Archive of Our Own

There isn’t a single person in the entire Knights of Favonius who enjoys doing paperwork… but Mika doesn’t mind! 

The grandfather clock ticks past midnight, then one, then two in the morning, and his quill is still scratch-scratch-scratching away at parchment. In the dim candlelight of the Grand Master’s office, there’s just enough glow to see the desk, and his own reflection in the tall glass windows beside him.

He’d offered to finish up the reports of a few of his colleagues. Mika enjoys the alone time, when there’s nobody about and nothing but the friendly, familiar sound of a faithful writing utensil. It’s a nice quill, weighted, with a body that’s made of gold. The sides are engraved, and the feathers adorning it had been a beloved gift; tailfeathers from a Halberd-Crest bird, humanely harvested by someone from the Flower-Feather Clan in Natlan. His brother had bought it for him on one of his first scouting missions, along with a motley collection of other found-on-the-ground plumage.

Those feathers are all still on his shelf at home, meticulously dusted and kept tidy even all these years later. As time has passed, the collection has grown to be quite the expansive one. He can recite their designated species by memory, in order: Northern Flicker, Yellow-Crowned Night Heron, Lapis Glede, Crested Caracara, Golden Finch, Blue Jay… the most recent edition being a duo of long, silky pinnae from a Longplume Ibis. They’d been laying there on an outskirt beach of Hiisi Island, scavenged from his expedition to Nod Krai. He’d hardly been able to contain his excitement when he’d picked them up, identified them, and carefully pressed them in between the pages of his journal for later.

Many a Mondstadter knows that Front-Line Surveyor Mika Schmidt draws maps. Some know that he also draws birds.

What started as an interest as a child has grown into a special kind of obsession in young adulthood. It’s been several times now that Acting Grand Master Jean has caught him with his binoculars, staring out the windows of the office and tracking birds in flight. His journal is littered with sketches of feathers, labeled diagrams of wing structure, and life-drawings. For his sixteenth birthday, just before he was to leave on the grand expedition to Nod Krai, the Cavalry Captain had gifted him a richly illustrated field guide of Northern shorebirds and frigatebirds.

It’s a trait many of his fellow knights don’t care to discover… or perhaps they’re all just too busy. They’ve got their own important duties to attend to, after all. Reports to write…

But there aren’t any birds to watch out the window at two in the morning. Even the occasional trill of the Nighthawks outside have died down by now. Three reports deep, Mika’s writing hand keeps smearing ink diagonally as he works his way down the page. It’s a valiant effort to keep his eyelids from drooping as the tick-tick of the clock keeps hypnotizing time to his slow progress.

Just one more, and he’ll be all good to clean up the desk, stack the papers nicely, and make the walk upstairs and back to his room. Maybe he’ll let himself sleep in a bit tomorrow… As far as he remembers, he doesn’t have anything particularly important to attend to first thing in the morning.

Other Knights may call him a saint for volunteering to do all of this practical busywork. Mika doesn’t think it’s all too big of a deal. Most of the time that he’s out in the field, he has his nose buried between pages anyways; carefully documenting landmarks, meticulously measuring, and checking and double-checking distances and deer paths. What’s a few reports on top of it?

Grand Master Varka has his own opinions on the matter, but needn’t Mika remind him of his own paperwork-shirking behaviors… it’d hardly be a far cry to call it hypocritical, and the Grand Master likes to keep things as honest as possible. Mika respects him greatly. It’s more of a silly quirk than anything, and Mika doesn’t mind helping Acting Grand Master Jean to tie up loose ends. 

He yawns, and looking down at the paper, sees that he’s written the same word thrice in a row now. A tired sigh and a scratch of the quill as he crosses it out and starts again.

But something piques his attention instead. His ears automatically prick at the sound of footsteps clicking in the hallway beyond the office. Looking through the darkness of the open doorway across the room, there’s no light on in the hallway. His eyes strain against the shadows, aided only by the dim moonglow of the few windows.

The boots are high-heeled. Could it be Jean? Or maybe Miss Lisa? Though, it’d be incredibly unlike her to be awake at such a late hour, not when she can hardly keep her head out of her teacup, dozing off to a good reread at noon. Mika swallows, his quill hand stalled above the parchment. The clicking stops, and his breath catches in his throat.

The Spindrift Knight? Or maybe just some colleague or another of his, doing their due diligence and patrolling? Mika’s rarely up this late. He has no clue what is or isn’t ordinary for the Knights of Favonius Headquarters at this hour. Maybe routine inspections are a commonality. 

But why has the sound stopped..?

And then, through the darkness of the office, a dreadful, bone-chilling sound creeps beneath his skin. A long, low creak. He can see the black void of the doorway grow in size as the door slowly swings further open. 

Not a further sound hence. 

From Mika’s quill, a fat blob of ink falls in a puddle on the parchment. He can hardly care, not when his heart is starting to race. It’s silly, surely! There’s nothing to be afraid of in a place like this. The Front-Line Surveyor has always felt safe within these walls. It’s a place that’s warm with companionship, chivalric spirit, and the usual do-good attitude of the Knights. He has no reason, really, to be scared of noises in the dark. 

Mika sets aside the quill with a soft click, gripping the edge of the desk. His mind races. An intruder? Somebody targeting the Grand Master? No, of course not. How would they have gotten into the building in the first place, when it’s definitely guarded?

A sweat breaks out across the back of his neck, blinking at the regretful realization that, if somebody’s here in the room with him, he has no way of knowing. He reaches for the candle on the desk, but freezes in fear at the thought of waving it aloft and revealing some evil creature lurking where he can’t see.

He swallows again nervously and tries to will the shakiness out of his voice. “Hello?” 

The lack of response makes him feel both foolish and unnerved. His voice sounds meek. If he had to defend himself, how would he? He doesn’t have a weapon on him—why should he?

Mika’s heart stops at the exact moment that the hairs on his nape rise, tickled by a puff of warm breath.

“Up late?”

Mika’s yelp is muffled by a gloved hand and a sinister laugh. “Shhh… wouldn’t want to scare the other Knights, would we?”

His head whips around, and he’s met with a familiar pair of ruby-red eyes, glinting in the candlelight. The smile on his face is uncanny, lit from below, but it’s much more of a relief to see who it is, rather than an unknown intruder. The hand over his mouth is gone as soon as it had arrived—clearly holding no intention on silencing him any further. “Vice Captain??”

His head tilts, dull cyan hair feathering across his face with the movement, and he crosses his arms. “I didn’t know you were the type to burn the midnight oil, little bird.”

“I… I was wrapping up reports.” 

Leaning over Mika’s shoulder, Lohen’s hand taps rhythmically on the desktop, one finger after another. “You know… I think you just may be the only one awake right now. Even Miss Acting Grand Master has turned in by now.”

Mika doesn’t respond, attention turned back to the stack of paperwork before him. Right—he has to finish these regardless. Unfortunately, that’s going to be much more of a feat than it was before now that Lohen’s going to insist on becoming a distraction. He opts not to speak, picking up the quill again. He really had managed to sneak up on him. Mika hadn’t even seen the shadow of Lohen’s figure slipping through the doorway.

“So many reports for just one person.” He sweeps up one of the finished papers, and before Mika can argue, he’s flipping through it. “You’re not biting off more than you can chew?”

“W-Well…” 

“...Because your name certainly isn’t Riese.” He swipes up another report. "Or Friedrich. Isn’t he from the seventh company?”

“We went on a field m… field m…” he pauses, shaking his head as if to clear it. “A field expedition recently together. Just to do edits and revisions of the m—Of the maps I’ve drawn up of Falcon Coast.” Mika swallows, face burning. His stutter always makes itself blatantly clear when he’s overtired. M’s and n’s stick his lips together like glue, and the same words trip over and over again like one of Miss Lisa’s records, scratched and skipping. 

Grand Master Varka tells him not to be embarrassed. Still, no matter how much he tries to slow down, it doesn’t make the words come any easier. He can’t shake the feeling that the troops he guides sometimes don’t take him seriously. How can they, when he can’t even get the syllables out?

Lohen must be used to it by now. He never calls attention to it, something Mika’s endlessly grateful for. “So these reports belong to them?” Tapping the papers lengthwise against the desk surface to tidy them, he sets them back down. “Weird. All the handwriting looks the same to me. Hah!”

Awkwardly, Mika avoids eye contact at all costs. It’s not against the rules for colleagues to write reports for each other. Most of the time, they’re just used for book-keeping purposes. The content doesn’t need to be fancy or eloquent—straight and to the point will get the job done. Something to file away, a changelog, usually collecting dust in a cabinet somewhere. 

But Mika’s prideful of his work. Each field mission, no matter the importance, is an opportunity to do right by himself and his job as Front-Line Surveyor. There’s really very little more that he loves than mapmaking—and birds—and if his colleagues are less-than excited to write up their reports, Mika will gladly shoulder the duty. Three reports: Riese’s, Friedrich’s, and his own. Three different perspectives of what happened on the mission, the same events seen through the eyes of three companies.

If not anything else, it’s at least a good workout for his mind. While he’s a member of the fourth company, Mika understands quite a bit about how Knights in the other companies think. 

But the Acting Grand Master does nag at him to encourage his fellow Knights to write their own reports. He can hear her voice in the back of his mind: “I don’t want them taking advantage of your generosity, Mika. There’s plenty of hands to go around for the amount of work necessary after each mission.”

Mika can feel Lohen’s eyes burning holes into the back of his head, and all he can do is release a heavy exhale and turn over his shoulder to face him. “They’re… I did technically write them all. They were complaining about—about—about their reports…” He pauses, “...So I offered to do them.”

The clock ticks in the silence. Despite desperate attempts to read Lohen’s expression, the lack of sleep has certainly caught up to him. There’s nothing he can gather from the amused smile on his face, except that maybe there’s a message he’s trying to send about work and just how much of it Mika should be doing.

He leans closer, and Mika stares. “Mika,” he singsongs. “How diligent. Quite the Knightly spirit you have.” His hand raises as he taps a finger against his cheek, looking up at the ceiling in thought before he gasps as if struck by divine inspiration. “Ah! Now, I just had the most incredible idea. Would you like to inherit the title of Benevolent Knight? It’d certainly suit you.”

“I… I don’t think the Grand M… Grand Master would be very happy with that idea…”

“Whaat? No… No, I think he’d think the opposite, actually.”

Mika purses his lips, trying to suppress a yawn. Lohen’s teasing him, he knows that. It’s just that his current mental state isn’t making it the easiest to keep up. “That title’s meant for the Captain of the fifth company, Vice Captain”

“So? Traditions can be broken, can’t they? Or records?” A mischievous sparkle flickers in his eyes. “Come on. You’re not up to being a contender for the youngest-captain-since-the-Darknight-Hero record?”

“...Darknight Hero?”

“Whoops! Heh. Did I say that out loud?” Lohen crouches next to the desk, looking up at Mika, a self-satisfied look on his face. When he runs a hand through his hair, brushing it out of his eyes, Mika can hear the clinking of his earring. “Anyways. A Knight doing the work of three Knights surely deserves recognition.”

Looking back at the report in front of him—his own report—the words almost look like gibberish. To an extent, Lohen’s right. He’s pretty exhausted… his wrist aches from holding the quill, his back aches from leaning over the papers, and his head aches from his lack of saying “no”. But Mika had volunteered for this work. It’s not as though it was forced onto him. Isn’t there a saying about making your bed and lying in it?

He turns his head back to look at Lohen, but the Vice Captain has already vanished from his spot next to the desk. Momentarily confused, he whips his head around and instead finds himself face-to-face with him. He can’t stop from jumping, a hand flying to his heart in surprise. Lohen doesn’t look the slightest bit sorry.

“Well… what are you doing up so late?” Mika finally counters, blinking rapidly. His racing heart still hasn’t fully calmed down from the Vice Captain’s initial scare.

“Oh, you know.”

“...?”

He sighs, as though he’s discontented that Mika doesn’t think that his meager explanation is satisfactory. “Just… seeing what’s about. A little check-in, if you will.” 

“A check-in?”

“And I’m glad that I did. Just how much do you have left of this report? Were you planning on being here until the sun comes up?”

His report. Even squinting, his glasses don’t do much to aid him in terms of his eyes focusing in and out on the scribbled lines of information. He pushes them up to his forehead and rubs at his eyes with the back of his hands. But in that short motion, he can feel them pulled from his face—and Lohen is then smiling at him, pretty scarlet eyes magnified by Mika’s round, gold frames. He bats his eyelashes. “How do I look?”

“...N—N… N—ot bad.” Nervously, he fidgets with his hands. “But don’t get too far, or I won’t be able to see you at all...”

“You know, little bird,” Lohen muses. Mika’s eyes are suddenly caught by the flash of Lohen’s dagger, spinning off of one finger. He’s used enough to this fidget that he only flinches a little bit. “I was able to sneak up on you pretty easily. I don’t like knowing that just anyone could ambush you like this.”

‘You’re not just anyone!’ Mika wants to protest, but the words get stuck, skipping helplessly until he’s forced to take a tired breath through his nose. He half-expects Lohen to keep talking, but instead, he’s looking at him patiently, dagger still swinging.

“You aren’t just an—anyone,” he settles on. “I don’t know if there’s a single other Knight who has your level of stealth.”

“I’d say they hate to see me coming, but, ah…” he giggles, “they don’t.”

With a flick of his wrist, the dagger spins up into the air and comes hurtling down towards the table. Mika’s chair scoots loudly against the wooden floor as he recoils. It lands blade-down, embedded in the wood. 

“Y’know. See me coming,” he clarifies.

Mika’s not scared of Lohen. Or… at least, not in the same way that the other Knights say that they are. His first impression of the Vice Captain of the Fifth Company was a pleasant one, and it stuck with him. No matter how terrifying he tries to be, Mika can’t forget the warm, candid smile he’d had. He’d been one of the only people to ever ask him about his Front-Line Surveying Device, and not only did he ask, but he held his attention and listened actively as Mika had babbled on and on about it. 

When news had spread to the other Knights about Lohen and Theodore’s involvement with the remains of Ursa the Drake, most of them had bristled. Chatter circulated through the Knights of Favonius, and it wasn’t long until everyone was talking about the ‘Malevolent Knight’ who was set to take Adorno’s place some day or another.

Mika hadn’t known that Lohen was one of the children who’d been captured by Eroch and the Doctor. He’d heard the story of course, but he never could’ve guessed that one of the victims was none other than the fearsome Frontline Suppression Officer.

Lohen was bedridden for two weeks before he had to serve his punishment in solitary confinement. Mika visited him every day, and sat at his bedside as he shook with tremors and coughed up foul purple sludge. When medics from the Eighth Company came to change his wound dressings, they were surprised to find that most of them had already been tended to. It’d been an opportunity for him to work with his vision, Mika had explained nervously, maybe even a little too quickly. A chance to practice his healing abilities by channeling elemental energy.

Mika’s one of the only ones that knows about the thick white scar on the palm of Lohen’s hand. The only one who knows that very same injury has caused two fingers on that hand to twitch and tremble, rife with pins and needles and short-circuiting nerves. To this day, it won’t stop. Lohen jokes about it sometimes. Well, at least it’s not my dominant hand! Which is funny, because the Vice Captain is ambidextrous.

Theodore had been experimenting with Ursa’s flesh, concentrating it and injecting it into him whenever their experiments with monsters would stall for too long. Lohen’s really lucky. Another dose, and he probably would’ve lost his mind. Now, he’s just really sick. A chronic cough, and untreatable aches and pains. He really does hide it well. Nobody would guess that the most ruthless of the Knights of Favonius is afflicted with a now persistent and underlying condition.

Mika thinks it might be the only pain that Lohen can’t pretend to enjoy.

Despite him and Theodore’s plan and Lohen’s eerie disposition, to Mika, Lohen’s really not so bad. He’s only ever treated Mika well, and the practical jokes or scares that he pulls on him are out of fun rather than anything with ill intentions. He’s not exactly a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and isn’t the other way around, either. Mika’s never met somebody so complicated.

He reaches out and pulls the dagger out of the table before handing it to Lohen, who grabs it by the blade, gloved fingers feeling along each serrated edge. Then, Mika scoots back up to the table and pulls his glasses off of Lohen’s face by the bridge.

He yawns again and, vision finally clear once again, turns his attention to the reports. Archons… 

“I need to start this over…”

“Hm?” Lohen leans forward, peering his head down to look at the report. “All because of a little ink stain?”

“I-It’s illegible now.”

“Tell me you’ve at least eaten something today. You’ve been holed up in this dusty office all day.”

He drops the regretfully stained report into the bin next to the desk and groans. “Acting Grand M… Master Jean brought me a bowl of sunsettias earlier.”

“That it?” He sighs and clicks his tongue, shaking his head in a manner that’s far too comfortable considering the fact that he’s just snuck his way into the Grand Master’s office. “Mika, Mika, Mika. What am I going to do with you, hm?”

“I’ve just been busy. Usually I’m pretty good at things like that.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure? Because I seem to recall quite a few times now that I’ve had to sneak attack you.” He settles into a catlike smile. “I mean… touch base with you… to be sure you’re taking care.”

“I mean…”

“Here! At least have some water.” And suddenly he’s sliding a glass across the table. Mika can hardly catch it before it bumps into his chest, sure to spill. “Please?”

“H—,” he blinks, “Have you had that this whole time?”

Lohen’s words run together as he looks anywhere but Mika’s eyes. “Whaddyamean?”

Mika eyes the cup, blinking tiredly. He’s not stupid… Knowing Lohen, the water is most definitely spiked with something. Considering the situation, it’s probably some kind of mild sedative, something to get to him to nod off before he can argue otherwise. Despite his unique habits, the Vice Captain has never actually poisoned Mika. The worst thing he's done is slip Jueyun chili powder into his food.

Mika has been known time and time again to show up outside the Vice Captain’s room in the middle of the night. This isn’t the first time he’d be taking a sedative from him—sometimes he’ll even request them if he’s struggling particularly hard with insomnia. Lohen will always hand him a cup, and after he drinks it, will make sure Mika’s in a comfortable spot before drifting off.

He always wakes up in Lohen’s bed, tucked underneath several blankets. Sometimes, Lohen will be next to him, startling him awake with a wide-eyed grin. Other times, there’ll be a note scrawled and left on the pillow beside him.

I left you some rolls and cold cuts from the dining room, since you’ll be missing breakfast. Be sure to finish them! It’d be a shame to let it go to waste.

Most Knights wouldn’t dare to let themselves be so vulnerable around Lohen, but Mika has always found that, if you’re on the right side of him, those worries are unfounded. Or… maybe it’s something that just has to do with Mika himself? After all, Lohen and the Grand Master get along just fine, but that doesn’t stop him from attempting to ambush him time after time.

Put simply, Mika trusts him. Trusts him enough to let Lohen administer a chemical sleep-aid and then snooze soundly in his bed.

Right now, the coziness of a warm bed doesn’t sound half bad. Slowly, he reaches for the cup of water.

“Just so you kn… know. I’m well aware of what you’re doing.”

“Oh?” Lohen sounds oh so very amused. “Who said that I was hiding anything?”

He tips the cup back and swallows its contents. The flavor is faint enough to pass off as water to anybody none the wiser. Mika can pick up on the slight sweetness, cloying, barely-noticeable, at the back of his throat. When he sets down the glass, his eyelids already feel heavier.

Lohen smiles, eyes flashing. “Good birdie.”

“Y… you’re…” he rests his hands on the table, a pall of sleepiness settling over his shoulders. “Something else.”

The Vice Captain reaches out again to take off Mika’s glasses, but this time, he folds them neatly and tucks them into his front shirt pocket. Then, he pinches Mika’s cheek, just hard enough to get him to open his eyes back up again. “And you’re very, very cute.”
Mika lets Lohen scoot his chair away from the desk and scoop him up. Nestling into the warmth of his shoulder, if he turns his head just the right way so that his ear is pressed to his clavicle, he can hear his heartbeat. When Lohen brushes hair out of Mika’s eyes, he notices that he’s taken off one of his gloves, presumably with his teeth. 

“Don’t you go overdoing it,” Lohen murmurs. “You’re too nice for your own good. Those morons can do their own busywork.”

“S… peak for yours… yourself.” He wants to argue more, but his eyelids are heavy. Lohen knows full well that he has a tendency to push himself far more than necessary whenever he’s out in the field. Mika’s patched him up enough to see that he has a kind of reckless abandon that can be really dangerous. Still, there’s this softness to him that most people don’t see—that most people aren’t allowed to see. 

And what about you getting rest, he wants to say, instead of spending all of your nights clearing out the camps I try to hide from you?

Trying to protest leaves him stuttering instead. 

“Shhh,” he hushes from above him, cradling him closer. “Just focus on getting sleep. I’ll take care of the rest, ‘kay?”

Take care of the rest… Mika swallows, thinking about poor Friedrich and Riese. Knowing Lohen, he’s going to find some way to teach them a lesson. It’s hypocritical! Lohen has passed his reports off to somebody else tons of times. But when it comes to Mika, Lohen seems to be… protective, for lack of a better word.

He climbs the stairs, and Mika can tell that he’s taking care not to jostle him. It’s funny, because Mika’s at least a few inches taller than Lohen. They come out to about the same height, seeing how Lohen’s boots are heeled, but Mika’s all in all bigger than Lohen is. Where Lohen is slight, Mika’s a bit stocky, with broader shoulders. His build, while disguised well with layers of clothing and a boxy-silhouette, is unfortunately feminine. He takes great care to bind his chest but he’s always a bit nervous that the Knights will remember or bring up Huffman’s little “sister”.

Fortunately for him, they don’t. Even if they did, the Grand Master wouldn’t let it last for long.

Lohen, on the other hand, seems to be effortlessly androgynous. Despite being far shorter than the average guy, he’s far from looking like a young woman. Lohen’s built small, almost willowy for being so short. Mika can fit his wrist between his thumb and pointer finger.

Still, he carries him easily. He has no shortage of lean muscle, honed from countless days of constant training and fighting. He bets that climbing the stairs with sleepy Mika in his arms doesn’t even cause him to break a sweat.

Mika’s head feels floaty, but in a pleasant, dreamy kind of way. Before he can realize where he is, he’s being gently lowered onto a mattress. He can feel his shoelaces being undone and his boots being pulled off before he’s repositioned and covered with a heavy duvet. Mika foggily watches Lohen, whose back is turned, slowly remove each piece of hardware from his own uniform: his pauldron, his bandolier, his sash, his capelet. He takes off his boots and his other glove, and finally unbuttons his corset. Mika can hardly keep his eyes open.

When he climbs into bed, he’s wearing nothing but the loose linen pants that he’s changed into. Mika watches silently as Lohen reaches behind himself and starts unwinding the thick strip of cloth that’s bound around his chest. 

It’s unlike him to stare, but he’s out of it. When Lohen catches his eye, he smirks, but doesn’t otherwise tease him about it. Instead, he’s leaning in and sitting Mika up. 

“Lift your arms up.”

He tries, but they feel like they weigh as much as the heavy barrels of wine he had to help transport during the expedition. Lohen just clicks his tongue again and takes hold of his wrists, lifting them up himself.

Lohen pulls his jacket up and over his head, and then the soft beige henley underneath. The pressure around his chest eases as he unties the linen strophium he secured there early this morning. The Vice Captain doesn’t bother to fold anything in the way that Mika does—he just holds it out and lets it fall over the bedside.

When he finally seems to be satisfied with Mika’s binding safety, he settles down, curled up and facing him. A pale, trembling finger winds its way around one of Mika’s strands of blond hair, curling it before letting it go. Even in a state of being half-asleep, he instinctually scoots forward, pressing his face into the soft spot between Lohen’s shoulder and neck. 

Lohen covers almost all of his skin at all times; a high-necked collar, a pair of gloves, and several layers of sleeves are a start. Mika’s found that he doesn’t particularly like being touched by anybody that much. He suspects that it has something to do with the roughness with which he was handled as a child—wrestled out of one wagon and into another, and thrust into an iron cell. He might not have been experimented on, but apparently his arms and wrists were prodded and probed all over to find suitable veins before Adorno and the other Knights arrived to save him and the other children. He’d apparently had bruises encircling his wrists for weeks.

It’s ironic, because Lohen doesn’t mind blood at all. Even Mika gets squeamish if he looks too long at an accidental cut on his arm welling up with blood, but Lohen seems to enjoy the sight of that kind of thing. Skin on skin may be too much for him, but blood isn’t?

When he first saw Lohen undressed—after a terrible scuffle that left him covered in dried blood and caked-on mud—it was when he’d insisted on helping him to wash his hair. Mika had modestly tried to look the other direction as Lohen climbed into his bathtub, but even after he was half-submerged did he catch sight of the myriad of scars on his arms, his sides, the tops of his thighs.

“What are those from?” Mika remembers mumbling while sudsing soap into his dirty hair.

“Oh, these?” He’d held his arm up, as if admiring his handiwork. “I did these.”

He’d been too stunned to say anything in response at the time. They’re still there, of course. Mika sometimes will gently scratch them when Lohen complains that they’re itching—his nails are short enough to avoid irritation, and he doesn’t trust Lohen not to rake himself up with his own nails, anyway. The scabs and cuts and wounds from monster attacks are as prevalent as ever, but Mika has noticed that any self-inflicted injuries seem to mostly be scars from the past, at this point in time at least.

And alongside that, it’s become very clear to Mika that he himself is the only one who gets the privilege of touching Lohen’s bare skin. He doesn’t know how exactly that boundary was made clear, but suddenly Lohen was slipping off his gloves before holding his hand, rubbing his cheek against Mika’s first thing in the morning, or tangling their legs together beneath the blankets. 

Sometimes, it seems like Lohen wants Mika to touch his skin more than anything. Like he’s starving for it. What would the other Knights think, if they knew that their ruthless Vice Captain was cuddled up to the Front Line Surveyor, head buried in his chest as Mika untangled his hair with his fingers? If they knew that Mika was the only person who’s seen him cry?

Now, though the world is hazy, Mika can feel Lohen’s fingers ghosting over his back before settling down and rubbing lazy circles there. He lets out a long, exhausted breath and pays close attention to the sound of Lohen’s slow inhales and exhales. One after another. Outside, he can hear the muffled keening of a nightingale through the glass window. Far too groggy for any complex thoughts now, he decides to leave the comparison of which makes a better lullaby for tomorrow morning.

“Nighty night,” Lohen hums. 

Mika just presses a kiss against his collarbone in return.