Work Text:
In the dead of night, Alva wakes.
Raindrops patter against the window. Dark clouds gather above the Manor, lightning flashing through every few breaths and applauded soon after by a round of thunder. Occasionally, a streak of light races across the sky and fades away into blooming fractals.
Thunderstorms are not uncommon here. One would be hard-pressed to find a day when the sky is anything but overcast and dreary.
And so, the storm itself isn’t what catches Alva’s attention. Instead, he focuses on the young man in his bed, sat up and silhouetted against the flashes of light outside the window. His eyes trace the outline of the man’s thin shoulders, along the bandages obscuring the scars they both bear, and eventually drift up towards a soft, sleepy face.
“Oh…Did I wake you?” Luca Balsa murmurs, long, messy brown hair falling in front of his eyes.
Alva reaches out and cards his fingers through the fluffy locks, absently noting again how small Luca is—or rather, as a Hunter, how monstrously large he himself has become. He could close his hand around the full circumference of Luca’s neck if he so wished, and squeezing would be no different from crumpling a paper tube.
“No,” Alva answers simply and gently strokes Luca’s hair out of his eyes. “You should be resting as well, my dear.”
Luca smiles back at him. It’s small, but not for lack of sincerity. He leans his cheek into Alva’s palm and nuzzles, as if the cold, unliving skin could provide any sort of comfort for him. “I wanted to watch the storm for a bit.”
Pulling away from the touch, but taking care to slip his hand into Alva’s, he turns towards the window. If there were words to follow, they failed to leave his lips. Another arc of lightning connects two swirling masses of turbulent clouds, and a peal of thunder they can feel in their bones chases it into the distance. Luca barely flinches.
Alva supposes neither of them have much to fear from lightning anymore.
He pulls himself up to sit, and shifts closer to fold Luca into his arms. “Are you inspired or simply observing?” he asks.
The warmth of the younger man’s back pressed into his chest is soothing. Not in the sense that Alva finds comfort in body heat in his current state, but that having a tangible reminder that Luca is here and alive quiets the noise lingering in his soul. Broken, but not lost. Not gone.
“Both, I suppose,” Luca hums, sinking into the embrace. “I dreamt about electrical transmissions without the use of wires or cables. Of course, in the dream, it was a couple of electrophorus electricus swimming around in the air,” he snorts. “But the fundamental concept is fascinating, I think.”
The corners of Alva’s lips curl slightly, amused. He wouldn’t say such a thing is impossible, only that they will have to take quite some time to untangle the physics and logistics of it. Still, a thunderstorm in the middle of the night is not the time to be starting a new project.
He watches the raindrops grow into a cascade as the weather intensifies, and pulls Luca closer. For a few moments, there is only the sound of rain and thunder in the darkened room.
A thrum of energy ripples through Alva’s body, subtle and quiet but always there; his Master’s power. When light shatters the night outside, the low thrum goes silent and his breath stills though he no longer needs to breathe. There is little in this world that can sever his Master’s strings. And yet, they waver all the same when the light is brightest, as though he needs reminding that other powers lurk where darkness hides.
“I used to dream about you whenever it stormed like this,” Luca speaks up eventually. He traces his finger over Alva’s forearm, folded protectively across his shoulders, and traces over the bandages on their skin.
Alva leans in to press a kiss against Luca’s temple, and hums in response, “Did you, now?” Perhaps it’s not surprising. What happened between them had changed them both, shorn their wings at the height of their lives and sent them plummeting and crashing into their present forms. Dreams tend to echo the waking world in some way as well.
“It was always blurry,” Luca admits. His eyes remain fixed towards the window, looking at the rain perhaps something further beyond. “For so long, I couldn’t even remember your face, but I still dreamt about you, and about losing you.”
There is a sag in his body, though not one of comfort, leaning into an embrace. Disappointment, or shame. They may have come some way from their fraught reunion, but emotions wouldn’t be such troubling things if they faded as easily as they struck.
Alva believes himself a man who forgives sooner than he should. It was such with Herman, it would have certainly been the same with Luca.
“You’re fishing,” he says, without judgement. “You’re waiting for me to tell you that it’s alright, that it’s in the past now.”
To his surprise, Luca snorts. “I don’t need that,” he says as he stops tracing their scars. “I know what I did, and I don’t need you to patronise me.”
Stubborn. Always so stubborn. Alva smiles despite himself. In the same intensity that it frustrates him, Luca’s stubbornness, his headstrong will, is dear. There has never been any doubt, has there? The sun does not shrink its light and searing warmth of its own accord, one has to drape clouds over its blinding radiance or turn away from it instead. Like a moth drawn to a flame, Alva loved—loves, still—that about Luca.
“What do you want, then?” he asks, resting his cheek against the crown of the younger man’s head.
Lightning flashes. Thunder crashes all around them, and Luca tenses—a little too slowly and delayed to be startled.
Alva simply waits.
In the long pause between thunder and words, Luca turns away from the window and pulls back just enough to cup Alva’s face. His slender hands, calloused from working with tools and machines all day, feel so pleasantly warm. The darkness can barely hide the shine in his eyes, the grey in his irises matching the storm outside.
“I want you ,” Luca says with a strange sort of conviction, as if he has something to prove to someone who isn’t here. “I want to remember you, this time.” He strokes his thumb over the sharp angles of Alva’s cheek, and his lip wibbles for a vulnerable, fleeting moment. “I want to keep all of you inside me, and never have to fight to remember what I feel about you ever again.”
Despite appearances, Luca has always had a flair for poetics. It was one of the things that set him apart from the other intellectuals they once surrounded themselves with; that romantic, naive way through which he saw the world, explained away in his own mind as pure logic. A naivete easily tainted by the volatile emotions of youth, but romantic all the same.
“I’m here now,” Alva murmurs, turning his face to brush a kiss against Luca’s palm.
There is no other assurance he can give.
His Saviour, his Master, blesses him with an eternity beyond mortal death for as long as he carries out his duty but, for Luca, the sand falls fast in the hourglass. The damage is done, irreversible, and fate will find him. His fractured mind cannot hold itself together for long, that much is painfully certain. One day soon, Luca will forget again. He will forget everything, and that brilliant, devastatingly bright light inside him will be snuffed out.
Even the sun itself will eventually die, and darkness will sweep in to claim that which is left behind.
Alva holds Luca’s hand to his cheek and he studies every twitch, every little emotion and unspoken thought laid bare in the twinkling grey of Luca’s eyes. This time, too, he will have to be the one to remember, for both their sakes. “I’m here now,” he repeats.
“You are,” Luca smiles softly. His sincerity burrows a deep, stinging ache into Alva’s chest, even after all this time. “You’re back, yes. Now I can see you even when I’m not dreaming.”
“Sometimes it rather seems like you’d prefer not to,” Alva counters without bitterness. There is no need for it. He understands Luca’s temper more than most and, difficult as it may have been, has had time to learn to take it in stride (whether he deserves the ire or not). “I believe Mrs. Plinius heard your shouting from across the Manor the other day. She seemed very impressed at your extensive knowledge of insect subspecies.”
Luca’s cheeks darken, and he flicks his gaze away with a nervous, sheepish laugh. “I’m working on that, I promise.”
Like his father, Luca is not a man who apologises.
No, Herman never did apologise for anything, not once that Alva can remember in their years of friendship. Every mistake had to be justified in some way and, to Herman, it had evidently been an accomplishment of sorts to turn the knife edge of blame away towards someone or something else. Pride, more than anything, plagued him even until his demise.
That same pride afflicts Luca as well. However, Alva notes with a balanced share of exasperation and fondness, Luca has more often than not found ways to express remorse through action. He does not apologise, and instead he fixes —or at least tries to do so. His temper and stubbornness continue to trip him, but he would not be “Luca Balsa” if his forward momentum is stopped by these little obstacles.
Alva decides that it is enough for him. There are some things that cannot be fixed, that Luca will have to learn to accept and properly apologise for someday, but Alva supposes that he would be a hypocrite to demand that of the younger man, as they are now.
After all, what are they if not two fools orbiting the same bad habits? The scars on their skin sneer up at them with the answer carved in each matching, branching fractal.
Alva shakes his head, sighing lightly. “Enough of that, then,” he says, to himself and to Luca. “You should sleep, Luca. Your friends will worry if you’re out of sorts for your matches tomorrow.”
The soft, messy locks of brown hair brush against his throat as Luca tucks himself into his embrace. “They’ll worry anyway, the lot of them,” Luca mumbles, lips just brushing over Alva’s collarbone. The sharp points of irritation are smoothed over by the badly concealed shyness of one who has forgotten how it feels to be cared for by those around him. “I’m fine, you know.”
A noncommittal hum slips from Alva as he gathers Luca into his arms and slides back under the thick blankets.
Another flash of light illuminates the room. The storm rages on, still, even as the thunder starts to trail further and further behind each round of lightning. Alva reaches for the bed curtains hanging from the canopy and pulls them free from their tieback, letting the fabric fall into place. It may not be the perfect darkness he would have preferred, but it shields them enough from the bright flashes until slumber settles in.
Alva rests his head against the pillow, his arms wrapped protectively around Luca. Some part of him fears that something else would come along in the night and steal this precious thing from him. Irrational fears, or perhaps not so irrational. He sighs, and holds Luca close. “Sleep well—”
The words stop short as Luca suddenly surges up towards him and closes the distance between their lips.
Alva is sure he must have released an embarrassingly startled noise from his throat, because Luca snickers into the kiss. Despite being smaller, Luca holds nothing back in trying to take control of these intimate moments. The intensity of his fervour pushes him through, catching Alva off guard, and he chases without rest until what he wants is relinquished to him.
The momentary surprise ignites, dried grass catching fire under a searing summer day. Alva folds a hand behind Luca’s head, carding through his hair, and allows Luca to dictate the terms. Alva himself follows as easily as he leads. The hallmark of an effective mentor is the willingness to learn alongside and learn from his protégé.
There is no reason to fight for control. Alva knows and has always been certain of it, because Luca is just arrogant enough to forget that he is not the only prideful man in the room. And, more than passion, experience and acuity pave a longer path.
When they part for breath, Alva watches the self-satisfied smirk on Luca’s face and he savours the haze gathering in storm-grey eyes.
“I wanted a goodnight kiss,” Luca chuckles and drops his head down onto the pillow, satisfied.
“I would have given it if you simply asked,” Alva sighs, pressing a gentle kiss between Luca’s brows. As he pulls back, he narrows his eyes and cups Luca’s jaw. When he speaks again, his voice lowers, rumbling along the same resonance as the thunder outside the Manor. “You’ve gotten brazen, my dear. Perhaps you are due for another lesson in humility.”
How terribly pleasing, Alva thinks, to see the conceit drain from Luca’s grin as he plunges in to devour the younger man.
Slender, warm fingers dig into his shoulders. He feels Luca struggling to regain control, desperately fighting amidst breathless gasps, and he allows himself a smirk against Luca’s lips. Impatient, reckless, sins that continue to catch up to Luca, and Alva doubts he will ever truly learn unless thoroughly humbled. He wraps an arm around Luca’s waist and folds him in closer, tighter against his larger, longer body.
Where Luca had focused on fervour earlier, staying ahead and in control through sheer intensity, Alva had remembered every little touch that sent Luca’s pulse racing, every little flash of weakness. He slides his hand over Luca’s jaw, carding into his hair once again and fingers curling against his scalp with a light tug.
A moan slips out between their lips. Another is muffled soon after.
Alva leans in deeper into him, ravenous but precise, and Luca melts with a second, firmer tug on his hair. Distantly, the sound of thunder reaches their ears. Louder yet is Luca’s fluttering heartbeat and helpless whines into their kiss.
Light bathes the room for barely a blink when they part.
“...Petty old man.” The pout is a rare sight. Alva smiles, stroking his thumb over Luca’s cheek, focusing his sight on the glisten of saliva along the younger man’s lips and the dazed, half-lidded glare Luca shoots back at him. Cute. If he were honest, Alva could perhaps admit that this has become his favourite of Luca’s mercurial expressions, second only to his usual, radiant smile overflowing with sunlit warmth.
“I’ve given you two kisses goodnight,” he hums. “Perhaps you’re well set for some sleep now.”
Luca snorts quietly and buries his face into Alva’s neck, his breath heavy. “How am I supposed to sleep like this?” he grumbles.
“You’ll manage,” Alva chuckles and allows himself to nuzzle his cheek into Luca’s hair. “Now sleep. I'll be here when you wake.”
An ache rises in his chest as he feels Luca relax in his embrace immediately, as though this simple reassurance had lifted a weight from him and melted away his unspoken fears. Nothing else is—or needs to be—said. Alva listens to the rain, the cacophony of the storm, and he listens to Luca’s breathing slowly even out while his eyes trace the patterns on the bed canopy.
The low thrum of energy in his own veins resonate with each pulse of Luca’s heart, unworldly electricity binding them together.
As Alva lets his eyelids fall, he sees the visions granted by his Master. In the depths of darkness, he sees a glimmer of light and he watches it flicker and sway until it is eventually extinguished. Gone. His Master is no paltry god serving riddles and prophecies, he understands that more than anyone. No, these visions are merely confirmation of what he already knows to be true and inevitable.
He holds Luca tighter, and feels the warmth of life flowing within the younger man’s flesh. So bright, still—defiant against the darkness. It cannot last forever. Alva will keep his promise, and be here when morning comes for them, but he may never know if Luca will be. Despite any power an unfathomable higher being could grant him, this cherished, faltering light will be taken away from him again in time.
And Alva Lorenz, a man once murdered by Luca Balsa, is afraid .