He talked, constantly, needling and prodding at Flins for a response, darting around and ahead like a feral, bored puppy and picking random targets to hit with various hydro weapon constructs until Flins had to ask him to please stop destroying the scenery and scaring the wildlife. The single time his restlessness managed to settle was during the boat ride to the Voidsea Outlook, where, ironically, Flins was most restless himself, eyeing the Fatui soldiers that manned the ship and the endless depths of the wine-dark sea around them with visible discomfort.
Flins could only fervently await the moment their trek to Piramida would end.
“Knights of Favonius up ahead,” Tartaglia pointed out. Curiosity rose in his voice - a foreboding sign.
Flins lifted his gaze, and, at the sight of obsidian armor gleaming amidst the collection of silver approaching them, felt some of the tension in his muscles relax on instinct.
“Flins! I didn’t know you were coming out here today.” The Grand Master’s sweet grin made his lantern flame brighten, and Flins was so desperately glad to see him that any sense of propriety he possessed vanished as he darted forward to latch onto his arm in a movement that would have been called clinging from anyone else.
“How fortuitous that our paths have crossed, then, Grand Master.” Flins peered up at him from beneath silver-tipped lashes, leaving the man in question speechless while he continued on. “Are you perhaps on your way to Piramida?”
“I - definitely can be, yep,” Varka managed to reply, and Flins could have sank to his knees with the force of the sheer, giddy relief that filled him.
Unfortunately, all of that relief was swiftly crushed when Tartaglia opened his mouth.
“Holy shit, are you the Grand Master?” The glint in his eye - near manic - made something in Flins’s chest flare, and he forced himself to stay within his human form, no matter how his flames pushed against the confines of it and crackled when Tartaglia leered closer, his excitement palpable. “Like, the Knight of Boreas, Wolf of the North, Grand Master? The one that the First Harbinger called his equal?”
Varka visibly shifted, his smile remaining easy even as his gaze sharpened and honed in on the harbinger in front of them.
“That’s me. And you are…?”
The undisguised amusement in Tartaglia’s expression, his sharklike grin far too knowing as he glanced at the Lightkeeper before returning his attention to Varka, had Flins’s hackles rising on instinct.
“Oh, nobody special. Just call me Childe.” He rocked back on his heels, his grin widening like a cat that had just caught sight of a mouse under the banisters. Flins restrained the primal urge to snarl at him.
“This is Tartaglia, Eleventh of the Fatui Harbingers,” Flins interjected. The fae tightened his grip on Varka’s arm, and the pointed glare he shot the young man in question only seemed to stoke Tartaglia’s growing delight. “Do not listen to anything he says.”
“Okay, wow, rude,” Tartaglia retorted. “And here I thought we were friends, Mister Flins.”
“We are not. Never suggest such an abhorrent idea again.”
Varka’s gaze flickered between the two of them, his eyebrows raising slightly at Flins’s unusual levels of vitriol and Tartaglia’s completely unfazed smile.
“Flins, are you being held hostage?” He kept his tone light, but the querying glance he gave the lightkeeper next to him was genuine, softening the unnatural yellow irises that met his. “Just let me know. I’m pretty sure I can take him.”
Flins ignored Tartaglia’s faint response of, “Please do,” in favor of giving Varka a gentle smile and a pat on the arm.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but, unfortunately, I am fine. Shall we proceed onto Piramida?”
“Yeah, yeah, just give me a second -“
While the Grand Master turned to give his knights additional orders, Flins narrowed his eyes at Tartaglia in a look that said, Behave yourself.
All he got was a cheeky smirk in response that promised nothing of the sort.
~
Flins stared at the harbinger sitting across from him at the small corner table, shadowed by the metal spiral of Piramida’s Lighthouse above them, and tried very hard to remember that he did not want to cause a diplomatic crisis by assaulting a high-ranking foreign military General.
“Oh, c’mon, you’ve gotta admit the Grand Master is sexy as fuck.” Tartaglia spoke in Snezhnayan, so the topic of conversation himself - who was currently overseeing the training of a group of newly indicted Ratnik recruits nearby - wouldn’t understand, and had an elbow propped up on the small table they sat at, chin resting on his hand. “I mean, normally the whole righteous, morally good act makes me want to claw my eyes out, but somehow he manages to pull it off.”
Flins’s leather-gloved fingers tightened around his mug of cider hard enough to make the wood creak.
He did not answer - blue eyes alight with laughter, sun-tanned muscle rippling under the sunlight, Varka’s grin making his heart of flame flutter and brighten - which only encouraged Tartaglia to prod at him further. “Not your type? Honestly, I thought you’d be into that sort of thing. Honorable, sweet enough to make me gag, apologizes for existing -“
“Your speculation is irritating and unfounded,” Flins managed to get out through clenched teeth. “Cease it at once.”
Blue irises sparkled with something indecipherable.
“I mean, if you don’t want him, more for me, I guess.” He grinned, wide and sharklike. “You think he’d go for a casual hookup? Because holy hell, those thighs -“
Flins set down his mug, took a deep breath, and lunged across the table for Tartaglia’s throat.
Trails of azure flame burst from the tips of his hair, his lashes, his mouth, yellow eyes glowing with blue smoke and fangs bared around a snarl as the target of his rage let out an undignified yelp and dodged his grasping hands, sending both of them tumbling out of their seats to the metal-plated ground.
He was inches away from strangling the harbinger when a hand unceremoniously gripped the back of his coat and yanked him away.
“Alright, that’s enough.” The rumble of Varka’s voice didn’t soothe the fae this time, because Tartaglia’s snickering had him straining against the Grand Master’s hold with a high-pitched, inhuman hiss of fury, resulting in a short altercation that ended in him being hoisted over said knight’s shoulder to prevent him from turning strangling to evisceration. “And you -“ Varka raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the harbinger. “Quit it or I’ll make you run laps until nightfall.”
He got a very smug, “Yessir,” and a mock-salute in response.
~
Varka booted the door to the Starshyna’s office shut with the back of his heel, footsteps clanking against the patchwork metal flooring as he carried a fuming Flins inside and set him gently back on his feet. Azure flames licked with affection at the fingers that worked to brush disheveled hair and clothing back into place, betraying the Lightkeeper’s feelings in a way that might have flustered him had he not been seething with rage.
“He doesn’t mean it,” Varka murmured, trying to soothe the being of more flame than flesh that curled into him, gripping at his armor like a lifeline.
“He speaks of you with lust in his eyes. He wishes to bed you.” A hiss, flames crackling and blooming higher. Many men had cowered in the face of it. “I will kill him for his impudence.”
The Grand Master did not flinch.
“Even if he did, it takes two to tango, and I’m not interested.” He gave as much of a shrug as he could, a small half-smile rising on his lips. “So. No murder necessary.”
Flins peered up at him. Yellow eyes, even wreathed in smoke as they were, exuded clear skepticism.
“You do not desire him?” His grip tightened a little. “Why?”
“Aside from the fact he’s a foreign diplomat with questionable morals and proven murderous tendencies?” Varka’s gaze softened, along with his smile. “I’m pretty firmly head-over-heels for someone else, already, and multiple partners aren’t really my thing.”
Oh.
A small frown.
“I was unaware of your affections,” Flins admitted. He ignored the strange twist in his chest as he spoke. “Do I know them?”
“Ah, well, I guess so? But -“
“Miss Lauma?” The Lightkeeper furrowed his brow, and amended, “Or perhaps Miss Nefer, considering her connections to Mondstadt.”
“What?” Varka seemed startled. “No, gods, no - I would rather never drink again than get involved in whatever those two have going on -“
“Miss Nicole, then.” Gaining another vaguely horrified look, Flins’s frown deepened. “Young Master Illuga? Miss Ineffa?” A scrunched up nose. “Nikita?”
The Grand Master laughed, a lovely sound, and lifted his human-warm hands to gently cup Flins’s face, his easy grin and blue-eyed gaze melting into something impossibly tender.
“Flins. Kyryll.“ He leaned in to press a lingering kiss to the crown of his head, to the corner of his eye, to the softness of his cheek, and… oh.
Oh.
The azure flames around them danced in a flustered, but pleased, manner, as Flins turned his cheek into Varka’s palm, curling his gloved fingers around the knight’s and shivering a little beneath the kiss placed on the bridge of his nose. “Get it, now?”
“Mm.” A soft hum. Yellow eyes half-lidded and framed by silver-tipped lashes. “I believe I may need more clarification.”
Varka chuckled, low and fond, and dipped his head, breath brushing across lips parted in anticipation -
Only to pause at the thunderous clatter and rumble of commotion outside the quiet office they’d shut themselves into.
Both of them turned to look at the closed door.
“… We should probably go check that out,” Varka said.
~
Somehow, in the few minutes they had been gone, Tartaglia had managed to start a huge brawl in the middle of the town square.
Without saying a word, Flins unhooked the flask from Varka’s belt, popped the cap off, and proceeded to tip the entire thing down his throat.
The knight next to him rubbed a hand down his face and let out a long sigh.
~
Flins soon learned that Varka could yell very loudly when he wanted to.
~
The day came to an end at the docks of Nasha Town, with Tartaglia and Flins standing together as the evening sun set in the distance.
The Eleventh Harbinger’s subordinates readied a ship for departure under the stoic purview of Arlecchino, who had arrived to pick up Tartaglia at exactly the promised time, only to find him running laps around the island under the watchful gaze the Grand Master and Flins. She hadn’t needed to be told what he’d done before pinching the bridge of her nose and apologizing for his behavior.
“So,” Tartaglia mused, fixing the clasp on one of his grey gloves. Flins eyed him with no small amount of suspicion. “You and the Grand Master kiss and get together yet?”
Flins’s brain short circuited.
“What,” he stated.
“Y’know.” A vague hand wave. “Confess your feelings, wildly make out, that sort of thing.”
Flins opened his mouth, and closed it again, speechless.
“You… do not desire him for yourself?”
Tartaglia laughed. Laughed, as if he’d told a hilarious joke.
“Nah. I’ve got a fiancé who lives out in Liyue. He’s a bit possessive.” The harbinger winked, eyes twinkling with something knowing as he lifted the hand wearing the glove he’d just finished adjusting.
There, above the fabric, flashed a gold ring. Flins had not paid attention to it, earlier, but now, watching the smooth metal glint in the fading sunlight, he understood he had made a crucial oversight.
With that revelation, Tartaglia’s behavior became twice as confusing.
“But - your commentary -“ The fae’s gaze flickered from the ring, to his face, and back down again, completely baffled.
“Oh, yeah, that’s because you were practically eye-fucking each other and I thought it would be fun to see if I could piss you off,” the other man said with an unabashed grin. “Bonus points if you actually tried to fight me since I’ve never battled a Lantern Fae before.”
Flins gaped at him, before recovering from his shock and allowing his lip to curl around a snarl of, “You little -“
“Whoops, gotta go, bye Mister Flins! Say hello to Grand Master Varka for me!”
“Get back here this instant!”