Work Text:
Lohen is a fever dream.
His unimaginable stamina is not as impressive as his never ending will to have a fight against any enemy or anything that imposes even the slightest strength, really. His eyes cradle the wildest thousand yard stare, the hair messy after getting roughed up by a group Fatui debt collectors with a few too many tricks up in their sleeves. Blood sliding down his chin and dirtying the worn out battle ground as he thrusts the floor with his polearm to use as a leverage. Lohen looks forward as the sun rises between the mountains.
Would you mind if he passed by your home at dawn again?
You, a humble healer who lives on their own far away from the city of Mondstadt, caught his eye for the first time while the vice captain was having a face off with a ruin guard that wouldn’t surrender for nothing. Good for him, but not for your peace. The boy was getting dizzy by the blood loss that nasty head injury the ruin guard nailed, he was on the verge of passing out at any given moment. Abandoning the grocery from the port of Mond, you rushed to use your vision to impede Lohen from getting himself killed by the adrenaline rush ─ the only thing keeping him up at this point.
This change of heart, however, ruined your peace for the next couple months.
Knocking at your door, you take a while to get to it despite the small house. Your reaction to his devastating state will never cease to make Lohen’s smile creep up and adorn his face.
“This is quite nostalgic, isn’t it?” He’d muse, bowing his head as he always does whenever visiting you.
You make haste, of course, concerned about your new rug but even more distressed at the sight of your inconvenience that gave you a good wake up. “What’s with you?! Was it another ruin guard?” You ask while guiding him to a different location of your house instead of the kitchen with the good ol’ med-kit. “Come quick. And if another blood drops in my rug I’ll finish its job myself.”
First door of the corridor on the left, you open it even more and reveal it to be your bedroom with half of the med-kit lying on the dressing table. Lohen, being held by arm, halts right before entering.
“Oh please, it’s not…” He thinks quickly on an excuse not to make things awkward between the two of you. “Hey, it wouldn’t be very, you know, knightly of me to enter your chamber like that. I can wait in the kitchen.”
You stop on your track, look over your shoulder in disbelief because he is literally drying his own blood through those cuts and his first worry is to not enter your bedroom. Makes perfect sense.
If it weren’t for the suddenness of the act, you might have thought it to be adorable, but your worrying plummeted your adoration.
“Dude, just– come inside! You’re bleeding through all holes and cuts, for Barbatos’ sake! Who cares about being a gentleman or whatever right now?”
You gently grab his biceps again, careful with the cuts, and try to make him move with you but it’s to no avail. He’s got a better grip and firms his feet on the creaking wood floor, insisting on resting in the kitchen. “No, no, I’ll survive a few minutes while you gather your stuff. Please, I can’t enter…”
His voice cracks a little as he coughs saliva mixed with blood from his lips after that ridiculous punch that got him with his guard down.
“Lohen!” This distressed tone almost made him feel bad for the stubbornness. With a quick “excuse me” he limps your way, ignoring the relieved breath and relaxing your furrowed brows.
There wasn’t anything weird between you two, nothing left untold ─ you thought so ─ to escalate a confusion such as this to an awkward silence. Lohen and you had gone through this frequently: the subtle touches of your hand where he swore he “didn’t feel anything”, the gauze after the healing potion going right where it hurts making a small hiss come out of him, the precision of your sewing prowess to attach skin to skin back or your concentrated look on his cuts right on the lips.
The dry and fresh blood, the iron scent that reeks from him, the moss, dirt and alcohol staining his skin and clothes don’t make the scenario appealing to anyone else, it’s a disgusting and messy mixture of what many tend to avoid to show to attest their glory for fighting. Lohen felt intimate with you, in a non-sexual way, because you never scoffed at his sight, you didn’t hide an ugly face when in face of guts and rests of monsters still on him. You offered aid when he denied, you covered him once he asked and even put up with his asks for a spar you vehemently denied. You know him and silently accept without invading his personal life or incessantly questioning or indulging him to change his way. Most of all, you aren’t scared of him. You respect him. And it goes both ways.
This ugly, messy, battle maniac Lohen isn’t contained in front of you.
Perhaps the bedroom door scene caused a shock because this value taught to the knights made his brain short circuit, rethink for milliseconds how he should see you. The camaraderie was more like it. Still, you are so unknown and not camaraderie-esque, he was afraid of barging in and having you take your leave.
Your place in his life was never questioned once before, you were like the familiar fragrance the passing wind blew his way, a spirit caught in the peripheral vision, a favorite spot he rarely visited to preserve its duration even if it fades in the memory land. Who are you and how should he call you?
Home. You are home. He yearns for the comfort you bring, the acceptance and the warm coffee at four in the afternoon you always have. He should drop the anxiety and formalities and stay at home at once. Until he gets better from his injuries your small inconvenience is going to be a sweet headache.