Honkai: Star Rail oneshots

[blade/luocha] you need only ask

cw: Blade/Luocha, blood & injury (not super graphic just post-mission Blade), partial nudity, temporary paresis

super self-indulgent!! me exploring them w this dynamic ig.

🚂 _ _ _ _ 💫

The door to Blade's room is slightly ajar when Luocha arrives. It is a silent invitation, but still, he knocks, by way of announcing his presence. The room is as Luocha remembers it: lukewarm, dimly lit, and simple if not barren. What's left of Blade's clothes after the mission he just returned from is lying in a haphazard heap by the bathroom door. The sound of running water hums through the space, amplifying the lethargic atmosphere.

Luocha drops off his own bag and coat. He walks over to the bathroom, raps his knuckles against the door. "Blade, I'm here."

"One moment." Blade's voice is dampened by the water—and much tiredness, Luocha notes. "Can you close the front door?"

"Sure."

It seems Blade is making him wait, so Luocha takes the liberty of wandering around his room, in absent-minded search of anything that may pique his interest. The only thing he's repeatedly found funny is the amount of pillows on Blade's bed; he didn't strike Luocha as the kind of guy to want five. He wonders if that's actually Blade's preference, or just the amount the room came with, and he couldn't be bothered to toss some out.

The water shuts off. Luocha patiently waits for the other man, but what emerges from the other side of the door is not Blade, only his voice. "Luocha. Can you help me?"

A smile involuntarily tugs at the corners of Luocha's lips. Forget asking; the old Blade would never have even factored his healing into his mission plans, much less subject himself to receiving it. The only times Luocha could get his hands on him were when Blade was physically unable to protest, having either gone into shock, lost consciousness, or been in one way or another subdued by his fellow Hunters. So to call such a display of trust 'rare' would be a profound understatement. How can Luocha possibly turn it down? "Of course. I'm coming in, then."

He slides the bathroom door open. The inside looks nothing short of a crime scene. There's red on the floor, in the sink, all along the walls... as if Blade has had to claw and struggle his way into the bathtub. The air is thick with steam, filled with a familiar scent as sweet as it is metallic. On the edge of the tub sits Blade, facing away from Luocha, hair like wet silk clinging to the bare curve of his back.

"Shut the door, please," he rasps. "It's cold."

"How about you put some clothes on?" Luocha grabs the bathrobe hanging nearby and goes to cover Blade with it, but not before quickly taking note of what's visible to him. As expected, bruises are already lightening to yellow, and open wounds have closed over with new, pinkish skin. But the hand Blade has pressed to his abdomen raises a flag for Luocha—as well as a glimmer of what looks concerningly like Kafka's signature threads, just beneath the skin of his waist. Luocha wraps Blade in the plush bathrobe, leaves the other man to slip his arms through the sleeves and lazily pull the piece of clothing around himself, while he takes care of his dripping wet hair. "What happened?"

Blade makes a soft grunting noise when Luocha drapes a towel over his head and starts to rub his hair dry. "A Voidranger shot at me," he explains; then, after a few moments, corrects himself, "through me."

"Huh?" The healer inside Luocha finds his own lackluster reaction alarming. Granted, Blade is much more... robust than the usual person, but having one's body torn apart in that way must still have been traumatic. "'Through,' how?"