Chapter Text
N ew moon. The perfect witness to keep secrets.
And it isn’t that Viktor wishes to maintain his feelings hidden, resurfacing like the high tide during full moon—rising every night during the solitude of the watch, with the familiar glow of your window visible from the tower until sleep took you for the day, the light of the candle extinguished.
But it a necessary illness he doesn’t mind to be afflicted with.
The place you ought to call house it’s so different to this lonely tower; avant-garde wallpapers are here but starting to chip off. There the candles burn with riches fragrances, while here the beacon illuminates, unforgiving, leaving oil prints all over his fingertips.
At least he can pretend to watch over your dreams from here, peering at the starry night. A childish desire to keep you away from nightmares soaked in crimson tides and women jumping out the cliff.
It’s the same tale of every night—to cocoon in the couch by the control panel, door close to avoid any flicking light filtering inside the room. A book resting on his lap, forgotten pens scattered all over the floor by his shoes. Today isn’t worthy of writing in the logbook. At least not yet.
The door creaks open, metal scratch against wood.
“Viktor,” your voice makes him jump. Between a dream and a ghostly whispering like the sea uses to do with each crashing wave.
He stands up from the couch, leaving the book he was reading closed without any mark. It doesn’t matter. Viktor doubts he knew what the chapter was about even before you arrived.
His hands are eager. They settle in the roundness of your cheeks, finding like a miracle that your skin it’s so soft and warm. “You’re really here.”
It wouldn’t be the first time the water fools him, allowing him to imagine both of you, floating weightless inside an infinite of blue. Hands intertwined.
You oughtn’t to fear the place you come from.
“I almost got caught,” you laugh, leaning against the safety of his touch. Against the cold surrounding you in her way toward the lighthouse, Viktor is your refuge. “They hired new fishermen. Mister Gavin was talking with them in his office up until midnight.”
That catches Viktor’s attention, obliged to recoil his touch. “New fishermen?” Upon his hiring as lighthouse keeper, Viktor had seen the dark silhouettes of the fishing boats sailing on open water during the night, where fish could be easily collected. Every journey, fewer boats get out. And even less returned.
“He has always been a greedy man,” you sigh, sinking into the couch. He hopes your shampoo gets imprinted in his pillow for at least a couple of days. Until he gets to see you again. “He doesn’t wish to understand Piltover will never be the same as it was thanks to her.”
Viktor settles next to you. “I suppose sometimes dwelling in the past it’s the only thing one can do to avoid going mad.”
He observes you, loving that intense gaze that could only be described as a frozen storm, cloudy and deep and dark from all the tears he’s sure you don’t dare to shed.
“I hope he goes mad,” your voice is barely audible. A shivery whisper that crawls inside his chest. “I hope I get to do it.”
That need starts to nudge again the gate of his reason. You’re not like this, he wants to tell you. The poison dripping down every syllable, breaking its enchanting cadence. But it would be senseless to utter so—because your family has sworn upon themselves to forge you into whatever monstrosity the townsfolk’s rumors proclaim.
“There lies the reason behind your current visits?” Part of him lets slip, a terrible weight settled onto his heart.
Your chuckle echoes, a whisper that would remain even after you leave. “No, Viktor. It isn’t.” You drink from his golden eyes, twin stars guiding your way. You aren’t sure what this night has of special. It’s just a moonless night, full of stars in the sky. The sea laps all the same. “I would never drag you into my mess.” Not as Gavin and his new wife had dragged Astraia, hoping for you to grow all alone, feeding the desperation to seek freedom.
“I wouldn’t have minded if you do,” he says, and your eyes start to blurry.
His fingers are rough and cold, yet he touches you with the same delicate nature one would hold a butterfly. Afraid that if he takes too much, you’d be all but a shattered dream.
“I’m happy here,” you mutter, the secret you’re so afraid to say out loud if bad luck ever tries to snatch it. “I can’t go anywhere, but here… here I don’t want to run away.” And it terrifies you. All your life, wishing to be someone else, to forsake the family name impose upon your existence. Yet not even the waves could take what runs through your veins. “I loathe this place with every fiber of my being, but now you’re here and… everything has changed.”
It's like it was before. The blue of the sea is shinier, and the call doesn’t reverberate in your bones with the ache of impossibility. It calls you home. Morphed into one endless way up into the end of every lament.
For the first time in so long, you don’t want to leave.
His smile breaks your heart, and you let yourself cry, letting him hold you while every tear erases the grey colors once painted over the vibrant memories of your mother’s tight embrace, her haunting voice calling you to sleep. The way the sand got under your toes after one swimming afternoon. All the ghostly laughter you blessed upon the cliff.
Before everything turned crimson and empty.
“I will keep this place safe,” he says, his voice muffled against your hair. “For you.”
Your hands grab his shoulders, and for a moment it seems like you wish to disappear in him, to forever echo the rhythm of his heartbeat as another lullaby.
You can’t see him, so he dares to deposit a kiss on your forehead, muttering things you cannot understand.
“Come with me,” he says after an eternity that’s cut too short.
*~*~*~*
The water’s cold, but it lights every nerve on fire once you submerge.
Viktor slips behind you, your hands never leaving his once your tears are erased by the sea water hitting in gentle waves. A moonless night with inky water, yet you don’t have to fear the abyss. You have never.
“Does your leg hurt?” you say, waddling toward him. You could guide him toward the cliffiside where the coral grows meters under the surface, so he could feel the fish between his legs and grab at the rock for safety.
“N-no,” Viktor shivers. “The cold helps to numb sometimes.”
It’s barely visible outside of the lighthouse’s rotating beacon, which give you enough courage to inch shamelessly closer, until your dress it’s tangled in his legs. Because it’s your time to hold him, soak him in your warmth.
Astraia’s words haunt you, but what reputation do you still hold? You don’t care to stain the last name they force you to keep.
“Numb what?” You can barely feel his hands ghosting over your back. Afraid.
He averts your gaze. But you can’t let him; with your warm hands cupping his cheeks. Despite the coldness, you could see the faint blush on his cheeks every time the lighthouse painted the waves gold.
“Are you afraid of me?” you whisper, his fingers intertwined with yours.
“Never.” His voice is gruff, the grasp so tight his knuckles are bone-white. “But… there are some things meant to remain hidden.”
“Why?” You know why, but you have stopped caring about the reason long ago. “I don’t want to keep them locked any longer.” It was as if sometimes they drowned you, blocking every breath from your throat at the mere thought of saying those words your tongue longed to express.
Your name has never been more precious that in the way Viktor whispers it. A prayer he covets for only him to call.
And you’ll let him. Of course you’ll let him.
“I don’t want to, either,” he says, golden stars fluttering close one his lips beckon yours, soft and pliant and so sweet. Barely a sheepish brush, before you push yourself closer, his hands grabbing handfuls of floating fabric on your lower back.
You get lost. Barely keeping afloat in the great tides of emotions sieging you. Yet Viktor doesn’t care if your lips taste like salt, if you’re shivering and breaking in sobs. Despite all the love, he knows it hurts—being loved hurts by the mere thought of all this being stolen with the same easiness it could be taken away.
But he won’t let it.
“You make me feel free,” you utter, breathless. And this otherworldly vision will forever haunt him; your bright eyes, swollen lips. The smile that’s just for him.
“I’m in love with you,” he says, his voice dripping with dread, the ever-present possibility of rejection.
Your laughter fills him with pain, but Viktor quickly realizes, by how you embrace him, that it’s not meant to be mocking. It’s euphoric, triumphant in the way you call for him. “Viktor, kiss me.”
And he does, up until the cold seeps into his bones, threatening into leaving him up to the design of the sea. Yet you hold him close, guide him back to the shore where you both lay in the sand like teenagers laughing at the constellations above because they would never have the brightest stars in all the skies, light only meant to gaze upon you.
And you love those stars, making them close so you can kiss them along with every precious feature of his face that you’re decided to carve in your memory.
Viktor embraces you despite the warmth of the sand seeping through your clothes, the humid summer air blowing hair into his face. You want to tell him the truth, to let your throat sore from a scream so everything and everyone could hear it.
But you’re afraid. You know the sea always takes those who you love, and you dread for Viktor to be next. So you don’t, and instead, cuddle up right into his side, your cheek pressed against his chest as his breath slowly grows steady.
He’s asleep, but his hands are still taking yours, his chin over your head.
“I love you, too, Viktor,” you mutter, so low either he or the sea can hear you. Yet the lighthouse sees, casting shadows along your refuge on the coastline like a blanket.