Work Text:
Darion stared down at the hand in his. Fingers interlocked, palms pressed together. The fingers were wider than Darion’s, warmer, pinker. He felt the hint of a pulse where the heels touched, the suggestion of a heartbeat far down the road the blood traveled within this body.
The hand clasping his loosened its grip, and Darion didn’t budge from his own grasp.
His hand was far narrower than the one he held. Malnutrition preceding undeath did that, and it wasn’t really a fair comparison, with how his companion was the son of a massive man. Beyond the hand were bulky arms, broad shoulders, and a thick torso that could crush Darion, given enough force.
The hand tried to pull free, but Darion kept his hold firm.
The fingernails were quite the stark comparison. Most of Darion’s fingernails were broken—if he bothered, he could focus the power of Blood to convince his nails to grow as they did in life, or even hone into claws it needed. Darion always found the claws impractical to use save as a last resort. They interfered with both his gauntlets and his grip on his weapons, so the nails stayed torn and short, dried blood and dirt lingering the cuticles. The other hand, however, looked as if it never touched dirt before. The nails all ended with a clean, even band of white.
The hand tried to pull away again.
The warmth was foreign, too. Darion could feel his cursed body do its best to leech all it could—he liked to think undeath made his body envious, that this was merely a want for what he once had, but he knew better. The darkness of undeath despised all things living, and desperately wished to choke it all out, even in this small gesture.
If Darion focused, he could convince himself that he could delineate between the natural, living warmth in the hand from the supernatural warmth that pervaded the truly devoted.
“Are you going to let me go?” Anduin asked, sounding a little peeved.
They just had sex, an increasingly common occurrence, and were not lounging about in that post-coital way. Darion’s deadened nerves didn’t exactly afterglow, so he could either beat a hasty and awkward retreat, or find time to do something else. Darion’s eyes finally flickered to Anduin, lying beside him in his frankly massive bed. Anduin winced, either unable to bear the weight of a death knight’s gaze, or, more likely, he realized how he sounded.
“I mean,” Anduin tried again, a bit more casually, a bit more playful. “I didn’t expect you to be one for hand holding.”
Darion’s hum was tuneless. Clasped together, even in the dim light of the few sparse candles of the room, their hands made a stark contrast. Darion was little more than pale skin pulled taut over bones, while Anduin was the picture perfect hand of a good soldier.
“Have you held hands before now, or are you enjoying the novelty of this?”
Darion snorted. “That’s bold, even for you.” The warm hand gently squeezed in response. The gesture pressed their heels flush together, his pulse echoing against Darion’s skin. “I have.”
“Aha!” Anduin exclaimed. “Fortune does favor the bold. Childhood sweetheart?”
Embarrassment decided to make an appearance now. By holding Anduin’s hand between them, he couldn’t really shy away. “It wasn’t that,” Darion corrected. “And it wasn’t really hand holding. I’ve grabbed someone’s hand. Pulled them by their hand.”
“Is this… before or after?” Anduin hazarded, sounding less bold now. Darion imagined he was panicking at the ‘pulled them’ part, imagining a helpless woman being yanked around by a damned soul, ready to use her for reagents or some such.
“Before,” Darion said. “Well, before I died, if that’s the question. During the Third War.” She had an overbearing father, just as Darion did, and they bonded over that fact. In the early years of the war, they played together once their duties were done. He vaguely remembered romping around Marenhold Keep, running through side halls with her hand in his. They stopped playing not long after one of those times for a million tiny reasons—it was war, they had duties, it could be seen as inappropriate, Darion vaguely remembered her father not really liking him.
“Pulled them to…?”
“We were playing. I was a kid.” He felt like he couldn’t talk like a normal person, the words just wouldn’t cooperate with him. He really hated talking about his life.
“Is this person…” Anduin hesitated. “Are they…?”
“We don’t keep in touch,” Darion said, which should be enough of an answer.
Anduin nodded. A comfortable silence stole over them for several minutes. He should just leave, in all honesty. He had things to do, an increasingly shrinking window to do something about the Helm, knights to oversee.
“Can you be normal about something?” Darion asked.
Anduin spluttered. “I—” he started before he clamped down on the snarky comment he was about to make. “What is it?” he asked after a moment, sincerity in his tone.
Darion hesitated, making sure he tasted the words before he said them. He didn’t like them. “What does the Light feel like?”
It tasted even worse said aloud. To Anduin’s credit, he considered the question seriously. “You’ve felt the Light,” he said.
He certainly did—he had the scars to prove it, too. “I meant… ambiently,” he lamely amended. He raised their clasped hands to enunciate this. “I never… had a connection the Light. Not really.”
“Oh,” Anduin said. His voice dropped as if that news saddened him. He pulled his clasped hand free to instead cradle Darion’s hand between both of his. He held his hand with the care of handling something delicate and cherished. “You know, I don't even really remember what it’s like without it. I've had the Light for so long now,” he admitted. “I’m sure that's not what you want to hear.”
Darion didn’t respond. It had been a painfully indulgent question, and he shouldn’t have asked it at all. Thinking too much on what could have been made the jagged, calcified wound that cleaved his chest and back ache—or perhaps in between those two points was where the remaining shreds of his soul resided. He had sealed his fate long ago, a bargain made with no duress, and entertaining regret for that choice did nothing but borrow needless pain.
“Can I…?” Anduin trailed off. He had that look on his face he got when he had a reckless idea that he shouldn’t follow through on.
“Yes.”
The dimmest light began to emanate from Anduin’s hands. His face was tight with his concentration as a gentle warmth slowly began to breach Darion’s skin and reach the bones beneath. It was a frighteningly alien feeling after so many years dead, almost too foreign to evoke any memories of childhood.
The light flared, the warmth turning white hot in an instant, and Darion yanked his hand back with a snarl. His stomach cramped as his curse demanded retribution, demanded the destruction and desecration of anything holy. He grit his teeth and fought the feeling back.
“Sorry,” Anduin gasped out as he let the Light go. “I forget how much I’m holding it back.”
“It’s fine,” Darion replied, cradling his injured hand. There was an unpleasant odor of easily identifiable origin.
Anduin reached over and took Darion’s hand again, rubbing circles into the burned flesh.
Neither of them said anything more until Darion left.