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clarissalance · 3 years

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Watermelon-flavored popsicle

Pairing: Xingqiu x g/n!reader, mention of Chongyun

Warning: light swearing, kissing, a lot of grammatically errors.

Word count: 3404

Summary: A coincident meeting between you and Xingqiu on Yaoguang Shoal might have changed your relationship.

A/N: Here is my come back for summer. This piece has been in my folder for so long but I just don’t want to check the errors and proofread. Luckily, I have found my motivation (no more wifi) and here is the piece. This one is inspired by imagination if I can go to the beach ( I hate corona).I hope you have fun reading this oneshot (and feel my desperation to enjoy the sunny beach) Next up will be Kazuha, I think :D. Please send Xingqiu a lot of love~~ (❤´艸｀❤)

Picture credit: @polarbear43666 on Twitter.

Summer in Liyue has always been sweltering, burning, and unbreathable. The sun stands proudly in the middle of clear azure sky, not a single cloud dare to tread near the glowing king, blocking the beam of lights shine down the city.

Today is also another day of undesirable temperature. Even when the city is a harbor, the cool breezes from the sea can’t calm down the rising heat from the road, nor the glowing businesses or the flock of people going to the market. Living in the city for 5 years, you know not to tread near the market during working hours, so you decide to go somewhere quiet, relaxing and enjoyable.

Yaoguang Shoal.

Normally, you would have gone to a teahouse or a bookstore to escape the hot weather, but today, those areas are swamp with people. You might have a brief idea of why they would be so crowded in there. It can only be Yunjin performance, or the teahouse is having a giveaway.

As much as you love to enjoy her breathtaking performance and intriguing stories, you wouldn’t risk getting trampled by those people. Maybe another day, when people aren’t packing inside the teahouse.

As soon as you arrive at the shore, the thick scent of salt waffles around the tip of your nose, sounds of waves calmly splashing against the coast. Slowly, you remove your shoes and sink your feet down the fever-like golden sand, heading toward the white bubbles splashing waves.

You should have brought a flip-flop instead of shoes.

At the burning sensation on the sole of your feet, you start sprinting toward the nearby small patches of grass hiding under a gigantic shade, hoping to save your sensitive skins.

As soon as you jump on the lump of grass, you can’t help letting out a painful hiss, jumping like a grasshopper on the surface. This place isn’t very far from the water, maybe you can put on an umbrella here and enjoy the breathtaking scenery.

Afar, you can see a few white cranes enjoying the cold water while looking for fishes, bathing under the scorching heat. Propping yourself on your knee, you sit down and enjoy the feeling of wind combing through your messy dark locks. From here, the sound of splashing water on the sand, the soothing sensation of a peaceful summer gently sinks down your skin.

You’re lucky to find a shade in the middle of a shore, under the scorching sun glaring holes on your head. Unlike the harbor, Yaoguang shoal is much more breathable, the cool breeze brings the smell of sea salt dancing on your skin, slowly imbued your silky dark lock with the distinctive scent of the ocean.

Letting out a lazy sigh, you leisurely drift into a slumber, opting for a relaxing nap while enjoying the sound of nature.

How great is it to not have someone disturb you?

“Y/N?”

Maybe you speak too soon.

Furrow your brows, you slowly open your eyes, annoyed by the sudden intrusion. The bright light clearly wants to pierce your eyes, but the figure moves closer and blocks the over-enthusiastic sun out of your gaze. You slowly sit up, squinting hard at the dark figure.

“Xingqiu?” Widen your eyes at the familiar shade of blue, you look at him quizzically. “What are you doing here?”

The male lets out a breathy chuckle and crouches down, letting light falls on his face.

“Me? The weather is nice, so I’m strolling along the shore and enjoy the weather.”

At your comical gaze drilling at his head, and the hydro user finally raises his hand in defeat. “ Fine, fine. I was on my way back to the Harbor after helping the traveler with some commissions.”

“ The harbor is the other direction.” You dubiously point the opposite direction, a small gust of wind picking up and tousling your hair. “ If you’re heading this direction, Dragonspine is where you're heading.”

“What are you doing here?” The young man ignores your remark and changes the topic, eyes curiously wander down your lying body on the grass.

“ Escaping the heat from the harbor.” You hum and scoot to the other side, sparing Xingqiu a space to sit. He must be drying staying that long under the sun.

He quickly sits down next to you, slowly peeling his boots and socks away. The area is small, forcing you to stay close to him, your shoulders almost bumping into each other. As much as you love skinship, any physical contact is overbearing in this weather. The scenery would have been more romantic if you’re sharing body heat in the bizarrely cold Starglow Cavern.

Wait… why did Xingqiu sit down and remove his boots? Isn’t he supposed to go back to the harbor?

“ You aren’t going back to the harbor?” You tilt your head and his side profile.

“ I was, but I change my mind.” The blue figure has his eyes on the boots, unlacing the footwear. “Sitting here with you is much more breathable than cramping inside the teahouse and the bookstore.”

…But you didn’t agree to let him stay in the first place. Why is he still here then?

You just offer him a place to sit down in the shade, just because he was sweating profusely under the sun when you were talking to him. It’s called an action out of politeness!!! He isn’t supposed to take the offer and makes himself comfortable.

Great, now you’re stuck with a body heat that you desperate to get away from. Roll your eyes, you let your gaze fleet over the vast clear ocean in front of you.

From here, you can slightly make out an outline of Guyun Stone Forest peeking behind the thickening clouds. That majestic scenery, the infamous fight between Osial and Res Lapis, you wonder how big that fight was to create a whole island with a gigantic unique shape? After thousands of years, you can still feel the rumbling energy threatening to break the seal of lord of Geo, yet something manages to force them down. Perhaps, there might be someone there securing the seal, holding the remaining pieces together. What would happen if that seal finally breaks again? Will the entire harbor engulfed by the anger of the lord of Vortex, or, will the new Geo archon will defend it?

“A mora of your thought?” A youthful voice calls out, and you whirl your head in his direction. “ You look so deep in thought.”

“ Ah… I was just thinking about the Guyun Stone Forest.” You shyly scratch your head, eyes don’t meet his. You totally forgot someone is sitting next to you. Xingqiu doesn’t comment, he lets his gaze drift to the Stone Forest, and the silence falls.

This time you don’t let your eyes stray to the exalted scenery hiding away under those clouds. Instead, you observe the hydro user, who is just a few inches away. His features are soft, yet so define. The sharp eyes, the slope of his nose, and the plush lips. Under the smooth cerulean locks is his signature amber orb. You have always felt enamored under his gaze ever since you first met. That golden eyes are always filled with the determination and sharpness of a predator. You love it when the soft, bubbly Xingqiu turns sharp, or when he’s practicing his swordsmanship.

“Take a picture, it will last longer.” The hydro user says, his voice remains calm and unwavering, almost make you mistake for someone else. “ How is my face?”

“ Utterly unacceptably handsome.” Propping yourself on your elbow, you stare into his deep eyes, answer honestly, try to hold your scoff.

Xingqiu doesn’t comment on your compliment but tilts his head the other way, avoiding your hawking gaze. Obviously, he knows you like to mess with him, trying to pull a reaction out of the shameless nonchalant friend when you’re bored. How you wish he would at least give you an entertaining reaction.

You remember those days when Xingqiu and Chongyun are easily flustered. Nowadays, only Chongyun is still affected by your antic. How does that popsicle boy not immune to your frequent teasing is also a big mystery you’re looking for an answer to.

“ You shouldn’t say someone is handsome if you don’t mean it.” After a while, the calm hydro user is back, composed, and relax. How can he be so lax in this atrocious weather, you don’t want to know.

“ But… you’re handsome ?”

“ You’re just trying to make me fluster.” He replies, a blush slowly creeps on his cheek. You don’t know why he’s trying to deny your compliment. He’s handsome, and you’re just using that fact to turn him into a tomato. Why does it sound like he’s trying hard to convince himself his face isn't aesthetic to look at?

You open your mouth but close it. Speechless, you don't know how do you convince him that you honestly compliment his features, not… uh baiting him? Do your compliments sound like cheap-ass flirtatious attempts people usually get in a combo when they visit the tavern?

Your motive isn’t as pure as it can be but your compliment does: honest, and authentic. How could he twist your words into something so scandalous like that? Outrageous!

Your lips part to speak, but something cold and hard is shoved inside, and your olfactory bulbs almost explode with flavor (and numbing cold). The feeling of fruity sweetness seeps on your tongue, with a tingle of refreshing feeling dancing on top. Glaring dagger at Xingqiu, you notice his gloating face while biting the signature blue popsicle. Did Chongyun give that to him?

Plug the freezing item out of your mouth, the vibrant pinkish color glowing under the sun, slowly dripping down your hand. It is a watermelon-flavored popsicle. He could have handed it to you nicely instead of almost choking you off and stop your sentence like that. Nevertheless, you still enjoy the watermelon-flavored popsicle while pouting at the young man.

“ Where did you get this?” In between you lick, you look up at him, surprised to see half of the popsicle has disappeared. Did he just chomp all that in less than a minute?

“I bought it, of course, food doesn't fall from the sky.” This young man is much more handsome when he has his mouth closed. You are really contemplated whether to use your handkerchief to shove down his throat. Or maybe a rock could do the job well too.

“So, pay me.” Xingqiu suddenly brings his hand to your face, mischief glowing in his amber eyes. The audacity of this hydro user must have rocketed the sky after so long not having a good fight. You give him a forced smile while elbow him in the stomach, voice dangerously low.

“ Our friendship doesn’t even worth a single popsicle? Really Xingqiu, I’m so disappointed.” You fake a sigh, head shaking in disapproval.

The god-damned bastard avoids your blow without a hitch and even slithers his hand on your waist to tickle you. Oh, he must be looking for death this time.

With the popsicle still inside your mouth, you sneakily raise your hand, attempting to push Xingqiu into the lava-like sand as revenge. It'd be a perfect touch to your lovely afternoon to see him tumbling on the group while jumping like a hissing cat.

How naïve of you, to think that he doesn’t spot your little antic. This is the young man always out-performing you in every aspect, even in eating a popsicle.

Without even looking at you, he catches your wrist effortlessly while still licking the ice cream. His body relaxes, compare to you, who almost tumbling toward him if he doesn't hold you in place. In a panic, you try to wriggle yourself out of his hold, but the young man only tightens his hold, remains unfazed by your swinging attempt to fling his hand out of your wrist.

“ Let me go Xingqiu!” Instead of laughing at a hissing Xingqiu tumbling on the sand, you become the angry cat here.

“ So you can hit me? Of course not.” He replies gloatingly, chins lackadaisical, his fingers wrap tightly around your wrist.

“It’s hot.”

“ Eat your popsicle then.” His hand holding your wrist brings up to point at the melting ice cream on your hand. “It’s melting.”

Of course, everyone can see that. Shooting pointed gaze at him, you try to shake the tight grip on your wrist a few more times, but nothing avails. He doesn’t let go, and your other hand is busy holding the popsicle. If you have another one, maybe you can peel off his fingers. Too bad you only have 2 hands.

Sigh out in defeat, you give Xingqiu stink eyes before turning your attention back to the watermelon popsicle, occasionally look down at his grip to find an escape route. You don’t believe you can’t escape from his grasp!

The hydro user doesn’t let your hand go after he finished his popsicle, instead, he slumps down with one cheek resting in his hand, staring at your face blatantly. You don’t usually mind but being gawked at while eating isn’t as comfortable as you thought.

“ What?” Finally, you look up to face the mischievous blue boy.

“ Can I have a bite?”

“ Obviously n-” He doesn’t wait for your answer and leans in. Your first reaction is to be dodged away, but the sneak has your wrist pinned on the grass, forcing you to stay still.

As soon as you realize your immobile state, Xingqiu is a few inches away from your face, licking the popsicle, and then biting off the edge near the stick. His smooth cheek brushes past your fingers, the deep blue locks fall on his face. From here, you inhale a hint of mint and sweet vanilla. Instead of the familiar scent of woodsy musky of old books, you notice a whiff of summer and salt on him.

Stunted by his sudden closeness, you remain to freeze even after he pulls away.

“W-wh-what did you j-just do?” To your horror, you stutter. Not once, but twice.

“Eat your popsicle.”

As nonchalant as ever, he shrugs while swiping the remains on his lips, like he isn’t the one who just leans in so close to you. You are too dazed to even realize the popsicle hang close to your mouth is dripping down your clothes.

Startle at the coldness, you hastily look down and scrunch your face at the mess. Ugh, it’s because of him, again!

“ Need me to eat that for you?” he offers, but you swear you hear a hint of playfulness glinting in his voice. Quickly, you bite off the remaining before he can steal another bite, forget how sensitive your gum is. The result, you can already imagine, is brain freeze.

Hissing at the sudden burst of frost blooming in your mouth, unconsciously grab on Xingqiu, squeezing his hand tightly while squirming vigorously. You shouldn’t have bitten off the whole thing, even when it melts. Hand in hand, you can feel the warmth of his fingers caressing your wrist, and they slowly move down and intertwine with yours. That opportunistic guy.

During that heated moment, you remember yourself instinctively looking for a source of heat. At one point, your brain decided to throw the remaining sanity out the window. It convinces your body that the crook of his neck is the best source of warmth to melt the overbearing sensation in your mouth. And your body decides to do without giving another thought.

Face buries deep in his neck, you are engulfed in his strong musky scent, naturally, you freeze dead on your track.

What have you done?

How do you get up?

How can you look at his eyes now?

With the dreading thoughts constantly running around your mind, you can only hit your head on his shoulder blade in shame, earning a rumbling chuckle from the young man.

“ Don’t laugh!” Your whiny voice is muffled by his clothes. Upon your request, he doesn’t stop at a chuckle but starts to wheeze, chest rumbling. Your cheeks burn crisp with embarrassment, yet you can’t find a single hole to hide.

“ Hahaha… Why did you do that?” He bursts out ungracefully, his shoulder shaking vividly. Xingqiu is teasing you on purpose!!

You also want to ask why did you do that too. Why did you do that without even thinking about the consequence again?

“ Stop laughing!” The audacity of this boy, after you told him to stop laughing, he snorts louder and teases you more. You thought this chivalrous nobleman would only snort for a few minutes, then he would comfort you like the novel. Too bad, life isn’t as predictable as the novels. What you expect is the comforting hug, or his hand patting your head reassuringly. What you get instead is a never-ending tease and the constant re-telling of the scenario in an out-of-breath voice.

Moving away from his neck, you pout and sulky. Despite being under the shade and cool sea breezes, you feel the heat rushing at the back of your neck and on your cheeks, a friendly reminder. Fingers fondling the edge of your shirt, you pretend to be deaf at the puff of his laugh. Is it too late for you to move to Inazuma and never see him again?

Actually, it might be better to start avoiding than do nothing.

You attempt to stand up abruptly and prepare to sprint off, fleeing away from the young hydro user who is making himself relax next to you.

Notice the use of the word here: “attempt”.

Xingqiu quickly sees through your plan before you can start it.

Unlike last time, he saw your movement and stopped your hand in the mid-air. This time, he is a step ahead and caught your chin between his fingers, tilting your head toward him, his mesmerizing golden eyes pierce through you.

Catch-off-guard by his sudden closeness, the unsuccessful plan is extinguished at the back of your head.

Out of everything, why would he choose this way for your attention? You feel like you have no sanity left every time he does something intimate.

How weak are you for him?

The deep amber orbs study you intently like he’s trying to ingrain your face into his memories. The glimmering eyes always full of mischief and playfulness now is like an abyss, easily pull you in and spiraling into the darkness. The bubbly, transparent Xingqiu is replaced by a mature, mysterious, and charismatic man.

The distance between you slowly shorten, and finally, he’s a breath away. You nervously hold your breath, eyes widen at his every movement. Being this close, you can see his fluttering lashes, his sudden quicken breathing, and his plump lips dangling like a piece of meat in front of your hungry gaze. What is this feeling of heat rising up to your chest?

Like a moth drawn into flame, your eyes follow when his tongue darts out to wet the soft kissable pad, his lips transform into pinkish color, just like the watermelon popsicle.

Butterflies roaming inside your stomach, your fuzzy mind lets out a weak resistance, telling you to turn away, escape from the cradle of his finger on your chin.

However, your instinct gives in.

You part your lips and angle up, time stops when his lips meet yours. It is a light brush, yet you can feel your heart pounding wildly inside your chest as the mint frosty scent invades your sense. Your breath slowly turns labored, yet all you can focus on is how soft he felt on your lips and how addicting he’s tasting on your tongue.

When your visions start to blur, and your legs threaten to give out, you finally decide to part away, but the hydro user has his hands cupping on your cheek doesn't think so.

“Let me taste you again.” Xingqiu whispers, his voice deep and smooth like velvet.

And then he pulls you in, claiming your mouth again, passionate and intense. He tastes like the watermelon popsicle you just ate, like a sunny summer you used to love, like a soaring kite in the sky.

You don’t think you hate the feeling of his lips on yours.

#genshin impact x reader #genshin impact #genshin xingqiu #summer #hot weather #popsicle #a kiss #clarissalance #no beta we kayak like tim #fluff #romance #friend to lovers #xingqiu x reader #xingqiu x y/n #oneshot #beach #sweating like hell #I proofread this with no wifi ;-;

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punkpoemprose · 3 years

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A Convenient Arrangement Part 10

Universe: Canonverse Arranged Marriage AU Rating:T Length: 8805 Words A/N: Long chapter-- distance makes the heart grow fonder, fluffy date time, questions answered, and Kristoff definitely finds his wife attractive.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9]

The week was a long one. They both would agree when or if asked, but if it wasn’t related to festival plans, no one was asking either one of them anything. When they rose in the morning, they scarcely had time to greet each other in the hall or over breakfast before knocks at the door would pull them each their own way.

Kristoff spent most of his days with Kai, learning all that he could about royal manners, the history of the kingdom, peerage, and the other pertinent information and skills required of a prince consort. He’d be the first to admit it, most of it went over his head. Sometimes when Kai spoke to him he thought that he understood the words well enough individually, but when they were strung together as they were, they may as well have been in French.

He really had no real interest in knowing whether it was more appropriate to bow or be bowed to when he met other members of the aristocracy which he was now technically a part of. He was doing his best to absorb what he could for Anna’s sake. He hated the idea that his lack of knowledge would reflect poorly on her because at the end of the day, even barely seeing her for a week, he cared deeply for her. He knew that part of making their marriage work was putting the effort in to understand her world.

When the lessons ended for the day, he would sometimes, but not always, have dinner with her. It felt like a small blessing to just be in her space since the announcement of the festival celebrating their engagement. He thought that it might be prudent to spend more time with her given that they were meant to at least appear a happy and doting couple to the public, but that detail seemed to be moot to whoever had decided to plan their days apart.

He supposed that he would seem in love with her regardless because he did have a fondness for her. He was beginning to understand the meaning of “distance makes the heart grow fonder” with each passing day. Every time they managed to dine together, he could often barely calm the racing of his heart while watching her enter the dining room, watching her sit across from him, close enough to look, but not to touch.

She’d ask him about what he had done each day and would share, in return, the plans she’d been making with her sister and the staff for the festival. He’d watch her carefully as they dined, noting the exhaustion in her posture that kept them from discussing much of anything past that. It was usually his only interaction with her each day, and it was always entirely too short.

Every night since the start of their overscheduled days, he’d slept in his room alone. Anna was usually needed elsewhere after dinner, attending to decisions and meetings that had been pushed late into the night. Sometimes she was being stolen for a fitting for her festival gown, other times decoration choices, and at least once she’d been taken for a chocolate tasting. That at least seemed to be the least objectionable way for her to spend her evenings of the lot. Each night he’d waited for her to return in vain, and each night he’d eventually headed to bed alone.

It had become strangely lonely to climb into his bed at the end of each day, knowing that she would do the same on the opposite side of their shared door. He’d slept alone for his entire life, but after only a few nights with Anna in his arms, he hated the way it felt to lay in the large empty bed without her. Some nights he would stay awake a short while, expecting to hear her knock or laying there wondering if she wanted him to knock. He’d never heard her knock though, he’d just hear the opening of her door, the soft thuds of drawers and doors as she prepared for bed, and then silence.

From across the room, the small chest he stored his things in would taunt him with the memory of something she’d said just a few days before. A crystal sat amongst his belongings, untouched, waiting for him to work up the courage to remove it from its wrappings.

It would make things so much simpler.

Or infinitely more complicated.

He’d fall asleep like that, wondering whether he should knock, whether he should bring her the gem, whether he should just let things be, or whether he should just go spend the night in the stables with Sven and his worries.

At least then I’d have someone to talk to. I don’t even care that he doesn’t speak back.

He slept in his bed each night, and when he woke each morning, he’d feel like he’d barely slept. By the end of the week, he could see the bags under his eyes when he shaved. Only two weeks living in the lap of luxury and it was already exacting a price from him.

At this rate I’ll be grey in a month.

When the knock came again, he sighed, cleaned the remaining soap from his face and shouted for the knocker to enter. He assumed that Kai was arriving with another of his famously packed schedules. While Kristoff rather liked the man, he’d begun to dread his morning arrival. He’d lived his entire life unscheduled, never bothering to pay much attention to the calendar or clock, and he wasn’t particularly thrilled by the concept of time being his master instead of he being the master of it.

The door swung open behind him with only a light sound of protest from the hinges that were still getting used to the room having an occupant. It had been unoccupied for many years, and the door seemed to have enjoyed its time off as even oiling it hadn’t stopped its protest. The soft click of its closure came immediately after, and Kristoff awaited the address from Kai that didn’t come.

There was, instead, a soft clicking of heeled shoes on the wood floor behind him as he wiped the water from his face. He didn’t think much of it or course, not until he heard another familiar voice that made his heart race.

“Kristoff?”

Anna’s voice startled him. Of course, they usually had a quick morning conversation over breakfast, but she hadn’t been in his room, nor he in hers, in a week. He turned to see her, red faced and staring at his chest.

She looked tired as well and there was a sort of tearfulness to her eye that made him nervous. She clearly hadn’t been sleeping well, and he wondered if she had been upset by something. He could admit to being a little more emotional than usual when he was tired, so he could relate, but he couldn’t quite read what was going on with Anna as she stared at him.

He tossed the towel aside. His hair, which he had been about to comb, was still wet and he could feel rivulets of water dripping down his back and over his chest. Despite the warmth of the sun through his window, he felt cool, hairs standing up on his arms as he closed the space between them in long strides.

As he approached, she was still staring at him, her face flushed, and her lips parted slightly as if she were about to say something. She said nothing though, and he started to understand her expression a bit better. There was exhaustion there of course, but it was only serving to exacerbate the absolute frazzled countenance and posture she was currently performing.

It made him relax a bit. She didn’t look upset per say and he did know that his wife was not a morning person. He also had the sneaking suspicion that there was a small tinge of embarrassment in her eye and that it could explain the flush on her cheeks.

She blinked after a moment and looked up from his chest to meet his eye. He started to get the sense from as quickly as she looked away and to the floor that he understood.

Embarrassment.

It was a feeling that he had become remarkably familiar with in the last couple weeks. He’d spent years of his life half or completely naked in the woods, not knowing what it was like to worry about how he looked or sounded, but the castle was quickly making him aware of just how embarrassed he should be about, well, everything.

It was a feeling that he wasn’t particularly fond of in any way shape or form, but it was something he was getting used to. There was something at least a little bit reassuring in being comfortable with discomfort, knowing it was part of the process. Kai had been kind enough to show him that in their lessons, telling him that he was in the perfect position to always act as if he’d done nothing wrong even when he slipped up, and that if he didn’t react it didn’t give anyone else the room to do so either.

“I’m…” she started to stretch her hand out, reaching for him like she was going to press her palm into his chest.

He didn’t back away or shift from her reach, but her hand fell anyway.

“Sorry. I’m… I’m fine. I just wasn’t expecting you to be… well that is… I didn’t know you were still getting ready. I’ll, oh gosh. I’ll leave.”

It all clicked into place then, and Kristoff couldn’t help but feel oddly amused. He felt a smile creeping to his face, completely unbidden, for the first time in a long while. He shook his head.

“No, you’re fine. I just finished up. I just need to put a shirt on and comb my hair. Did you need something?”

She seemed to collect herself somewhat as he responded. He watched as she nodded in return, still flushing, but focusing a bit more on making eye contact with him despite it.

“I thought that we could, um, skip the meetings today? I had Kai clear your schedule. I hope you don’t mind, but I thought it would be nice to just get out for the day.”

Her voice went soft when she added, quietly, “I’ve missed you.”

He felt like she’d just handed him the most perfect gift he’d ever received. There was nothing he could imagine ever wanting more than spending time away from the castle with her. There was no greater gift than a break from the frustrating monotony of lessons with the built-in bonus of having her at his side.

“I’ve missed you too.”

He turned from her for a moment, crossing the room back to his dressing table. It was a motion with a twofold intention, allowing her to flush again without the scrutiny of his eye, and allowing him to dress and get ready as soon as possible. He could all but feel her relax behind him once his shirt was on, and it almost made him chuckle.

He remembered her sleeping against his bare chest, her face smushed against him as she slept in the most ridiculous and endearing way possible. It was a happy and sad memory, still fresh in his thoughts from how recent it had been. He’d enjoyed feeling her against him, but still remembered what it had felt like to have her shaking, crying into his shirt just before they slept. He pondered why seeing him without a shirt in the light of day was somehow more blush-worthy but decided that he’d rather not dig too deep into it. He’d be happy if they saw a day where she wasn’t embarrassed around him at all. She had no reason to be.

“You look nice,” she said after a short time.

He’d felt her eyes on him as he’d finished readying himself for the day. He walked over to her, tying his sash around his waist as he went.

He hadn’t been convinced by Kai to change his style of dress, and he had been grateful that the man hadn’t really tried to convince him to do so at all. As a result of this, he was told that he had more clothes coming to him than he’d ever owned before, and that they would be in finer fabrics than he’d ever ben about to afford. He was grateful though that they would mostly mimic the styles he’d always worn, and that they would fit. He couldn’t ask for a better outcome to his tailoring situation than that.

He would have locked himself in the palace’s dungeon before he would have worn all the frills and layers of other men of station. He understood the need for a good suit but would never quite be on board with lace. He evidently had a set of formalwear arriving soon, and while he wasn’t particularly excited about it, he had been promised that his daily wear would not be nearly so embellished and that what he had coming was downright innocuous compared to the season’s fashions. Kai had called it “timeless” and he hoped that what he meant by that was “simple”.

Anna seemed cautious when she walked to his side after offering the compliment. Kristoff held his breath when she reached out a hand and gently smoothed a wrinkle in the front of his shirt with her palm.

Having her hands on him always felt good. There was no denying the fact that he enjoyed her attentions, and he couldn’t help but grin when her touch lingered a little longer than strictly necessary. He’d been longing to see her for days, to hold her hand, to even stand near her side.

“Thank you,” he said quietly after he allowed himself to breathe again.

He turned his attention to what she wore. It was perhaps the simplest dress he’d ever seen her wear, save of course for her nightgowns. It was dark green with some small embroidered details around the neck. It looked a bit like little flowers and birds, though he didn’t dare dip his head down towards her neck to investigate further. He didn’t think he could keep himself from pressing a kiss to her neck if he did. Even without further inspection, the fabric seemed light, like if he touched her waist while she wore it, she might be able to feel the roughness of his fingers through it.

“You look beautiful.”

She grinned at the compliment and he couldn’t help but feel grateful that she was happy to hear such a thing from him of all people.

“Thank you.”

He watched as she laced her fingers together behind her back and fidgeted a bit. Her nervousness came through when she spoke again.

“Since we’re going out I didn’t want to wear anything that would draw too much attention. I’m glad you still like it.”

He almost laughed, but held the reaction in. He wondered how she could ever be nervous about her appearance, as if she weren’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. As if he wouldn’t have thought that she was gorgeous even if they weren’t married. As if every man with eyes in a mile wouldn’t notice her even if she wore rags.

“I’ve told you before Anna, you’ll still turn heads. It has nothing to do with what you wear.”

He meant it, and he was rewarded by a shy smile and the unlacing of her fingers from each other, only to slip between his. The way his heart raced from her simply holding his hand made his face red.

Does she know how easily I’d fall apart for her?

He had to chase the thought away. He had to focus on the moment they were in before he said something he shouldn’t, something they weren’t ready for yet.

“So,” he asked, “What are we doing today?”

She shrugged a bit, then started to pull him toward the door to the hallway with her. He didn’t resist, letting himself be tugged along at her mercy.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

Every time she smiled, with every moment he spent holding her hand, he fell in love a bit deeper.

***

Anna’s morning had, thus far, not gone according to plan. Of course, there had barely been a plan to begin with, but blushing like a schoolgirl over seeing her husband shirtless and having her sister find out about her intentions to leave the castle weren’t exactly indicative of what it was that she’d had in mind.

As a consequence of the latter unplanned component of her day, she now found herself and her fortunately-and-unfortunately-fully-dressed husband being followed by a royal guard in full uniform. She felt like she was thirteen, being chaperoned on a date instead of being an adult woman out on a walk with her husband.

It’s not like I’m planning to snog him in the middle of the market.

Then a more judicious thought.

Of course, I didn’t plan a lot of things that have been happening lately.

She shook it off and instead focused on her recollection of her conversation with her sister.

“There’s still some unrest amongst the people Anna, what would you do if someone decided to take their anxiety out on you?”

She’d wanted to respond in several ways, most of which were incredibly sarcastic, but the forerunners had been each unique in their ability to elicit a response from her sister.

I would survive. You’ve taken your anxieties out on me twice.

From Elsa: Sadness.

I would fight them.

From Elsa: Long suffering exhaustion.

I would let my incredibly big and strong husband take care of it for me while I ogle him from the sidelines because while I love to fight my own battles, I also think it would be nice to watch him fight someone for me so I could watch those biceps flex.

Embarrassment on both of their parts.

Anna had, in the last week of barely seeing him but at meals and in passing, taken a particular interest in her husband’s physique. The morning’s events were not even close to the first time she’d looked at him and thought about what it would be like to be in his arms again, to have his large hands spanning her waist, lifting her off her feet and up closer to him.

So close that we could kiss.

She’d been longing for his touch since the first night she’d slept along. All week, once she managed to slip into a fitful sleep, she’d dreamt of him kissing her. She could still remember how real it had felt in her sleep, not that she knew what it would really feel like. They’d kissed at their wedding, her first and only “real” kiss, but the sort of deep, attentive kiss she’d received from him in her dream was something she’d never experienced.

I want to. I desperately want to.

They were in the residential district of the city. The cobbles of the path were fairly worn, but even below her feet. There were places here and there that she was already mentally noting needed improvement. A few lamps had cracked glass that likely made them unreliable on breezy evenings, some places in the road were low and held water that didn’t drain off easily. She would tell Elsa and ensure that a more formal investigation of the city and national infrastructure was eventually made. Personally, she thought that such a thing might be the better way to improve public opinion of the monarchy than a grand display of power and wealth, but she couldn’t pretend that her wedding hadn’t improved things.

Every now and then as they walked, she’d catch someone looking at her twice. Most people were away from home, working or learning at school, but a few people were home or in the area. Older people and young mothers mostly looked at her with recognition, and she did her best to give them a shy smile without giving the indication that she was available to stop and chat. It was a delicate dance. She liked to speak with her people, of course, but she truly just wanted to spend some time with her husband. One tagalong is already bad enough.

She’d wanted to go to the market. She’d thought it might be enjoyable to see the wares she’d only watched traded from above, but her unwanted guard had insisted that “her royal highness and her consort refrain from entering any highly trafficked and indefensible zones” which had, essentially made a trip to the market impossible unless she wanted a full guard detail.

That would certainly inspire confidence in the monarchy. Hello peasants, we don’t trust you to not murder our Princess, don’t mind the platoon of men you may or may not know who are, at any moment, prepared to stab you!

She’d all but felt Kristoff rolling his eyes in response to the guard’s words. It was like she sensed the expression he was making at her side before she’d even caught him actually making it.

“It’s just a little further… I think,” she said a bit nervously, squeezing Kristoff’s arm as they walked down the street together.

There were a few specialty shops that weren’t housed in the market district, and while she hadn’t visited any of them in many years, she thought that she’d recalled the location of the shop she was after. Thought, of course was the appropriate term given that nothing looked exactly as it had the last time she’d been in the area. The years had a funny way of changing things, and she hadn’t been to the shop without her mother which was indicative of the time that had passed since she’d seen it last.

Kristoff didn’t seem to mind the somewhat aimless walking they were doing. Anna suspected that if she told him the locations she desired to reach, he’d have an answer for her, but she liked keeping it a secret. It gave some small crumb of fun back to the adventure which had been intended to be more daring before their escort had been assigned.

“I bet you know these streets better than I do,” she said after a few more moments of walking, giving voice to her thoughts.

Mostly she was just endeavoring to break the silence between them. He’d seemed rather thrilled to leave the castle, but he’d been quiet since they left. She had a feeling that their unwelcome follower was making him as uncomfortable as it was making her annoyed.

“Not so much in these side streets,” he replied.

He pulled her ever so slightly right as they walked, helping her to avoid a puddle she hadn’t noticed until he was steering her around it. It was sweet, she thought, that he was saving her shoes from getting damp. She also didn’t mind how easily he’d pulled her even closer to his side with the gesture, putting her even more in his space.

“I do know the market fairly well though. When I sell ice I tend to stay over that way.”

Anna nodded and gave him an appreciative squeeze for the assistance with the puddle. He was absolutely the helpful sort, but somehow she doubted that he advertised himself that way. She got the distinct sense in his interactions with the guards, the staff, and anyone else she’d seen him forced to interact with, that he’d rather be seen as gruff and unapproachable. He wasn’t overly so with her, but she sometimes felt that he acted like a grump when in reality he just felt awkward or uncomfortable.

She tended to talk a lot when she felt the same way. It was something she knew about herself, that she dealt with anxiety with exuberance and self-deprecation. She was trying to get a better handle on it, and now with Kristoff at her side she found that it was easier to lean on him for support when she was feeling out of control. She hoped that he’d find he could do the same with her.

When she noticed the shop she was looking for nestled between two houses to their left she excitedly tugged Kristoff in return. She hadn’t been there in a great many years, but the old building still looked the way she remembered it as a child.

Oaken’s Thrifted Goods, Antiques and Consignments.

She’d traveled there every now and again with her mother who, despite being the Queen of their nation, was practical and more interested in the old than the new. They’d always looked for things there that reminded her mother of her youth, little things that were made by hand that reminded Anna that while few knew it, her mother had been common as well.

She sometimes wished that she had asked more questions of her mother, that she had learned the story of how she’d met her father and how they’d come to be wed. All Anna did know was that Iduna wasn’t born in Arendelle and that she was not royal by blood. There were some records somewhere in the archives about her being given a duchy somewhere in the direction of the hinterlands, and with the suddenness that she’d shown up in her father’s public life, she supposed that everyone must have assumed that she was born noble and had simply spent her whole life in the hills.

Maybe, she thought, Kristoff wouldn’t feel so out of place if he knew that he was not the first consort to Arendelle royalty to have been born common. She wondered if he would take comfort in the fact that the nation’s Queen hadn’t had an ounce of royal blood and that it had been purposeful. Marrying for love was not common for aristocracy, but her parents had done it.

“Oaken’s?”

Kristoff seemed confused, staring at the sign for a moment as if in disbelief.

“Yes?”

Anna stopped short of the door, feeling as confused as he was, her confusion having everything to do with his confusion and nothing to do with the shop before them. She didn’t think that the shop had ever moved. It might have changed hands in the years since she’d been there last, the owner had been an older man so she supposed it was possible that the shop was now run by someone who was not an Oaken. She wondered if that was the point of confusion for him, maybe he thought that the business had been renamed or something.

“There’s an Oaken who owns a trading post up in the mountains. It couldn’t be the same guy, right?”

Anna shrugged; she really couldn’t say for sure. She was glad to understand why he was confused, and she couldn’t help but try to recall whether or not the last name was terribly common.

“Because uh…” he looked back toward the guard, and then back at Anna seeming a little sheepish.

He ducked down and whispered in her ear, “The Oaken I know, he and I occasionally get into arguments over pricing. We’ve mostly worked it out, but I thought you should know in case we walk in and I get the stink eye.”

Anna tried to hold back her laugh, but to no avail.

He gave her an exasperated look when she walked them through the door, turning back to tell the guard he wasn’t needed indoors.

“Yet.”

***

Kristoff was grateful to know that the Oaken inside the shop was not the Oaken he’d recently had some “pricing debates” with. They rarely really argued, but he’d felt on one or two occasions that his arguments with Oaken brought the usually even-tempered man to the point of anger. They’d always sorted it out of course, but he was still waiting for the day that the man would throw him out on his rear over a debate.

No, this Oaken was much older, possibly the father of the man he knew, or some other elderly relative given the similarity of their faces and builds. He seemed similarly even tempered thus far, but perhaps a bit less enthusiastic. He’d been pleasant with Anna of course, recognizing her as the crown Princess and evidently a former customer, but he’d also told them in no unspecific terms that he was too old to help them and that if they had any questions, they should come to him because he was not going to them.

“Isn’t it so neat in here?”

Kristoff couldn’t help but smile as he saw Anna taking in the many items packed into the small building. They were arranged neatly, everything from old steamer trunks and hand-crafted furniture to piles of old keys and shelves of dusty books.

Anna grinned at all of it, openly gazing about the space like it was full of gold instead of second and third hand items. He thought that it was charming in a way, that the practical used items of the people who lived in her kingdom were of interest to her.

“My mother and I used to spend hours here when I was a little girl. She taught me how to sew using old tablecloths we bought here… not that I’m particularly good at it, but I can put a button back on if I need to.”

He couldn’t help but find her excitement at least a little bit contagious as he gazed upon the shelves and tables of items with her. There was something about the well-worn tools and broken in chairs in the space that spoke to him in a way that the fancy spotless trappings of the castle just couldn’t. He’d always been practical, and the items here were nothing if not sensible.

“It’s strange for me to try to imagine a Queen here,” he said, hoping that she took no offense to his saying so.

He was happy when he noticed Anna smiling fondly.

“My mom wasn’t really the royal type… not that she didn’t act like a Queen, because she did. She just never saw the point in waste, and she liked simple things. I have a shawl of hers that she had since she was a girl, a pretty handmade thing that she mended herself. That’s how I usually remember her; warm and pragmatic.”

“I’d probably describe my mom the same way,” he said quietly, “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet yours.”

Anna looked sad for a moment, but Kristoff could tell that it wasn’t his fault. The space brought it out of her as much as it brought her joy. He knew it was her first time here without her, and he was glad that they were talking about it. He was glad that she’d brought him somewhere so important to her.

“I’m sorry too,” she said before taking a deep breath and adding, “she would have liked you.”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just gave her what he hoped came off as an appreciative smile and squeezed her hand.

When she squeezed back and leaned into this side, for the first time in a week, he felt like he could truly relax.

“I thought we’d look for some things for your room?”

There was a bit of trepidation in her voice that he registered as nerves coming through. He wondered how long they would be nervous when they spoke to each other, how often they’d be walking on glass with one another. He already trusted her, and he desperately wanted to show himself to be worthy of her trust in return. Testing the already tenuous bonds of their fledgling relationship was understandably nerve wracking.

“I don’t really need much… I brought most of my things with me.”

He didn’t want to shut her down. He didn’t want to say no when she clearly wanted to do something with him. He just was unused to the idea of buying things for himself. He usually only bought what he couldn’t make or find himself

She’s trying.

“I… I know, it’s just… I know the room isn’t probably the way you want it to be. I remember your cabin being a lot cozier and I thought that maybe we could find some things here to make it a little more like that. Elsa suggested we get a decorator for you to consult with, but I kind of thought you’d hate that so…”

She let out a sort of nervous laugh and he felt his heart racing in his chest.

She’s been thinking about this. She’s been thinking about you.

“I… I’m not used to buying things… or having things bought for me. It just feels strange I suppose.”

Anna’s fingers slipped from his then, and the loss of contact was immediately distressing until she felt them tentatively shifting up his arm and wrapping around his bicep. She stepped in front of him and gave him a soft smile before pulling him in the direction of the nearby bookshelves that separated the front and back of the shop, forming an archway between them.

Once they had slipped past the shelves, she pulled him into a smaller alcove in the shop filled from floor to ceiling in small, labeled drawers. According to their labels they held everything from furniture hardware to saltshakers and children’s toys. She leaned into him once they were in the space, hiding them away in the already empty shop save for its owner.

“Please,” she said softly.

She wrapped her arms around him and looked up at him. He thought that she looked a bit determined despite the hesitancy she’d shown a few minutes before.

“I know this is all new and strange to you, but I really just… I want to do something for you. Please? I wasn’t even able to get you a wedding gift, and frankly if you’re worried about money… I guess no one told you about my dowry?”

He blinked for a moment, trying to focus on what she was saying when all he could think about was that she was hugging him. A week away from her touch, and only being somewhat familiar with the feeling of having her wrapped around him was taking its toll on his mind. He was already frazzled, just by the way it felt to have her against him again.

He wrapped his arms around her in return and noticed the way she melted into him a little more as he did so. He did his best to catalogue all the ways in which she was making him feel, and he flushed a bit when he realized that the embrace, combined with the doe eyed gaze she was giving him, was causing a very specific sort of reaction in him that he’d thus far been managing in her presence.

His wife was beautiful, he was getting a very good view of her freckled decolletage, and he was very much a man. He could feel his face going red again.

“I’m sorry,” he said a bit nervously realizing he hadn’t really heard what she’d said, “What?”

“I want to get you some things as a wedding gift, but if you’d prefer… I guess no one told you about the dowry, but there’s…” she cleared her throat, seeming embarrassed to be discussing money with him, “there’s a lot there. I think you have an account with the treasury, maybe Kai was going to tell you later, but anyway… you can afford to purchase things on your own if you want… I just, I really wanted to do something for you today. I wanted to do something with you.”

He almost asked about the dowry, the heart attack that revelation gave him being enough to distract him from the line his thoughts had been running in, but he could tell the discussion was making Anna uncomfortable. He didn’t exactly feel like telling her in this fraught moment that he wanted no bride price from her, and that certainly didn’t need the sort of exorbitant amount of money she was implying.

“If you would enjoy it,” he said after a moment, clearing his throat when the words came out a bit muddled, “I’m sure we could find something. You’re right, the room isn’t exactly cozy.”

I can’t tell her that I prefer her room over mine.

She smiled then and leaned her head into his chest. He felt the tension leaving both of their bodies when he pulled her closer.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He pressed a kiss into her hair and reveled in the soft sound she made in return. He longed for the day he’d kiss her properly.

***

Anna had almost felt bad relegating their guard to purchase handling duty.

Almost.

Of course, it hadn’t been his fault that he’d been sent to mettle in her day plans, but she was still a little miffed that he’d prevented her from taking Kristoff into the market to pick out some new things for his room. She knew that it was because Elsa had been the one to insist upon his guarding, but Anna wished that sometimes people were more amenable to bending her sister’s rules. She certainly was herself.

It didn’t matter now though, not when she felt Kristoff’s hand at her back, supporting her on the ladder they’d requested be brought up to his room so that Anna could hang the sage green curtains they’d managed to find at the shop.

He’d laughed at her glee over finding them, and she’d felt genuinely happy to be laughed at. She liked that her enthusiasm brought him joy, and truly she hadn’t felt like she was being laughed at by him. The better term would be that he was laughing with her, and she thought that if it was something that they could do together every day, their marriage would be exactly what she’d always wanted.

All I’ve ever wanted was for someone to love me.

She saw it in his eye when he helped her off the ladder. The joy of sharing the domesticity of the day with her, the spark of something that she might dare call like if not love. She held the joy it brought her in her heart, locked it up tight so that nothing that might occur in the next week leading up to the festival might steal it from her.

“You’re right,” he said warmly, “They do make it feel less…”

“Formal,” she finished.

The curtains were simple, a plain sage green with some small vines at the very top and bottom embroidered in white thread. Had she been any good at it, or had she had the patience for it, she liked to think that it would have been the sort of thing she would have made for him.

He nodded, and she felt his hands linger at her waist even when she was standing back on solid ground.

They’d shared lunch when they’d returned, eating it at the table in his room that was now decorated with a small candle holder she’d found that reminded them both of Sven’s antlers.

“When they bring the high back chairs up from storage, I think that’ll help too. We can have them put by the fireplace.”

She’d insisted that since he hadn’t allowed her to purchase any furniture for him, even used, that he select some furniture from the castle storage to improve the comfort of the space. He had selected a few items from a list she’d sent for while they were dining and she was rather pleased by his choices.

Making his room more comfortable for him was something that she was taking great enjoyment from.

That I’m also making it more comfortable for me is just a bonus.

She couldn’t really lie to herself. It was, in part, by design that she had insisted on two chairs instead of one, and that she’d encouraged him to pick a lovely quilt from the shop that made her think of the one they’d been wrapped in at his cabin. She couldn’t deny that she was thinking ahead to a time where perhaps she’d spend more time in his space, though she could hardly dare to think about a time beyond that, a time where his things would blend together with hers and where they would spend every night together. A time where the door between their rooms wouldn’t be needed.

Her heart raced every time the thought crossed her mind.

He lifted up the last remaining item they had to find a home for, a small wooden trinket box that he’d taken an interest in early on in their search. It had been amongst a pile of tools but had not been large enough to hold any of them. It was simple, smaller than her jewelry boxes, but roomy enough to fit a few small objects. The top had a line of trees burned into it but was the only decoration on the piece.

“I think I know what belongs in here,” he said after a few moments of looking it over.

I think I do too.

Her heart raced when he crossed the room to his chest and kneeled to the floor to open it. She’d been hoping, quietly, almost secretively to even herself, that he would want to show her the crystals again.

What did it mean? Why did he nearly kiss me after I told him about the glow?

***

The crystals were wrapped loosely in scraps of fabric, protecting their rough natural edges from chipping and breaking. He could feel the soft hum of magic inside each of them, even through the cloth. His parents had taught him how to feel it, encouraging him to focus on it and to guide the magic into his hands. He would never be able to control it as they did. Magic didn’t run in his blood like it did theirs, but as Anna approached behind him, he made the choice to show her, at least as much as he could, the importance of the gems.

He patted the floor beside him and was grateful when she didn’t hesitate to sit at his side in front of the box. He watched as she quickly settled herself to his side, her knees bumping into his gently as she sat.

“I think they deserve a special home,” he said, gesturing to the box he’d already set on his other side.

One deserves a very special home. It belongs with you.

The thought didn’t exactly catch him off guard as much as it slipped through the cracks of the wall he’d been holding it behind. He couldn’t admit to himself that he had a great deal of hope about what Anna had said before about the crystal, because to admit that would be to invite disappointment when the outcome was decidedly not what he was hoping for.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because I love her. If it’s not by fate it’s at least by choice.

He took some small comfort in it as he unwrapped the gems and lifted out the yellow one first.

“This one,” he said, focusing on the way it felt warm in his palm, encouraging it to give off a light glow, “is a fire crystal. They come in a few shades of red and orange and yellow. The trolls can actually start fires with them, but I can get it to warm up a little if I really focus on it.”

After a moment of quiet between them he heard her gasp as the crystal began to glow a pale yellow. He couldn’t help but grin when he handed it to her and let her watch the glow fade. He noticed the way she hovered a hand above the stone feeling the slight warmth radiate off of it from above as she felt it in her palm. She seemed thoroughly impressed and he couldn’t help but feel a bit proud to have been able to show it to her.

He handed her the small box and watched as she carefully set the stone inside. Once she was finished, he pulled out the next crystal, the blue one. He’d never had quite as much luck getting an effect with it, but he could make it glow.

“This one is a water crystal. The trolls can get them to make rain, but I’ve only ever been able to get a little condensation on the outside and I’m not convinced it wasn’t just sweat from my hand.”

When she laughed he felt light.

It’s easy to feel hopeful when everything she does makes my heart race.

The gem let off a light glow, but little more. She seemed impressed nevertheless and when he handed it to her, she focused on it in her palm for a short while before setting it too into the box with great care.

He had to remind himself to breathe watching her look from the box to him. When her eye met his, a strange knowingness there, he felt fear leave him. They were so close that he could easily kiss her, just by leaning in. He let the cloth fall away from the last crystal and forced himself to inhale deeply, breaking their eye contact to turn his attention to the pale pink gem.

She’s my wife. I love her.

“This one,” he began, lifting it from the fabric with his other hand to show her better, “This one is special. Every man in my family receives one when they reach adulthood, and they guard it closely. Its magic is special because it’s tied to the heart. I never really listened to everything my father told me about it because I never thought I’d have a reason to show it to anyone, but…”

She was looking at him intently, her eyes meeting his and then glancing to his lips. He felt his heart racing.

“Why doesn’t it glow when you hold it?” she asked, breaking the long silence where he’d let his speech drop off.

He gave her a soft, almost rueful smile. She felt like there was a joke there that she didn’t understand.

“Because it’s mine,” he started, then after a moment’s thought, continued, “It’s confusing and hard to explain if you weren’t raised knowing about it, but essentially the trolls think that everyone has a fated partner, a second half. You know they believe in fate, we discussed it when you met them, but this is the ultimate show of that belief. The only person that is supposed to make your gem glow is your soulmate.”

She flushed and he longed to give her a better reason to do so than a crystal. He wanted to scoop her up into his arms and tell her that it didn’t matter whether or not it glowed when she touched it. He wanted to kiss her and show her how little it mattered to him, but it would be a lie.

It does matter. I love her. I want her to see that I will only ever love her.

He knew she’d be crushed if it didn’t.

He watched as she extended her hand to him slowly. There was a shine to her eye that he understood as nerves. She’d told him before that the gem had glowed when she’d touched it, but he had thought about all the things it could have been, and was sure that she was worried about it as well.

A trick of the light, a fluke, a misremembrance from a day where she’d been given shock after shock.

“You don’t have to.”

She gave him a soft smile in return.

“I think we both know that I do.”

There was a finality in the way she cautiously uncurled her fingers, insisting that he deposit the gem in her hand. He wondered if she truly believed what she had seen before, or if the nerves he had seen in her were from the concern that it wouldn’t react to her touch.

He dropped it into her palm and felt the racing of his heart reach a crescendo.

Pink.

***

Anna felt her heart racing as he handed her the gem. She could see in his eyes that this meant even more than he was saying.

Soulmates. The glowing means we’re soulmates.

She’d spent her whole life wanting to be wanted, wanting to be someone’s everything. She tried to shake off her concerns that she’d been seeing things before when she’d made the gem glow in his cabin, but it was hard to believe that she had always been meant for someone, that she and Kristoff had been fated to be together.

She saw the shakiness of his normally steady hand as he held the gem over her palm, and she had to remind herself to breathe in the moments before he released it into her hand.

She gasped when the cold gem hit her skin and immediately sent a bright pink glow across her palm.

Fate.

Soulmates.

She’d already known. Something inside her had known since their wedding night, even before the trolls, that with Kristoff was where she was meant to be. The confirmation had her joyous.

He wrapped his hand over hers when he recognized the light, squeezing the gem between their palms and doing nothing to dampen the glow. If anything, Anna thought that it might be glowing even more under the combined touch of their skin. She didn’t have long to notice whether it was true or not though, because her view was quickly blocked by Kristoff entering her space.

Her eyes fluttered shut as he wrapped his free arm around her, pulling her to him enthusiastically. She let an appreciative, borderline needy, sound slip from her mouth and was rewarded by the press of his lips to hers.

It was a remarkably different kiss to the one they’d shared at their wedding. It wasn’t quick, it wasn’t chaste, and it wasn’t required.

She took the hand that was not entwined with his and let it slip up to his hair naturally. She’d wanted to slide her fingers through his hair for well over a week, and now it felt instinctive to do so. Her hand squeezed a bit tighter against his as she deepened the kiss, feeling the way he drew her in even closer as she did so.

She didn’t try to tame the soft sounds of pleasure that slipped from her mouth and into his, she didn’t fight it when he kissed her breathless. She simply forged ahead, feeling safe and loved in her husband’s arms, kissing him with love and appreciation.

My husband. My soulmate. How could I ever have doubted it for even a moment?

***

He hated to be the one to break the kiss, especially after being the one to initiate it. Unfortunately, what he could remember of his family’s tradition dictated that he stop kissing her at some point. He had work to do now, and there was only one place he could do it.

He let his free hand slide up from where he’d been holding her, to her cheek, cradling it. Her eyes were still half lidded and showed pleasure in their darkness as she looked from his lips to his eyes. She was glowing as much as the gem was, and he couldn’t help but to take a moment to just stare at how beautiful his wife was.

She leaned her head into his palm lovingly, almost nuzzling him. He thought that someday if she allowed him to, they’d sit just like this again and he’d count each and every freckle on her nose and cheeks. It was a scene that played out nicely in his thoughts, giving him the strength through promises of the future, to pull away.

“I’m sorry Anna, but I have to leave for tonight. I have to go do something… I have to tell…”

“You have to tell your family,” she said matter of factly, understanding in the face of his uncertain apologetics.

“It’s okay,” she added after a moment, “I’ll still be here when you come home.”

What she didn’t say, but what he heard in her tone was the “I love you”.

He leaned in again and when she kissed him, he felt the words in the act. He tried his best to give it to her in return.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Anna, my wife, my soulmate, I love you.

Someday soon he’d say it out loud.

#kristanna #frozen fanfiction #A Convenient Arrangement #Arranged Marriage AU

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dulce-pjm · 3 years

Text

cheek to cheek

request for taehyung from @kidcoredreamz (thanks bae!!)

listen to “cheek to cheek” by ella fitzgerald and louis armstrong and “i get along without you very well” by chet baker for maximum effect

make your own request here using these prompts!

cheek to cheek

word count: 3.1k

genre: fluff, arrangedmarriage!au

summary: it’s night like these that you wish things were different

Taehyung is guaranteed, always has been.

From the minute your tiny fingers could interlock with his, you were dragging each other around the mansions and garden parties, sneaking off to corners with desserts and chocolate milk and getting sugar rushes together. Time with Taehyung comes easy and passes quickly, the hours with him condensing into minutes and the few minutes without him stretching into lonesome years.

You’ve seen him through thick and thin. Through acne flare ups and awkward conversations and never-ending games of tag. You’ve seen him pick his nose, cry over spilled milk (or, in his case, a broken remote-control race car), get caught sneaking out. You’ve comforted him while he felt broken, laughed until your sides were aching. You know his ins and outs, his rough edges and corners, his soft spots he tries to hide.

Marrying him should be a blessing.

To spend the rest of your life with the person who’s stuck by your side throughout everything is a future some can only dream about. To have someone understand you so perfectly, to understand them like no one else will. It should be a blessing.

It should be.

The digital clock reads 11:57 when he knocks on the window.

You’ve always had a weird thing about having a room on the ground floor, when possible. It’s closest to the front door, in case of an emergency. And there’s no risk of tripping downstairs when you’re sleepily moving around in the night. And, most importantly, it’s easy to sneak out when you need to.

While you’re a little startled, you’re nothing close to afraid. You know exactly what face to expect as you throw open the sheer curtains, silken pajama sleeves hanging over your fingers and eyes swollen from sleep.

The moonlight makes his silvery hair seem otherworldly, a soft glow coming off of his locks. A few months ago, you’d been more than opposed to his sudden need to dye his hair, but you really shouldn’t have been surprised. The odd color just makes him more ethereal.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” you hiss, opening the bay window and letting the frigid air slam you in the face. Your eyes comb over the rest of his figure, your brows furrowing at his dark hoodie and sweats, a black hoodie crumpled in one of his hands. Anyone else would have assumed he was an intruder.

“Visiting my fiancée?” he tries, flashing a lopsided grin. “Thought we could sneak out again. For old times’ sake.”

“We’re not kids anymore, Tae,” you huff.

“That doesn’t mean we have to be boring.”

You cross your arms as a chill runs down your spine from the cool breeze. “It’s midnight. I’m in my pajamas.”

“Well, then you better change.” You stare at him indignantly for a moment, wondering just how much of a doormat he thinks you are.

“Please?” he adds, batting his lashes teasingly. “I have a surprise. You’ll like it, promise.”

“But will I like it more than I’d like crawling back into bed? Can’t it wait until morning?”

“No. Let’s be a little spontaneous, like we used to be.”

You won’t lie. The soft duvet, still warm, is calling to you strongly. You know that as soon as your head hit the pillow again, you’d be out. Sleeping like a baby.

But it’s Taehyung’s half-assed pout and an unfortunately strong curiosity that compels you to slip on the nearest t-shirt and sweats for the designated “not-dirty-enough-for-the-basket-yet” chair and climb out the window with a sigh.

“It’s Dad’s latest passion project. It was my suggestion, but I think he’s enjoying it more than me.”

You’re enjoying yourself more than you’d like to admit, too. You aren’t sure what urged Taehyung or his wealthy, CEO father to pour their time and effort into a run down museum, but you sure are glad they did. It’s like walking through a ghost town, dust coating the walls and old exhibits. Only some of the lights work and there’s renovation supplies littering the floors. You and Taehyung stick to each other’s sides in the poorly lit areas to avoid tripping and meeting a sorry end via paint roller.

This certainly isn’t the first time you’ve been out late with Taehyung. When you were in high school and determined to rebel against your parents’ constricting ways, the two of you often found yourselves roaming the city and laughing much too loudly during a time when you should have been catching up on sleep or homework.

Being with Taehyung was never too much of a risk. His parents always fell victim to your innocent smiles and mumbled apologies, while yours believed Taehyung could do no wrong. After they yelled and scolded and nearly tore their hair out, soon they were only shaking their heads and smiling at each other knowingly. It was hard to be mad for long when things were really working even better than planned.

“What do you think it means?” Taehyung asks as the two of you stare at the large mural. It’s filled with wide strokes of color, abstract shapes littering the foreground with seemingly no pattern or reason. You really can’t even see the whole thing, when Taehyung turned on the lights for this room, only two or three managed to flicker on.

You tap your chin, deep in thought. “Well, the red is clearly...” You tilt your head. “It’s clearly having a battle with the yellow. They represent good and evil. And the purple in the back is hope.” Taehyung tilts his head in the same direction as yours, brows knit in concentration.

“You really got all that from... that?” You snort.

“Nah, I just bullshitted it. I have no idea what it means.” Taehyung giggles, shoving you in the side. You stumble, yelping dramatically and nearly crashing into a probably very expensive bust of some historical figure you wouldn’t recognize.

“I was being serious, Y/N.” You laugh at his pouty expression, resisting the urge to poke him in the side in revenge. You don’t want to start a fight you know you can’t win.

After trying to make sense of the abstract mural for a few moments, you move out of the art exhibits on to the historical section, looking at the old skeletons and fossils and relics from years and years ago.

It’s fun trying to guess the names of the different dinosaur skeletons, cackling obnoxiously at all the ridiculous things you can combine with “—asaurus.” You take turns reading the puns scattered on the colorful signs throughout the exhibit, groaning at the bad ones and acknowledging the okay ones with a tiny chuckle. You laugh the hardest when Taehyung spots the fake alligators and climbs onto the display, insisting you take his picture so he can look cool.

“Tae, you can clearly tell you’re inside!” He scoffs.

“Just take the picture!” he insists. “Don’t I look like Steve Irwin?”

The photos all come out insanely blurry, your arms shaking too much as you try to hold in your giggles.

When you were first told of the arrangement at age sixteen, you cried. You sobbed and you wailed and you screamed and you locked yourself in your room in protest for an entire day. Your parents couldn’t understand it. You loved Taehyung. More than your own family. More than anything else. They loved him too. He was the son of a close friend and a union would benefit business, certainly.

When you eventually came out of your bedroom, you refused to talk about it. You only mumbled that you were sorry and your parents knew better than to ask questions and so, that was the end of it.

“Taehyung!” you shout, grabbing his wrist and dragging him across the antiques exhibit. You’d both already tried (and failed) at using the dusty typewriter and moved on to playfully arguing about who should pose with the guillotine when your eyes locked onto an item across the room.

“What is it?” he laughed, stumbling after you, all smiles.

“It’s a phonograph,” you explain. It appears in near-perfect condition despite the circumstances, the brass horn shiny and golden like it’d been made yesterday. “You can play records on it.”

He nods in understanding. “We should try it.” The idea is tempting, but your hopes for it working are fairly low. “There’s already a record on it, just try to get it to play.”

You lean forward, fingers mentally crossed as you fiddling with the needle and try winding the crank. The gears squeak terribly inside the main compartment, making you cringe. But you keep winding it, stepping back and squeezing your eyes tight in anticipation.

When you’re met with silence instead of music, you sigh in defeat. “Well, I guess that’s alright, it’s pretty old anyway, let’s—”

Suddenly, the machine fizzles to life, record slowly turning on the turntable and a jazzy tune carries through the air. Taehyung cheers, clapping on the shoulder.

“You did it!” Your smile quickly stretches into your cheeks, exhaustion long forgotten as you relax in the nice sound, soft piano and pleasant singing filling your ears.

You begin subconsciously swaying to song, fingers drumming to the beat absentmindedly on your thighs. Taehyung seems to know the song, quietly singing a few lyrics every one and a while.

“Let’s dance,” he says suddenly. Your stomach tightens.

“Let’s not,” you reply quickly, arms hugging your sides. You stare ahead, trying to focus on the song rather than the person beside you. Out of the corner of your eye, you see him lean slightly closer, lolling his head to the side.

“Why not?”

You sigh. You don’t really have an answer.

Your hand finds his, fingers interlocking as you let Taehyung guide you out into a relatively clearly spot, tennis-shoe clad feet shuffling lightly to the music. You’ve danced with him in other settings, with many more eyes watching. You’re normally dressed perfectly, not a hair out of place and a thick layer of makeup coating your eyes and cheeks.

“Remember that time your mom made us take dance lessons when we were twelve?” Taehyung asks, a glint in his eye.

You scoff. “I remember the part where you gave me laxatives right before the first lesson, yeah.” Taehyung can barely keep his grip on you, moving his other hand to your waist in an attempt to steady himself as his shoulders shake with laughter.

“I really thought it was regular tea, I promise.”

“Sure you did.”

��I did! I thought we were being all fancy like our parents and drinking fancy tea like fancy rich people.”

“Then why didn’t you drink the laxative tea, huh?”

“I don’t like tea. I just put milk in my teacup and hoped you wouldn’t notice.” You snort, hands settled all to comfortably on his shoulders as the smooth voice croons and echoes off of the walls.

It’s intimate. There’s nowhere else to look but his eyes as he places a hand on your waist, pulling you closer with a soft smile. The room feels warmer, his breath barely skimming across your face at the close proximity.

It forces you to think about the things you’d much rather keep inside.

This should be nice. It should be normal and romantic and sweet, to be slow-dancing with your fiancée. Your smile should be light and endeared and love-struck, not forced and fake.

There’s a heavy pang in your heart as you remember. Remember how much love him. How much you care. How much you want to hold him close, press your lips on his without a single bit of hesitance.

But you can’t do those things, knowing the things you do. To Taehyung, this marriage is a convenience. It’s a way to please his parents and strengthen his business connections and do it all with his best friend. He’s always been perfectly content with the arrangement, perfectly content to marry for everything but love.

And how are you supposed to feel, wanting to marry him for the very thing he doesn’t feel for you?

He’s all you’ve ever wanted. You would have left this life a long time ago, but it would mean sacrificing him. You’re too selfish to do that. You want him all to yourself, every part that you can get.

You’ve seen every side of him, the weird and the sad and sweet. You want it all. But you’ll never have it.

You wish it were real. That this were a romantic night away, that you’d wake up in the morning all tangled in his arms. It’s this intimacy that you crave but can never enjoy, not when you know it’s all fake.

And he knows you too. Knows something is up when that little knot between your brows forms and your eyes grow just a little glassy.

“What’s wrong?” You quickly straighten your spine, blinking away any tears pricking at your eyes.

“Nothing, I’m fine.” But Taehyung knows. He leans forward slightly, dark eyes piercing through your very soul. You gulp as you feel his body heat on your own skin, releasing your hands from his shoulders in your panic.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No,” you breathe. Your gaze falls as you step back, the music tapering off as the phonograph finally gives out and the moment is fully broken.

But instead of letting you slip away, his grip tightens, look growing desperate.

“Wait! Just a second.” You can see him itch to run his hand through his hair, but his arms don’t leave you. “You’ve been acting so weird lately. Is it me? Did I do something wrong?” You furiously shake your head.

“No, that’s not it. I just—” You stop yourself before too many words spill out and you say something you can’t take back.

When you don’t elaborate, Taehyung’s face falls further. “Seriously, what is it? Am I really making you that upset?”

“No, I—”

“Is it because I dragged you out so late? I’m sorry, it’d just been so long since I saw you and I missed you—”

“Just shut up!” you cry, shoving him off of you for good. A few tears wet your cheeks and your face heats with embarrassment. “It’s because you pull this kind of stupid, romantic shit that makes me love you even more than I already do but I know you don’t see us that way.”

Taehyung’s eyes go wide, but you suppose since it’s all on the table, you’ll keep going. “I know this is all just fun and games and easy to you but it fucking hurts, Taehyung. You can’t lead people on like this. You can’t do this shit and expect me not to feel something for you.”

The phonograph crackles in the corner of the room, unable to play pretty tunes or sweet songs anymore. It sounds restless and broken and unpleasant to hear.

“Maybe I wanted you to feel something for me.” You whip your head up, cheeks still hot from mortification and anger.

“What?”

“You heard me. I wanted you to love me. Because I love you.”

When you kiss him, it’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s hungry and rushed as your fingers gently tug on his hair and his palm is splayed on the small of your back, pulling you as close to him as humanly possible.

At some point, you end up pressed against the wall, euphoric as he trails pecks down your jaw and neck incessantly, like he’s trying to make up for every time he wished he’d kissed you. You whine when he parts his lips, tugging on his hair as he fastens your body against him. He tastes like the peppermint chapstick he always keeps in his pocket. The habit had ruined a pair of his dress pants before when it melted all in the pocket, but he’s always been too stubborn about chapped lips to learn his lesson and carry it elsewhere. You can smell his shampoo and the faint scent of his cologne. Everything that fills your senses is him and only him.

You feel a few tears sting at the corner of your eyes but you ignore them, gasping for breath between long kisses, a few giggles escaping you when you see you’re not the only one lightheaded.

After what feels both like hours and seconds, Taehyung pulls away, his lips swollen and pink, but stretched into that adorable grin that hasn’t changed since you were kids.

“Sorry I didn’t say something earlier,” he murmurs. “I never could find the right words to say it and I knew it’d make everything awkward if you didn’t feel the same way.” You laugh mirthlessly, cupping his face gently with your hands.

“Same here.” You sigh. “Guess we’re both idiots.”

“Guess so.”

It's a little frightening to stare at him like this. You’ve always held your guard tightly whenever you felt even close to your feelings being compromised, but that weight you’d carried for so long as suddenly detached itself from your shoulders, leaving you free floating. Yes, it’s like floating untethered through the air or being caught in the ocean with your life jacket. It’s scary and daunting and unknown. But it’s nice to know that you’ll have Taehyung’s hand tightly holding yours the whole way.

“Since I confessed first, I think you should pose for a picture with the guillotine.” Taehyung’s intent stare breaks, his face crinkling in disgust.

“But I kissed you first.”

“Only because I said I loved you.”

“If you really loved me, you’d pose with the guillotine and I could pose like I’m the executioner.” Now it’s your turn to be disgusted.

“That’s so fucking morbid, Kim Taehyung.” You smack his arm, but he keeps you against the wall, thigh between your legs as he leans in again.

“Only for you,” he murmurs, planting his lips on yours again.

The scoff about to leave your mouth is caught in your throat as you’re enveloped in his embrace, kissing each other dizzy until you’re certain the sun must be rising soon.

You wouldn’t mind too much if it did, though.

As Taehyung keeps trying to convince you to take stupid photos and explain abstract art to him, you aren’t sure how much a blessing he is. All you really know is that he’s your guarantee, your anchor in this unforgiving world. You aren’t sure where he’ll take you next, what random time he’ll decide is the best for your future adventures. You can’t know what the rest of your life holds, only that he’ll be next to you as long as he can.

And that’s enough for now.

#dulce-pjm: request #kidcoredreamz #taehyung #taehyung drabble #taehyung fluff #taehyung angst #this was uh #not supposed to be this long #nice #thank you for the request! i loved your prompt

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chiafett-moved · 2 years

Note

my brain is full of corrie medics today so: 📙 📀 🍐 🎀 for Hemlock? <3

Hi Terra! Sorry this is a bit late, life has been, well, life. Anyway, here's my boy Hemlock.

📙 What kind of subjects (of conversation, of discussion, in school or whatever) does your OC find interesting or engaging or that they can talk for hours about? What kind of stuff do they just find fun?

So Hemlock is very serious, but he's also a huge dork. This is a carefully guarded secret that nobody knows except half the Guard. They pretend they don't, though. Hemlock has all the STEM potential that I never had. He's a trauma surgeon by training, and he's really into medical stuff in general. You'd think doing the job he does would kind of ruin the subject for him, but it doesn't! He spends his off hours combing the holonet for cool new papers and surgical techniques about trauma surgery but also just whatever catches his eye. This is definitely useful for work, but he also just likes it. He likes to memorize little facts and statistics so he can quote them later. It's his love language.

He also really likes math and, more specifically, statistics. Sorting through data is very relaxing for him and often, numbers have lower stakes than patients. It's nice to have something to do where he gets a tangible result AND no one dies in the process.

He’s also a fan of ‘debates.’ Yes, Hemlock is one of those assholes that likes to argue. He’s not ashamed.

📀 How easy is it to shock your OC? To confuse them? To lie to them, to manipulate them? How are they with feelings of trust? Can your OC be trusted?

Hemlock may be a bitter bastard, but he trusts vode easily and, once he trusts, he trusts for life. Betrayals shock him, in part because he’s very committed to the people and causes he loves, and he can’t imagine ever doing something like that. The news of Slick disturbed him.

In his natural state, Hemlock’s not too hard to lie to. He’s not like Thire or Stone, who have built-in bullshit detectors, or like Fox, who just assumes everything is a lie and/or a trick. He’s just kind of vibing. HOWEVER Holly is extremely susceptible to lies and deceit of all forms, so Hemlock’s learned to sharpen up. It’s decently hard to sneak things past him because he’s usually paying pretty close attention.

Hemlock would like to think he’s seen it all (and he’s right, it’s pretty hard to shock him), but sometimes things happen that just shake him in a way he can’t describe. A brother takes his hand and his dying breath and Hemlock’s cold for the rest of the day. A battalion is wiped out and he can’t sleep. He sees a natborn child his own (chronological) age and something in him is unsettled.

🍐 What is your OC’s mentality? Are they overall positive? Negative? A bit of both? Describe their thought patterns and reasoning behind their choice making!

Hemlock’s a bitter bastard. It’s not even the trauma, he’s just like that. Trauma just put a sharper edge on it lmfao. He doesn’t really like people and he doesn’t get lonely, so he doesn’t seek out company. He’d rather be reading or working out.

He tries to be ready for the worst. It works a little too well. By the end, it’s hard for him to see the bright parts of life. He’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A lot of Hemlock’s personality is shaped by grief. His anger is grief. His sadness is grief. His bitterness is grief. He’s lost a lot and he’s seen others lose more, so he’s gotten to a point where he’s always ready to lose the next person he loves. He tries to hold people at a distance, but it just makes him feel more alone. It’s a vicious thing, and he feels empty inside.

🎀 Do they wear a specific accessory with a special meaning behind it? What is their usual fashion sense like? What do they wear when they want to be comfortable and what do they wear when they’re going to a fancy party? Or do they just not care?

Hemlock doesn’t get much chance to exercise his fashion creativity in his day-to-day life, but he does have a few things he likes. He has some really pretty black tattoos that scroll up his arms in kind of a swoopy sharp way (I’m thinking of a specific symbol for balance that I wear around my neck. I’ll rb with a picture for general vibes). He also wears black stud earrings. They’re shiny and hands-down the fanciest thing he owns. A ~lady friend~ gave them to him on a night out. There is a betting pool around whether or not they still meet up and also how much the earrings are worth (guesses range from 2-2million credits, with a bonus category called ‘stolen’).

When he goes out, he just wears his greys. I would say he doesn’t have anything else, but I hc that the Guard is one of the few battalions that actually accumulates Stuff because they’re landbound (this comes up in a fic or two of mine I think). Slowly, illegally, they acquire what might generously be called a communal wardrobe. Hemlock is partial to greys and light blues. He likes clothes he can move in, but he’s also proud of his physique, so they’ve got to be somewhat fitting. Definitely a wearer of white Air Forces.

And that’s all! Thank you so much, Terra, this was so much fun.

#hemlock #mikey's ocs #ask tag #kkrazy256 #terra ner cyar

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amyrlin-of-starlight · 3 years

Text

Rain was beautiful. Rain was fast. Rain was gone. Rain was never coming back.

If you asked someone- anyone, really, maybe even a random person you caught a glimpse of in Kohl’s with Christmas tree ornaments at half the price or a cable-knit sweater with a V-neck that you could tell was meant to show off the crevice of a cleavage, and grabbed them by the arm, asked them the question you always hoped that they would answer differently- about Rain Wood, a look would wash over their face. The gaze that their eyes emanated would soften, melt with sympathy, and their lips would part without a word for a moment, and then they would say Rain was... Rain was a nice girl. Rain was a pretty girl. Rain was a missing girl. And then maybe they would notice the slope of my nose, the color of my eyes, the shape of my lips, and realize that Rain Wood was not just a missing girl to me, not just a nice girl, not just a pretty girl. That she was a girl who left something-someone-behind with the slope of her nose, the color of her eyes, and the shape of her lips to always remind her of someone who was never coming home. Her Christmas stocking, red and white, was getting dusty and smelled like old wood from so many years trapped in the attic, and there were unopened gifts hidden in the closet underneath the hems of winter coats and tucked behind the worn boots my father wore to trudge through the snow or the mittens tossed aside, flung from frozen fingers, and her favorite cereal was still in the cupboard, having expired three years ago, but my mother would have never let anyone eat it anyway.

That cereal was Rain’s.

Rain was a girl with fiery red hair that she twisted into messily done braids with wisps of her tresses curling around her ears that seemed to be caught on fire underneath the gleam of the sun, and Rain was a girl with bright, green eyes that resembled the leaves of a walnut tree in the summer. I had those bright, green, walnut tree-esque eyes too but they never looked as good on me as they did Rain. Rain had eyes that twinkled, that glimmered, and that sparkled. Maybe my eyes did that too but then Rain was gone and my eyes became dull, unpolished, and murky. Rain was a girl with a boisterous laugh, one that giggled, one that made you laugh too. Rain was a girl who sang country songs in the passenger seat of our mother’s car, her bare feet propped up on the dashboard, her chipped, baby blue nail polish seeming to look beautiful on her delicate toenails, and her voice had a southern drawl to it when she sang that my mother never understood, the origin unknown and a mystery.

Rain was perfect.

And Rain was gone.

Rain was.

The word “is” just never accompanied her name anymore.

Because.

Rain was gone.

It was Christmas Eve when she disappeared, when she went from Rain Is to Rain Was, and she was with me, her fingers clad with gloves wrapped around the laces of her ice skates with blades that glinted underneath the rays of the sun and clinked together as she walked, her footsteps crunching in the white, glittering snow, and she was smiling at me, telling me how beautiful everything looked in winter. She was oblivious. I was smiling, agreeing with her. I was oblivious.

I had my own pair of ice skates and I was holding them by the heels, rubbing the leathery material in between my cold fingers, and sticking out my tongue to feel the cool droplet of a snowflake falling on my tongue. I dropped my ice skates onto the snow, flurries emanating from around the blades and the sides of the shoe, and the tip of one of the laces had buried into the snow, as if it were hiding, as if it knew. I was peeling off my boots, tossing them in random directions, and I heard the humph of a man grunting behind me as my boot whacked against his shin. I heard Rain apologizing to him, I heard Rain telling him that I was just excited, I heard Rain wishing him a Merry Christmas.

I heard him ask her if she knew which direction our local Wal-Mart was.

I heard him ask her if she would mind showing him on his map in his car.

I heard her say yes.

I never heard Rain say anything after that.

I waited for her to come back, my ice skates tied tightly around my feet, and the tips of my fingers beginning to develop what felt like frostbite, and I even stepped out onto the ice alone, a small little pond with snowflakes collecting on the glass-like surface, scratched with the treads of past ice skates, and I waited. I waited for her to show him which way the local Wal-Mart was on his map in his car. I waited for her to come running back, smiling and laughing, joking about out-of-towners, and then for her to yank down the zipper of her boots that almost reached her knee and lace her ice skates.

I waited for the blades of her ice skates to graze the ice of the pond with mine. And then, after the sun had begun to dip behind the forest of pine trees behind me, I got off of the solid pond and walked on the blades of my ice skates to the parking lot of the park, wobbling and grabbing onto bird baths and light-posts when I could, and I searched for a car with a man and Rain hunched over a map, her finger tracing the roads and gliding over the rivers, and his furrowed brow, confused. He had to be really confused if he still did not know the way. But there was no car, there was no map, there was no confused, out-of-towner with a furrowed brow.

And there was no Rain.

I nearly tripped on the pavement of the parking lot as I searched for her, stepping in brown slush with the blades of my ice skates, and I called out her name. There was no Rain. I asked a woman with her children who wore matching knit hats if she saw a teenage girl with an older man, and she said no. She asked me if I was lost, and I said no. My sister, Rain, was lost, I told her. I told her about the man who wanted directions to the local Wal-Mart and how my sister was going to help him. She had just gotten her learner’s permit that year. The woman’s faced drained and wrinkled with something that looked a lot like fear as she asked if I knew the man, if he was a friend. She told me to play with her children with the matching knit hats when I told her no. He was a stranger.

And Rain was gone.

Red and blue lights flickered and gleamed off of the dark pavement of the park parking lot after the woman brought her cell phone out of her purse and pressed her thumb down on three numbers. She said that there was a missing minor, and I remembered thinking that I didn’t know what that meant. Rain, not minor, was missing, and she was just lost. She was trying to help an out-of-towner find our local Wal-Mart. I remembered a man dressed in navy blue with badges decorating his chest and a walkie-talkie strapped to his shoulder crouching down in front of me, asking me about Rain, about the man she was trying to help. He held out a pair of ice skates he found in the parking lot. He asked me if they were hers. I said yes. I said that she was going to be upset that she lost her ice skates. He smiled a smile that did not reach his eyes and took out a notepad with a leather cover and a pen, clicking the top, and asked me if I knew my parents’ phone number. I did. I told him. He told him that they would try really hard to find Rain, my sister, and I just nodded.

I was oblivious.

I was in the dark.

I was unaware of the Amber Alert. I was unaware of the search parties composed of neighbors, of church-goers, of people I never met, that combed the forests. I was unaware of the reason for my mother’s hysterical tears. I was unaware of what the term foul play meant. I was unaware when they asked for my sister’s hairbrush, placing it in a plastic bag that zipped. I thought they were going to brush her hair. I was unaware that my sister’s face was on the news. I was unaware that people were already buying candles for the vigil. I was unaware of the missing posters that were being plastered over my hometown.

And I was unaware that somewhere, my sister, Rain was gone.

I always thought she would come back.

Until I heard a man who said he was an FBI agent in a blazer with a stripped red and green tie telling my mom that Rain was presumed dead, and how loudly my mother sobbed in the living room as she tried to take down the Christmas tree ornaments. Foul play, presumed dead, predators, they all felt like they were words too big for our living room to handle. My mother said that Rain was alive. My father said my mother’s name. My mother shouted and I heard something crashing. It was the Christmas tree. And then she ran for her computer and brought the document for Rain’s missing person’s poster and kept clicking the PRINT button over and over again, her breath coming out in gasps and her eyes trickling teardrops onto the keyboard.

I asked the FBI agent as he left if Rain was coming home.

His face softened.

His head tilted.

And his lips said the words, no. Rain probably would not come home.

When I was thirteen, just after May and the flowers began to grow in the flower beds that were pushed against the exterior bricks of houses in the Cul-De-Sac neighborhoods, and Rain has been gone for four years and her black and white pictures that store owners let my mother tape to their windows had been torn down and crumpled, tossed thoughtlessly into trashcans because she was gone- totally gone, completely gone, utterly gone, with nothing even to bury because she was totally, completely, and utterly gone- the police called us and told us that they had a man in custody. His name was Jerrod F. Norris and he had mean eyes that were murky blue and perfectly straight teeth and dark stubble adorning his cheeks in his mug shot photograph. He looked normal and terrifying at once. I thought about my sister seeing those mean, murky blue eyes, staring into them before she slipped away, and I thought about her heart fluttering. She said your heart flutters, jumps, when you look at a certain boy. I thought about her heart fluttering and jumping as he took away. I tried to turn off of the television as his face illuminated the pixels and my fingers were fumbling, unable to press the buttons of the remote control, and then I just threw it against the screen. It cracked and went black. My parents weren’t even mad. My mother actually thanked me as she choked on her tears. My father curled his fingers around the edge of the couch cushions.

They say he admitted to taking her, to seeing her that Christmas Eve in front of the frozen pond with the laces of her ice skates pressing into the folds of her fingers, and to lying about the directions of our local Wal-Mart. He lived only five miles away. He had receipt for duct tape and a curling iron from our Wal-Mart an hour before he said he took Rain away from me. I didn’t want to know why he had bought a curling iron but they said he was single and he had short hair. He said he took her away, covered her mouth, and taped her hands and feet together and drove. He took her to the woods, he said.

He molested her, he said. He murdered her, he said. He left her there, he said.

And when they asked for him to draw a map to find her, he said he could not.

Because he did not leave her in just one spot.

I remembered how my mother screamed, wept, when the detectives told her about the interview, about his confession, about what he said he had done to her little girl. She was on the ground, clutching a pillow to her chest, and her face was red and wet. The detective looked uncomfortable, distraught, and a little alarmed. I was too. I thought women only shouted in the movies but my mother was shouting, not even words but sounds, and my father was crying too, and kept saying, “Oh, my little girl. Oh, my little girl.” The detective tried to say that there wasn’t a body, or body parts, yet, but it didn’t matter.

Someone had said that they took our Rain away from us, kept her silent, hurt her, slayed her, and tore her apart, left her in the woods all alone on Christmas Eve, with her little sister waiting for her, teetering on the silver blades of her ice skates in the parking lot as she looked for her, calling out her name.

Rain was gone.

Rain was nowhere.

Rain was everywhere.

The day I met Franklin was Christmas Eve, but December 24th stopped feeling like Christmas Eve nine years ago when Rain went from “is” to “was” in that single moment in front of the frozen pond, the blades of her ice skates clinking together and her footsteps coinciding with his crunching on the thick snow. I was there, in front of the pond that was crisscrossed with the scratches and grazes of the blades of ice skates and dusted with a light layer of snowflakes. It looked like that day nine years ago; when I last saw her, Rain, when I last saw her smile. I brought my ice skates but they were too small now, fit for a nine year girl with a sister who was alive- gloriously alive and so in love with life, not an eighteen year old girl without a sister who was dead. I didn’t want to skate until she was found. Eventually, I just thought that I would never skate again.

But now I was back- because a couple of hunters stumbled upon a bone in the woods during the hunting season, and the DNA tests proved that it belonged to Rain, that it was Rain’s bone. It was a leg, they said. It looked broken, they said, maybe before she died or after. They thought she was dead when it happened, when her leg stopped being a part of her, but I was not sure if they were just trying to spare us the awful thoughts we were already thinking.

And now I was going to skate again.

But my skates were too small.

And Rain was gone.

“You will need bigger ice skates than that.” I heard his voice before I saw him and I flinched as I heard his playful, light voice bouncing against the barren trees and the glimmering snow-topped grounds as he walked, his large footsteps crunching and breaking the smooth, pristine assemblage of snowflakes on the ground. My footprints were barely visible- I had been standing there so long. He wore a thick, black parka that swished as he walked and held a black pair of hockey skates underneath his arm and the tips of his ears and nose were red from the cold. His breath came out in clouds as he grinned at me. I thought about Jerrod F. Norris and his grin I am sure he showed my sister before he took her away.

I backed away from him without even realizing as he stepped toward the pond-crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch-and he looked at me for a moment, as if he were puzzled, and titled his head to the side.

He dropped his ice skates onto the snow, the little flurries of white snowflakes drifting through the air as they plopped reminding me of my own ice skates and how I just dropped them that day.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice sounding that kind of breathless that came from the cold, and he still smiled at me. “I was not meaning to insult your foot size or anything. They just look kind of small.”

He shrugged and then lifted a gloved hand to wave at me, friendly, as if I were standing feet away from him. “I am Franklin, by the way. I practice here on Wednesdays. I am going to try out for the hockey team next semester but I doubt it will happen because I suck, horribly. I accidentally did a split a few weeks ago. Only time will tell if I am still able to have children.”

You talk a lot, I thought to myself as I stared at him, almost in bewilderment, as if somewhere during his rushed, awkward words. I wondered if Jerrod F. Norris spoke a lot, if on the way to his car that he chewed her ear about his job, about the imaginary family he pretended he was visiting, about whether or not he thought his hockey abilities were proficient or not.

“I was just leaving,” I told him, gripping the laces of my ice skates tightly.

They were too small.

And Rain was gone.

“You don’t have to. I mean, the pond is pretty big. And I promise I would not intentionally injure you and if I do, I will apologize profusely.”

“That is quite alright.” I wanted to leave. I felt suffocated by his words that felt as if they should have been friendly; but to me, they felt double edged, they felt like a façade.

They felt as if they were concealing twisted and malevolent objectives that took place underneath the shelter of the pine trees in the snowy woods.

He stared at me for a moment. “Um, okay, then. Merry Christmas.”

I felt something strange in that moment as I heard him say that. I felt a twinge of something that pinched the nerves in my chests and in my eyes, and I felt my lips beginning to quiver. It barely felt like Christmas, not the Merry Christmas he was wishing me. He was wishing me something that was wrapped with golden paper and a dark, green bow and curled ribbon and peppermint candy canes hooked around the pine-scented branches of a Christmas tree. He wasn’t wishing me the Christmas I had of remembering the posters plastered on the storefront windows and the news talking about my sister so distantly and the fading image of her smile beaming at me.

“I do not really celebrate Christmas… er, Franklin.”

“Oh, you are Jewish? Sorry. Happy belated Hanukah, then.”

I shook my head. “I am not Jewish.” I felt my finger along the sharp blade of my ice skates, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the rectangular blade. I looked horrible. I looked broken.

“I am just... I really miss someone. She, uh… she is dead. Or at least, that is what they say, but I do not know even though they found her- or a piece of her- in the woods but I just…” I felt a burning tear glide down my frozen cheek. “I just do not really celebrate Christmas anymore.”

He blinked. He looked sad. His grin was gone. “You are Aer Wood.”

I nodded. “I am.” My voice was choked.

“I am really, really sorry.”

“Thanks, but that does not really matter. People think it does matter but it does not. The one person I want to be sorry is the one person who took her away. But he is not sorry. He says he is but he is not because a month after he stole Rain from me, he stole someone else and then he stole someone else. They caught him because he was trying to hide her. A little fragment of her, anyway. A hunter saw him, saw what he had. He actually shot him in the knee.”

“I heard.”

I swallowed, pressing my index finger deeper into the blade of my right ice skate. “He said he wanted to stop him because he has three daughters at home. He said good men do not bury pieces of little girls so he shot him.”

I looked up at the sky. It was gray and bleak, as if it were mourning too. “She was fourteen. Rain was older than that. She was seventeen. People acted as if it was worse that a fourteen year was murdered than a seventeen year old. It is horrible no matter. It does not matter how old you are.” I choked on my words. “She was supposed to rest in peace, not in pieces.”

“I am sorry.”

“You already said that.”

“I feel like I need to say it again.” He cleared his throat, and then unstrapped the Velcro from his gloves and ripped them off, dropped them onto the ground beside his large and bulky hockey skates, and tore off his beanie hat. He ran a hand through his black hair that matched his olive, Hispanic skin tone. “What was she like? Rain, I mean.”

I turned to look at him, away from the gray and bleak sky that felt so ominous, so looming, and so sad that I felt my heartstrings beginning to burst just looking at it. I almost felt glad that it was a bright and sunny day that she was taken. That when she was pressed on the ground that she had a warm, blue sky to look toward. “Rain was beautiful. Rain was fast.”

Rain was.

“Did she like the color blue?”

“No. She thought it was too generic. Everyone’s favorite is blue, she said. She loved purple.”

“The color of royalty.”

“That’s what she said.” I almost felt like smiling. I think Franklin noticed.

“Did she eat apples?”

“She loved apples, especially the green ones.”

“Granny Smiths.”

“They’re so sour, she loved it.” Then I did smile. Then he definitely did notice. “She liked the faces a really, really sour one made her make, how it would purse her lips and wrinkle her nose. But I think she just exaggerated it to make me laugh.”

“Did she read books?”

“She loved reading, sometimes she would read me to sleep.”

“Did she put marshmallows in her hot chocolate?”

“Yeah, but never the ones from those packages with the ones already in them. She hated those. They weren’t real marshmallows she said. Dehydrated memories of a marshmallow, she called them.”

He kept asking me questions like that, about her, about Rain. Which Muppet was her favorite, if she liked spicy food, if she wore socks when she slept, if she was an early bird or a night owl. I never would have admitted it to him as he asked various enquiries about the kind of person Rain was, asking me to imitate her laugh, and if her smile was kind of crooked like mine, but it felt almost okay to talk about her. My mother never could without crying, without swallowing back tears she had cried so many times before, and my father got angry when she was mentioned. I think if he remembered her then he remembered him and his mean, murky blue eyes so he tried never to think about her.

It felt almost okay to talk about Rain and not about the fact that she was gone, not that she was not whole, not that she was alone and afraid on Christmas Eve but that she liked Granny Smith apples, that her favorite Muppet was Beaker, that she slept barefoot. That Rain was not just a name on a list of short lives that were stolen by a man with mean, murky blue eyes. That Rain had more than just her last moments.

“I could come back tomorrow,” Franklin offered as the sun slipped away into the pine trees of the distant woods my sister supposedly was buried in and he picked up the hockey skates he never touched. He dusted the snowflakes from them. “I could ask you if she liked extra butter on her popcorn or diet drinks instead of regular ones.”

“No and no,” I replied.

I thought his face fell for a moment. I was confused. I replayed my last sentence in my mind. And then I felt my eyes instinctively widen and my mouth drop, my head shaking from side to side. “No, that is not what I meant! I meant that she, um, did not like extra butter on her popcorn or diet drinks. Not that you should not come back tomorrow but it is Christmas tomorrow so you will probably be busy and I might be too. My mother does try to pretend that Christmas is a normal holiday. She is not very good at it, but she tries.”

He smiled at me. “I could come here to practice around noon tomorrow. And if you are here then ... well, you will be here. We will probably exchange a word or two or something and ... ”

“I thought you only practiced on Wednesdays.”

“Well, I do suck so maybe adding Thursday practices to my day planner would be a good idea.”

I smiled down at the glimmering snowflakes beneath me. They looked like sparkling, fragile pieces of crystal accumulating on the ground. “Yeah,” I murmured, softly. “Maybe it would be.”

He grinned at me.

I felt the flutter my sister told me I would feel when I looked at a certain boy.

Rain was gone.

Rain was not whole.

Rain was not coming back.

But I think Rain was proud.

I think Rain is proud.

@fluffybunsss @thegreatsaiyaman3 @keenu-loves-to-talk-talkytalky @thelastdream @the-living-typo @quoted-text @nerdyfuntheorist @obsessedwithparkjimin @user-with-a-name @carmen-riddle @tookoool @kritiwritesss

#fiction #thegreatsaiyaman3 #fluffy bunny #Aer-o-bitch #you are loved #tw death mention #tw #tw death #tw molestation #tw murder #tw serial killers

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michaelmyersmalewife · 3 years

Text

the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat 2/?

- sephiroth/reader

- sfw

“You look like shit.” said one of your fellow 2nds - Devon - through a mouthful of food.

“Thanks.” you replied, sitting next to him like a bag of rocks.

By the time you dragged yourself out of the training room (not even bothering to hit the communal showers and heading straight for the cafeteria in an exhausted stupor), there was only pallid, unspecified meat and soggy leaves that might’ve been a salad once left in the reservoir. It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t good either, uncomfortably sitting somewhere in the so-so region. Looking at the vaguely edible shapes in their cold, rectangular boxes, you figured they were more of an essence of whatever they labeled it as. A single piece of white bread had more flavor. You stacked your tray with what you could, and just before you left to grab a seat, you doubled back to grab a water bottle.

After finally having the chance to settle, the muscles in your arms and legs ached. Like someone had taken a hammer to your joints. It was nothing like the feeling of being a spunky 3rd just coming back from rigorous training - you had ached then, but it felt good. It felt like progress. Now you were just dead tired. You suspected with great indignation that the feeling wouldn’t subside in a good while.

You were about to shove a fork full of the essence of meat in your mouth when you couldn’t help but look up at the friend sitting across from you. He was staring at you with wide, bluer-than-the-sky eyes. His puppy stare (that you made sure never to call it that to his face).

“Vic.” you said, feinting a stern tone. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

You were dying to talk about it.

“You’re dying to talk about it.” said Victor and Devon in unison.

You groaned, hands flying to your face and tugging at your eyelids as you dragged them down. You had laid there in the training room for a good five minutes after Sephiroth left, half-expecting him to come back and further damage your ego. But he didn’t. And thankfully, no one else happened upon your battered form, for better or worse. Admittedly, you were feeling a lot less achy now that you were moving around, but where your back had collided with the floor now spouted an angry bruise in varying shades of yellow and purple.

“You sparred with Sephiroth?”

Victor - a 3rd and a few years your younger - always had at least one star in each of his eyes, but as you finished your lackluster retelling of the bout, he was twinkling like the night sky. “That’s so cool.”

“Oh yeah, real cool.” you picked at a clump of soggy leaves. “Ice cold.”

“That bad huh?” Devon said, with all the concern of wet concrete.

Slouching back down from where he was practically leaning across the entire table, Victor pouted.

“C’mon, it couldn’t have been that bad! At least you’re not stuck doing drills every day. Do you know how many of these guys would beg to be where you are?”

“At least you have someone to tell you what to do. Sephiroth just..expects me to know. It’s so - he’s so-” you punctuated with a grumble in your throat and a stab at the chalky meat on your tray, but it was so tender that it flaked away.

“He trusts you - that’s a good thing!”

You paused, taking a begrudging swig of water. “I guess..you have a point.”

You were still feeling slightly bitter, but a childish smirk played at the corners of your mouth. “Okay maybe it wasn’t completely terrible.”

They both perked up, looking at you curiously.

“I might’ve cut his hair.”

Both of their eyes shot open. “You what?”

---

It was dark by the time you and your friends dispersed, drowsily heading back to your respective quarters. But as tired as you were, you still felt like gum stuck on the bottom of someone’s shoe, so with a heavy sigh you hauled yourself to the showers.

They were empty, and completely quiet save for the tap-tap-tap of a few leaky showerheads. You tried to control your shivering as you turned the squeaky knob, a paralyzing chill washing down your body as cold water hit your skin like thousands of tiny icicles. The temperature evened out after a minute or two, though it was so late in the day that the highest it was able to reach was a tepid lukewarm.

You made quick work of your hair, combing out the last of the suds with your fingers. As you washed the rest of your body, your thoughts wandered back to the bout. It had only been a few hours since the training session, and you were already feeling a little better, if a little sore. But now the bruise was the least of your worries.

Sephiroth. Trusting you. You.

You wanted to laugh. You didn’t know why the concept was so unfathomable. To you, it just seemed like he was above that sort of thing. You knew of the other 1sts - it was almost impossible to avoid them, even if you wanted to - and how they were as thick as thieves. You knew your mentor was closer to them than anyone else, recalling brief memories of seeing them roaming the halls together, laughing and being..normal. You couldn’t imagine yourself in that sphere. You’d have better luck trying to catch a cloud.

Shutting off the water, you halfheartedly dried yourself off, your hair still slightly damp on your pillow as you faded into a dreamless sleep.

---

Waking up that next morning wasn’t as much of a chore as you thought it was. You were still sore as hell, but at least you could get up without complaining. Much.

You got dressed, your back popping as you threaded your arms through your sleeveless shirt’s armholes. Then, you rolled your shoulders, taking your wrist in one hand and pulling it across your chest, stretching and popping the joints in that socket. And then the other. Sliding your suspenders over your shoulders, you spied your reflection in the mirror in your bathroom. You could fit yourself inside it, with at least a foot to spare. But that foot was reserved for the door to swing open. You couldn’t count the amount of times you’ve stubbed your toe while opening the thing with both hands twice over. Brushing your teeth, you poked mindlessly at the dark bags under your eyes. You hadn’t noticed when they had gotten there, nor for how long. You spit into the sink.

Fixing your hair - which had somehow knotted itself in the back, making you look like you had gotten shocked by lightning in your sleep - with your hands, you were satisfied enough to leave your room. It was still early enough in the morning that the cafeteria was closed for at least another half-hour. Feeling restless, a prickling in your bones that couldn’t be quelled by sitting alone in your room - or anywhere else for that matter - you decided to go for a run.

The base’s outside training fields (that weren’t fields at all, but rather a series of cleared pads that weren’t completely overrun with crates of ammunition and other surplus supplies that had yet to be shipped to a warehouse somewhere) were a fair walk away, but you didn’t mind.

As you reached the end of the hallway, the elevator leading to the ground floor already in sight, the door slid open, revealing a figure that you didn’t quite register at first. You awkwardly stopped, your boots slightly skidding against the linoleum as if urging you forward. Which you did anyway, like a machine that had sputtered slightly before kicking itself back into gear. Sephiroth hadn’t seen your buffer, but the sound of it drew his eyes to you almost immediately. He stepped out, jutting one shoulder out first before the rest of his body followed. Trying not to meet his eyes, you waited for him to exit the elevator.

“Morning, sir.” you muttered, leftover grogginess on your tongue.

He nodded, a cordial expression flashing across his face.

As you passed him, one foot about to land in the elevator, you paused. There was a hand on your shoulder. You took a step back, straightening your posture without thinking.

His hand was gloved, always gloved, the leather not entirely warm - like he had just put them on. He wasn’t grabbing you in place, but Sephiroth had a gravity to him that made you want to stay there. It kind of scared you, but you were too busy shaking off the last vestiges of sleep that liked to hang around in the morning to care. If anything, you were just confused.

“Um.” you didn’t mean for the sound to come out, but too much silence made you nervous. You stayed quiet, too muddled to think of anything to say.

Sephiroth himself wasn’t silent for too long, but it was long enough to put a little seed of apprehension in you. You shifted your weight on your feet.

“Was this from yesterday?” he said in a notably smaller tone than usual.

It took you a full second to notice that he was looking at your shoulder, and another second to realize what he was talking about. “Oh - oh, that?”

You twisted your neck as far as it could go, bending back slightly even though the motion was more irritating than you’d like to admit. You gave the bruise a passing glance.

“I mean..yeah.” you said. “But I’ve had worse, can hardly feel it anymore actually.” you quickly added after seeing his brows crease lower on his face.

“Hey, man, seriously I’m over it. It’s just a bruise, you didn’t like, cut my arm off.” Though for a moment, you thought he would have done exactly that.

“I tend to get carried away with that sort of thing..it was unprofessional of me,” He almost seemed to shrink into himself, but he looked more like one of the droopy willows you saw once while patrolling a small village outside Midgar. He withdrew his hand like he had just stung you. “I apologize for causing you harm.”

“You..don’t have to, Seph, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

“But-”

“Honest. It was just a fall, that’s how sparring matches are.” you waved him off. His concern was sweet at first, albeit strange and just a little uncomfortable. But now you felt like you were consoling a kicked puppy. “Besides, it was fun.”

“..Fun?”

“Well, yeah. It’s not every day you get to fight, er, you.”

“I see.” he said, noticeably relaxing a bit. “So you’re sure you’re alright?”

“Positive.”

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly in..satisfaction? Relief? Something like that. He looked like he was about to leave, but before he could fully turn his back to you he stopped, turning his head.

“Oh, if you can, meet me in the briefing room in about an hour. There’s something I’d like to speak to you about.”

You could feel your stomach actively turning into a pit. “Aren’t we talking right now?” you said, feeling more than a little thick in the head and wanting very badly to slap yourself when you saw a crease form between his brows.

“It’s important. I requested a meeting with Lazard.”

The pit in your stomach was now a sinkhole.

“Oh,” you said. “Okay, uh...cool.”

Sephiroth snorted with some degree of amusement. “Don’t be late.”

“Sure!” you said maybe a little too enthusiastically. You never were good at masking your anxiety. “Sure.” you quickly repeated in a markedly more composed tone, doing an even worse job at sounding calm.

He was already walking away - thank god. You didn’t want to see his face. As the elevator doors severed you from him, you found yourself tapping your foot against the panels of the floor, arms crossed so tight they felt stiff and weird dangling at your sides as you walked outside to the training field.

You ran laps (you weren’t counting, but it felt infinite), your brain shutting itself off without you meaning to. There was too much to think about, but it was so early in the morning you told yourself, that you deserved not thinking about any of it. Just for a couple minutes, a few more laps. The apology, the hand on your shoulder, the meeting, the apology - nope. Not thinking about it.

---

By the time you reached the cafeteria, you found that you weren’t that hungry at all.

#sephiroth #sephiroth x reader #ff7 #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #crisis core #ff7 crisis core #my fics

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daughter-of-arda · 2 years

Text

Descent: Chapter 2--The Grey Owl

Word Count: 5.8k

Warnings: unwanted sexual advances (brief)

Author’s Note: Leave a review! Message me if you'd like to be added to a tag list.

Tags: @clumsy-wonderland

——————————————————————————

In the high August afternoon, nearly four months after an unexpected visit from a Wizard and two Dwarves, Ingrid reaches deep into the garden to twist off an oblong tomato from its vine. Cupping the fruit in her palm, she admires the vividness of the flesh and inspects it for any imperfections, like worm holes. She finds none and sets it into her wicker basket among other ripe tomatoes. The plants have grown magnificently this season, producing three long harvest periods.

Everything is at its brightest in August, Ingrid thinks, picking another. The redness of the tomatoes contrast greatly with their fuzzy, wide-fingered green leaves. The green of the stems and leaves is a bright, lively green, while the green of the surrounding grass is saturated and dark. Last night brought a summer thunderstorm, piercing the sky with alternating beats of lightning and thunder. Kara had woken up once to whine but quickly fell back asleep, and the rain had rejuvenated the grass and filled their water barrels, so there’s plenty of fresh water to drink.

“Are you nearly done?” her brother Esmund asks, poking his head up from the opposite side of the garden. “We still have to muck out the chickens before lunch.”

“Yes, almost,” Ingrid says. “How full is your basket?”

“Little more than half.”

“Good. We’ll get nearly two baskets of tomatoes.” She leans back from her hands to balance on her haunches, picking some dirt out from under her nails. “I wonder if Tobias’ garden is producing as many tomatoes as we are. I suspect we’re going to drown in them if these plants don’t slow down.”

“Can I go start the chickens? You’ll finish with the garden soon.”

“No,” Ingrid says, laughing at his crestfallen expression. “We have to weed after picking. I know what you’re trying to do.”

“But I hate weeding,” Esmund grumbles, shaking his head. His shaggy brown hair slips out of its tail, falling around his shoulders. Esmund is almost fourteen but already he’s taller than Ingrid, nearly as tall as their father Kane. He’s still skinny, too much elbow and not enough muscle, but their mother Nora says he’ll grow into his height soon enough.

“Here,” Ingrid says, standing. “Let me fix your hair.” She brushes off the knee stains on her dress, which is short and only reaches to her mid-calf. Sleeveless and with a low scoop neckline, the dress hovers on the line of propriety. In Bree she’d be frowned at, especially because she is without shoes, but here in Combe the farmsteads are so far apart that there’s no one to look at her and judge. Plus she likes the deep pockets on the hips.

The ground is forgiving under her toes, slightly damp from the earlier rain. Ingrid may come to regret her lack of footwear when she has to clean her feet before being allowed to enter the house, but now the cool grass tickles her heels as she comes to stand behind her youngest brother.

Esmund tilts his head back, letting Ingrid run her fingers through his hair to get rid of the tangles before she braids it, but he frowns and shrugs off her hands.

“What’s that?”

Ingrid looks up, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand as she follows Esmund’s finger. A dark shape flies above the farmhouse in lazy circles.

“It’s a bird,” she says.

“No, I think it’s an owl.”

“An owl is a bird, you corncob.”

“Don’t call me that,” Esmund grouches. “I mean what’s it doing out here in the day. Owls are nocturnal.”

“I’ve no idea,” Ingrid says. “But I don’t want it carrying off one of the chickens. Keep an eye on it.”

The owl continues to circle the house the entire time Ingrid braids Esmund’s hair. She doesn’t want to shoot it down, especially one as large and magnificent as this. Owls hunt the mice and rats that sneak into the cellar to eat their winter food stores. They’re helpful birds, but if it lingers any longer the chickens will grow nervous. Last week the coop was ransacked by a fox, killing half the hens before her father intervened. She’s got to protect what’s left.

Picking the rest of the tomatoes and weeding the garden goes quickly, and Esmund takes both baskets and sets them on the kitchen table. He returns shortly, holding her yew longbow and two arrows, by her instruction.

“Why two?” he asks. “You never miss.”

“I want to try and scare it off,” she says. “Go ‘round the house and make sure no one’s around to get hit.” Esmund does, and he returns with a shake of his head.

“All clear.”

With a single, smooth movement, Ingrid picks up one of the arrows and steadies it against the string, drawing it back to her cheek. She aims at the bird, moving slightly to adjust to its flying, then releases. The arrow, a simple design of a pointed, round metal tip on a wooden shaft, with exactly three feathers on the back to create stability, soars up through the sky to cross right before the owl. Even from such a distance Ingrid can see the bird recoil with a screech, flapping off in the direction of the Chetwood.

“I’ll go see if I can salvage the arrow,” she says, accepting Esmund’s praise with a pleased grin. “You start mucking out the chickens.”

Ingrid walks to the opposite side of the house, past the garden and the tall oak. The arrow isn’t anywhere to be found in the short grass that borders the house, and she gives it up after a few minutes of searching. She makes for the chicken coop, ready to help Esmund muck out the old hay and food scraps. The chore doesn’t take long and isn’t too terrible—Esmund certainly prefers sweeping out the chicken coop with their horsehair broom to pulling garden weeds with his bare hands.

“Looking for this?” a deep voice asks, and Ingrid turns to see Tobias Colborn coming toward her, holding her arrow in his hand. He’s walking from the direction of the north-south road that leads straight south to join the much larger East-West Road, which in turn leads to Bree.

“Tobias!” she greets. “Yes, that’s mine. I hope I didn’t skewer you.”

“Imagine my surprise, thinking of you as I walk down the road, when one of your arrows comes out of the sky and plants itself at my feet.” He smiles, setting the arrow in her palm. “It’s as if the universe itself were denying me.”

“Denying you what? Perhaps I can help,” she says.

“I’m afraid only your father can help.” He looks at her with a strange intensity, and Ingrid drops her gaze to study his clothes. He’s in comfortable dark pants and sturdy working boots, with a loose, light brown shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows to ward off the heat. His hair, brown and straight like her own, is freshly washed and pulled up off his neck in a loose knot. He’s let his stubble grow longer than how her father prefers his facial hair, but he looks nice.

Tobias is studying her as eagerly as she is him, and he seems to appreciate her sleeveless dress and low neckline, if his little smirk is any indication.

“Your mare isn’t giving birth again, is she?” she teases, creating a quick banter that lessens the sudden force, and Tobias laughs loudly. She leads him around the house, and as they pass the chicken coop Esmund waves. Tobias waves back. “But Da should be in the bean field with Brayan.” She squints against the sun, then points out toward the two small figures in the distance. “There, near the southern fence.”

“You always had better eyes,” Tobias says, staring hard. “I can’t see them.” He looks at her. “Why were you shooting anyway?”

“There was an owl,” Ingrid says by way of explanation.

“Did you kill it?”

“Scared it off is all.”

“Those feathers would have made nice arrows.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to shoot down the bird that keeps our cellar clear of mice.”

“That is true.” He grins down at her. “Perhaps you could scare it off in the direction of my house. Mum’s trying to domesticate one of the barn cats to hunt our mice.”

“It flew off toward the Chetwood, so you’ve a good chance,” Ingrid says. “Say, are you staying for lunch? I should let Mum know if there will be another.”

“No, thank you,” Tobias says. “I need to talk to your father and return to my own fields. I was given only the morning off, and you know the walk is an hour each way.”

“At least let me get you some water before you leave,” she concedes. “I don’t want you fainting on the side of the road due to the heat.”

“I would appreciate that,” Tobias nods. “Thank you, Ingrid.” He catches her elbow as she turns away, looking deep into her face. “It was wonderful to see you, even if only for this short moment,” he says.

“And you as well,” Ingrid says after a moment. “You are good company, and my brothers enjoy seeing you also.”

Tobias nods once more, taking her hand in a sudden movement to place a kiss on the back of it. He ignores her protest of dirt under her nails and general uncleanliness, raising his own hand.

“Farmer’s hands,” he says. “Fitting to hold the hands of any farmgirl.”

Suddenly flustered, Ingrid shoos Tobias off toward the bean field. Then she turns and blinks, wondering what that entire conversation even meant. She frowns when Esmund laughs, shamelessly leaning against the chicken coop instead of working.

“He’s totally going to ask Da’s permission to court you,” he says with a wicked grin.

“Be quiet,” Ingrid snaps, strangely defensive.

Indeed, Brayan loves to tease that Tobias will soon approach her father to ask for her hand in courtship, but Ingrid knows her father respects her opinion and would refuse Tobias if she asked. But the thought of courting Tobias Colborn doesn’t bother her all that much. It’s a convenient match, but he is also kind, hard-working, and not unattractive.

A few leaves rustle in the large oak, and she spots the large grey owl perched on one of the branches, staring directly at her. With a curse that her mother would be ashamed of, she strides toward it. “Oh, come on!” she shouts. “Get out of here!”

The owl continues to stare, unflinching. It simply releases a bit of shining metal from its clawed foot, then lifts off and flies west.

“What did it drop?” Esmund asks eagerly, swiping the metal off the ground before Ingrid can reach it. It’s a cylinder, with a twist-off cap dipped in blue wax to show it hasn’t been tampered with. She can’t fathom what’s inside, but if it’s something dangerous she doesn’t want her brother holding it.

“Give it here, Esmund,” she commands. He immediately complies, turned somber by the seriousness in her words. The most similar object she’s seen is the pipe-weed her father keeps in a tin in the cellar, but the tube is noiseless when she gives it an experimental shake. Deciding that there’s no better course of action, Ingrid scores the wax with her nails and twists off the cap, storing it in her pocket.

A rolled paper falls into her palm. While strange, it appears to be harmless, and Ingrid allows Esmund to take the tube from her grasp to study it further. She’s never seen a letter delivered by tube, or by owl. Letters in Bree-land are sent on pieces of rectangular paper, folded and inserted into an envelope of thicker, cheaper paper. The address of the intended recipient is written on the front, then given to Ethen. As the southernmost farmstead in Combe, he travels to Bree twice a week, and he brings the letters, delivering them for just a few coins. Any letters whose recipients are to the north are carried back, making their slow way along the cobbled and dirt roads of Bree-land.

There’s others to bring the letter to if the destination is to the far north in Archet, or southeast in Staddle. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for it to be delivered, depending on when the farmer plans to make his trip. But most people consider letter-writing too much effort for what it is, and either travel by foot to deliver news in person or keep to themselves. Very few in Archet, Combe, and Staddle can read or write in the first place.

Tentatively, Ingrid unrolls the letter. She has only to look at the flowery signature at the bottom to confirm her suspicions.

“What is it?” Esmund asks quietly, watching her shoulders stiffen.

Ingrid takes a deep breath, slowly releasing the air. “Do you remember the day Mum and Da went to Bree, and Tobias came by to get you and Brayan to help with his mare’s birth?”

“Yes, but what—?”

“I had some visitors that morning. And they offered an unexpected proposition.”

She’d kept it secret under Gandalf’s command, the visit from Fili and Kili and the Wizard Gandalf. And even if she had been allowed to tell anyone they wouldn’t believe her, especially if she were to present it without proof. Dwarves don’t travel to Bree-land, especially to visit a young woman from Combe. They don’t offer her a position in their Company to reclaim an ancient homeland from a Dragon.

And she certainly doesn’t consider their offer, to the point where the Wizard sends a contract of service by a great grey owl.

——————————————————————————

Three days after Ingrid receives the letter from the Wizard Gandalf, she finds herself sitting at the kitchen table. Bleary-eyed, she stretches and accepts the mug of spiced tea offered by her father.

“Not that I don’t enjoy your company, Ingrid,” Kane Broderick says, sitting opposite her, “but remind me why you offered to travel to Bree in your mother’s stead?”

Ingrid yawns hugely. The sky is dark yet, dawn at most an hour away. The farmhouse is quiet, as everyone is still sleeping. Brayan will be sprawled on the bed he and Esmund usually share, but in high August it’s too hot to even accidentally brush up against each other and Esmund has been banished to the floor. Kara is in bed as well, dozing in the middle of the big bed so she doesn’t roll off. Ingrid’s mother Nora had been up a few minutes ago to see her husband and daughter off, and had just gone upstairs to return to bed with Kara.

“Can I not simply spend time with my father?” she teases, sipping the lukewarm tea.

“That’s why you’re my favorite daughter,” her father grins, knocking back the last of his drink.

“I’m your only daughter.” They exchange a knowing glance, lips twitching. “But in all seriousness, I want to give Mum a day to rest a bit,” Ingrid says, the lie taking the form of a letter rolled in a metal tube, burning cold as it’s tucked hidden in her breast band. “It’ll be good for her to bond with Kara and she can let her ankle heal.” Yesterday her mother had stepped in an old rabbit hole, twisting her ankle as she fell. Nothing is broken and there’s little swelling, but it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep her at home.

Esmund is the only other person to know her true reason for going to Bree. Ingrid had sworn him to secrecy until the time when she decides to reveal it to the rest of her family.

Her father hums in acknowledgement, walking to the main room to strap on his boots. Ingrid does the same, tying her hair back into a simple pony’s tail to keep it out of her face. Even before dawn it’s warm out, and she’s dressed in one of her short-sleeved tunic dresses and leggings. Slung across her back is a bag holding money and waterskins, among other things needed for the weekly market.

“It’s a two hour walk to Bree,” her father warns, locking the front door behind him. The iron key, strung upon a leather cord, is tucked under his shirt, and he holds a lantern aloft. “And we must make haste there. It’s harvest time, and we cannot waste a day.”

“I’ve walked to the Colborn’s land without pause, and that’s a journey of little more than an hour,” Ingrid reminds him. “I’ll be fine. Although…” She eyes the wagon as it's illuminated by the lantern. Currently full of extra tomatoes from their garden, the wagon is of simple design: an open-topped rectangular box atop four wheels, with a metal t-shaped handle.

“No, you cannot ride in the wagon,” Kane Broderick sighs.

“On the return journey?”

“It will be full of our purchases. Unless you would like to sit upon your mother’s linen and the sharpened harvest tools.”

Ingrid pouts and her father laughs. It’s nice to hear him laugh. A farmer’s life is unpredictable, and as the head of the house her father carries many worries on his brow.

He extinguishes the lantern, placing it on the brick stoop, then takes the wagon in one hand and Ingrid’s hand in the other as he leads her out to the main road. She adjusts quickly to the darkness, finding that the grass is a darker shadow than the dirt path and she can mostly walk confidently south down the road. There’s a stretch of comfortable silence as they walk, and they listen to the dawn insects and the whisper of tall corn in the breeze. As the first streaks of sunlight crest the east, Ingrid tries to pull out of her father’s grasp, but he resists.

“Can a father not hold his daughter’s hand?” Kane says teasingly, but there’s a hint of melancholy in his words.

“He may,” Ingrid says carefully. “Especially if a young man has come to him asking for his daughter’s hand in courtship.”

“Smart as ever.” Her father smiles down at her before sobering. “Yes, Tobias Colborn asked my permission to woo you not three days ago.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I would ask my daughter.” He kisses her forehead before continuing. “Hear my thoughts first, if you will. Tobias is a good young man. His father tells me he is responsible and that he cares greatly for his mother and younger siblings, not unlike you. As the eldest son he will receive everything Hilton owns upon his death, so you will not have to worry about establishing your own land. And perhaps most important, from what I have observed you and he seem to get along. But my love for you outweighs any reason or sensibility. If you wish to refuse Tobias on any account, I will support you.”

Ingrid swells with love for her father. Kane Broderick is a good man. Some fathers would not take their daughter’s opinion into consideration when searching for a match, nor would they allow her the final decision. Some men even see it as a hassle to have daughters, as they’re married off anyway, but by that logic Ingrid thinks they should also resent their second and third sons. They’ll be forced to establish their own land, as the eldest son receives everything after his father’s death.

“Tobias is a fine man,” Ingrid says eventually. “But I do not know his opinion on Kara. I am her guardian mother and I will not court someone who treats her poorly because she is not of my or his blood.”

“Tobias knew Kara’s father, did he not? Alden?”

“He did. They were friends, although less close than Alden and myself due to proximity.” She sighs, thinking fondly on the past. “It was a happy day when Welford sold that old horse barn and its land to Kristen and Alden. We were neighbors, within eyeshot even.”

“There are no shameful tears, my daughter,” Kane says gently, squeezing her hand. “You will honor their memory in raising Kara.”

Ingrid nods, sliding the bag off her back so she can grab the two apples and hunks of seeded bread that is their breakfast. She blows her nose on a handkerchief, finding that the memory of her friends stings less than it had just a few months prior.

The pointed rooftops of Bree appear in the distance, and Ingrid inhales deeply to catch the final scent of crisp morning. She travels to Bree a few times a year, but remembers the stink vividly. If there’s any rain, the whole town smells of manure. With so many people in close contact, there’s also the smell of sweat, metal, and ale. It’s a dizzying combination that gives her a headache more often than not.

Most of Bree is built upon a long hill known as Bree-hill. It runs in a north-south direction and provides enough elevation that the residents of Bree can see from a great distance and from any direction who is nearing their village. On the western side, where the hill drops off, a ring of thick hedge provides a makeshift wall. There are two main entrances into the village, both in gaps in the hedge: one on the northwestern side, and the other on the southeastern side. From there, a cobbled road leads straight into the heart of the village, past Hobbit holes and houses of Men. Bree is thrice the size of Combe and is already busy with people by the time Ingrid and her father arrive at the center, where the weekly market is held. She recognizes a few from Combe, but most are either from Bree or Staddle, which is straight east. Everyone is speaking Westron, but those from Staddle have a more pronounced accent while those from Bree are flat and unaccented.

The market square is a large open area with the main well in its center. The square is paved in even rectangular stones, and few weeds have a chance to grow with the amount of daily foot traffic. Already, farmers have set up their wagons and baskets around the perimeter of the square, and more are coming in to fill the rest.

“Here, Ingrid,” her father says, pulling the wagon between a farmer selling some sort of nut and a weaver with many brightly colored fabrics. “Deliver these to the smithy, and quick. Before there’s a line.”

Ingrid dutifully accepts the armful of harvest tools and the pocket of coins, gripping the sickles and axes with both hands as she walks in the general direction of the smithy. She knows it’s on the northern side of Bree, but can’t remember quite how far up to go. She wanders past a great deal of people, but also a few homes and businesses, in particular a mapsmaker. All the buildings in Bree are of similar style: they have a steeply pitched roof with multiple front-facing gables. The majority of the exteriors are brick, and they’re accented with decorative half-timbering that creates a mock frame of thin wooden boards. Stucco or stone fills the spaces between the boards. Eventually she arrives in front of a two-storied tavern called the Prancing Pony. Even though the morning is less than an hour old the meaty aroma of cooked bacon floats out from the door. It’s tempting, but a boy also holding harvest tools comes out from one of the side streets and Ingrid remembers her duty. She follows the lad, who notices her and smiles once but keeps ahead.

The smithy is owned by a barrel-chested man, tall and loud, but he speaks kindly enough when she and the lad come up to the counter. Behind him is the smithy, the usual hammers and anvils and fire and tongs, plus two or three men who work under the owner’s employment.

“Just a sharpening, then?” the owner asks, assessing the lad’s tools and eyeing Ingrid’s as she stands behind him.

“Yessir,” the lad says, and Ingrid nods as well.

“That’ll be no trouble at all,” the man says, gesturing to the stacks of empty barrels to the left of the counter. As Ingrid and the lad deposit their tools in one barrel each, the man continues to speak. “Smart to be here before the market opens. Everyone’ll be wanting sharp tools for the harvest. Shouldn’t take more than a quarter hour.”

The lad nods, looking somewhat annoyed, and he drops four bronze coins on the counter. Then he turns on his heel and strides off without a word.

“If my boy did that to anyone I’d whack him upside the head,” the man sighs, scooping the coins into a large hand.

“Yes, that was rather rude,” Ingrid remarks, giving him five bronze coins. “Take the extra as a gratuity.”

“It’ll only be three for you, miss,” he says, pushing two coins back toward her. “And I’ll sharpen your tools first.”

“But the lad paid four.”

“Aye, but you’ll be charged three on the account of being politer.” His eyes flick down to her chest. “And prettier.”

At his height, he can look straight down the front of her tunic dress, and he does. Ingrid flushes, snatching the two extra coins from the man’s outstretched palm. She takes a large step back. His actions make her skin crawl and there’s no doubt he wouldn’t be so lewd if she were a man, but she can’t snap at him. This is the only true smithy in Bree-land. There’s a few tools in the cow barn, but she can’t risk this man refusing her business.

Next time she’ll get Tobias or one of her brothers to accompany her to the smithy, if he insists on being so boorish.

“Sharpen my tools second, if you will,” she says, careful to keep the hard edge out of her words. “I’ve other errands to run.”

“Suit yourself,” the man says. “They’ll be done in a half hour.” He glances downward once more, a comfortable grin on his wide face. “And the smithy closes an hour before sundown if you’re interested.”

“Good day, Mister Smith,” Ingrid says stiffly, and she walks swiftly from the smithy without pause until she comes before the business labeled mapsmaker by the map scroll carved into the hanging sign above the door. It’s in the lowest level of a house, longer than it is wide. The front door is tucked onto the side of the building that faces a thin alley big enough for just one person.

But if anyone in Bree-land can read, it will be a mapsmaker.

The door opens noiselessly. Ingrid creeps inside. Immediately she’s boxed in by high shelves that reach to the low ceiling. They’re stuffed with rolled paper and parchment, but if she peeks past the shelves there’s a more open area with a long countertop. There’s a smaller shelf there, with bottles of colored inks and blank unrolled paper, but the counter is still very cluttered. The shop is very still compared to the bustle just outside, and is silent save for the quick scratch of a metal-tipped pen on parchment.

There’s only one window and it’s quite small, so large candles sit on any available surface. Most are unlit, but the flame of the nearest candle flickers wildly as Ingrid walks past.

“Good morning,” she calls cautiously. The scratching stops, then an old man appears from the back. His hair is bright white and sucks up all the light in the room. Winkles mar his face, but his eyes are lively.

“Ah, good morning!” he says cheerily. He’s not hunched over as some elderly Men become in old age, and he extends a confident hand. Ingrid shakes. “Wonderful firm grip,” he comments. “My name is John.”

“Ingrid,” she says.

“Well, Miss Ingrid, how may I be of assistance?”

“I was wondering if you could read something for me.”

“Of course!” John says, beckoning her deep into the shop. The moment he turns his back to her, she carefully bolts the door shut so none can enter. “I can read and write anything in Westron. It is Westron, correct?” He waits for her nod. “Good. Can’t do much else other than the Common Tongue, but I do have maps to Rivendell if it were Elvish you needed.” He chuckles.

Before the countertop there are two metal stools, and she sits carefully. A large parchment rests on the table, and as John searches for a flint to light more candles she studies his current project. With a jolt she realizes it’s of Combe, and she quickly locates her own farmstead. The inking is beautiful; the roads and fences are in black ink but the farmhouse is a bright red, and the Chetwood a deep green. Penned above the farmhouse is her family name, Broderick, identifying that land as belonging to her father.

“Right then,” John says, sitting on the second stool with two lit candles in his hands. He pushes the map of Combe aside and places the candles on the table, then he turns toward her. “May I have our document?”

“Before that, I need to swear you to secrecy,” Ingrid says. She holds up two gold coins. “You can tell no one of the contents of this document. Not your wife, nor drinking partner, nor dog.”

“What is this document that demands such measures?” John wonders, but Ingrid merely raises a brow until he relents. “Yes, I swear secrecy on the grave of my father Arthur.”

The gold coins fall into his hand, and as John inspects them with wide eyes Ingrid reaches into her breast band and pulls out the metal tube. It’s warm to the touch. Aware of John’s suddenly sharp gaze, she unscrews the lid and removes the rolled paper, passing it to him.

“Good quality paper,” he mutters, rubbing the paper between two fingers. “Not from Bree-land. Where did you say this was from?”

“I didn’t,” she says. “But it came from the west by a great grey owl.”

The paper is unrolled with a sharp yank. It crinkles as it’s bent the opposite direction, and John hums, the paper shielding him from view.

“Not any handwriting of the Shire, that much is certain…” he abruptly drops the document to his lap, staring at her with sharp eyes. “What business do you have with the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains?”

“I have paid you to read,” she retorts. “Not to ask questions.”

“Very well,” John says, somewhat sheepish. “My apologies, Miss Ingrid. I have been told I get over-excited about maps and documents. Studied them my entire life and now I can identify anything from the race and sex of the transcriber to where the paper was sourced. This document in particular was written by a right-handed male, with fibers from a softwood conifer…but that’s unimportant,” he adds quickly, glancing at her. “Now we read.”

John clears his throat.

“Conditions of Engagement:

“Agreed hereto, freely and under neither duress nor force nor coercion nor threat to life and/or limb, and superceding any prior contract, agreement, or undertaking, survivable clauses notwithstanding, signed and witnessed below, as set forth hereunder:

“I, the undersigned, [referred to hereafter as the Archer] agree to travel to the Lonely Mountain, path to be determined by Thorin Oakenshield, who has a right to alter the course of the journey at his so choosing, without prior notification and/or liability for accident or injury incurred.

“The aforementioned journey and subsequent extraction from the Lonely Mountain any and all goods, valuables, and chattels [which activities are herein collectively described as the Adventure] shall proceed in a timely manner and with all due care and consideration as seen fit by said Thorin Oakenshield and companions, numbering sixteen more or less, to be known henceforth as the Company.

“Cash on delivery, up to and not exceeding one sixteenth of the total profit [if any]. Funeral expenses to be defined by us or our representatives if the occasion arises and the matter is not otherwise arranged for.

“The Archer shall devise means and methods to circumvent any difficulties arising from any illegal or illicit possession or guardianship of the Company’s righted home and property. Successful disposal of any such guardian, creature, or squatter in said home shall not necessarily earn any additional monetary or fiscal reward, but will definitely guarantee the Archer [if she survives] and her family the undying gratitude and promise of service in perpetuity and forever of the Company and its successors. Eviction or elimination of any undesirable guardian of the Company’s property, goods, or holdings shall take priority over the recovery of said property, goods, premises, or holds, should such a guardian be encountered. Elimination shall take priority over eviction in any and all such cases.

“Adventure undertaken entirely at the Archer’s own risk. Present Company shall not be liable for injuries inflicted by or sustained as a consequence thereof; including, but not limited to, lacerations, evisceration, incineration.

“Specialist equipment required in the execution of duties in her professional role as Archer shall be purchased, procured, purloined, or obtained by the Archer, by whatever methods she sees fit. Weaponry not provided. Although the Adventure is, by nature, a stealthy undertaking, combat or self-defense is not unforeseeable and indeed may become necessary, well-advised, important, imperative, or inescapable. Accordingly, the Archer should arm herself as best befits her stature, ability, ferocity, bravery, timidity, conviction, and determination.

“Return journey is deemed outside the terms of references encompassed herein and accordingly the Archer shall return to her place of residence by her own means, guidance, expertise, and expense, but with such directions, advice, and goodwill as can be offered by the Company.

“Transport provided in the form of one [1] pony, to be returned in good condition at the conclusion of the Adventure [or money paid in lieu thereof]. The Archer hereby accepts, warrants, and undertakes responsibilities for her own shoes [if worn by her], clothing, and effects for the duration of the Adventure. The Archer shall not use her womanly wiles to bewilder, beguile, and otherwise distract men of the Company.

“Confidentiality is of utmost importance and must be strictly maintained at all times during the course of the employment with the Company.

“Signed: Thorin son of Thrain

“Witnessed: Balin son of Fundin

“Archer. Blank.”

——————————————————————————

Later, Kane Broderick greets his daughter with a wide grin, taking the sharpened tools from her grasp to place them in the wagon. He sold all the tomatoes and purchased some linen at his wife’s request, plus some peaches as a surprise.

“Long line? You were gone for quite a while.”

“Yes,” she says eventually. Again, the metal tube burns cold against skin, within it a contract spelling out the details of a fatal adventure. She hides ink-stained fingers in the folds of her tunic. “Yes, the line was long.”

#the hobbit #the hobbit fic #the hobbit fanfiction #the hobbit fanfic #lotr fanfiction #daughter-of-arda #fili x reader #fili x oc #fili x ofc #oc #ofc #kili #bree #combe #tolkien #middle earth

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hale-13 · 3 years

Text

Dazed and Confused

By Hale13

For the Summer of Whump Day 21 - Panic (Thanks @spideyhoarder for the prompt!)

“I’ll be okay,” he croaks out hoarsely with weak smile. May gives him a look like she doesn’t believe him and Peter tries to make his expression even more earnest. He, actually, really doesn’t want her to go but he knows that they can’t afford her to miss this shift since she’s already used all her PTO on his Spider-Man related hospital stays. Things have been a little tight lately and, even though May is careful not to talk to Peter about money much, he knows that one shift could make or break them.

Words: 2301, Chapters: 1/1 (Complete), Language: English

Fandoms: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)

Rating: Gen

Relationships: Peter Parker & May Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, May Parker, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Helen Cho

TW: Vomiting, Fainting

Read on AO3 or below the line break.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay baby,” May asked him for the fifth time, combing his wet bangs back from his forehead and surreptitiously checking his fever with the cool palm of her hand. Peter fights against the inclination to push his head further into her hand.

“Alright,” May says dubiously, looking torn and guilty about leaving him. “If you start feeling any worse I want you to have the desk page me okay? Promise me Peter.”

“I will,” Peter promised, crossing his fingers under his sheets. There was no way that he would pull her from work. Literally none.

“Okay,” May says still looking guilty and Peter hates it. Hates that its just the two of them now, hates that May overworks herself, hates that he makes her worry about him. She leans forward to pull him into a soft hug and Peter returns it, mindful of his strength and a little misty eyed – fevers always make him emotional. “I love you. Get some sleep; I left plenty of water and Gatorade on your nightstand and there’s soup in the crock pot for lunch. Eat some of it okay?”

“I will May,” Peter agrees, releasing her and pulling back even though he doesn’t want to. Even though all he wants is to cuddle up next to her on the couch and watch cartoons like he did when he was eight and sick and miserable. “You need to go or you’ll be late,” Peter says with a smile and May runs her hands through his hair one more time before standing from the bed.

“Love you,” she repeats as she leaves the room. He hears her grab her bag and then the sound of the door closing, her footsteps fading into the distance and Peter relaxes back against his bed with a sigh and glances at the alarm clock next to him.

Thirteen hours. He can make it thirteen hours.

———————————————

Peter can’t make it thirteen hours.

He gags again, leaning over the toilet to dry heave and feels tears of effort and frustration leak down his cheeks. God he feels so awful.

The fit subsides and Peter collapses back to lean against the tub. The cramped single bathroom in their Queens apartment smells like stale bile and Peter grimaces as it turns his stomach, grabbing his water bottle to rinse out his mouth. It’s only just after ten and Peter has no idea how he’s going to make it until nine in the evening, he can tell his fever is rising and he’s feeling so much worse. The Advil that he had taken that morning is doing absolutely nothing for him and Peter just wants to cry.

He should call May. He can’t call May.

He can call Mr. Stark.

“No,” Peter says, shaking his head vigorously to clear it and making his headache throb worse, the room spinning and leaving him dizzy. There’s no way he can ask Tony Stark, Iron Man, his hero since he was a kid to rub his back while he vomits and get him soup. It’s way too embarrassing.

“This is fine,” Peter says, pinching his eyes shut and swallowing convulsively against the rising nausea. “I’m fine,” he gags, leaning over again to dry heave.

Eleven more hours. He can do that.

———————————————

The subway is bright and loud and full of people. Peter sways with the movement and tries to remember how he got here.

He’s freezing, the thin hoodie jacket, sweats and beat up tennis shoes doing nothing to block out the October chill that’s seeping through the underground. He feels sweat beading the back of his neck and face, chilling him more and making him shiver weakly. The smartly dressed business woman sitting across from him is eyeing him with distaste and Peter hunches in on himself.

How did he get here? Where is he going?

May?

No. Not May. May’s working.

Then where…?

He lets his eyes slip closed. The swirling of his vision and the movement of the subway car are making him want to vomit again and he can’t do that. There’s nothing more pathetic than vomiting on the train.

Also it’ll probably get him kicked off. So.

He drifts.

Stark Tower looms over him and Peter sways, dizzy and confused. Why is he here? What is he doing?

The crowds of people walking on the sidewalk – on their way to lunch or meetings or whatever it is that business people do – swerve around him with irritation and Peter stumbles when one smacks him with their elbow.

Is it a lab day? What day is it? He’s so tired, he wants to sleep.

He has a bed in Mr. Stark’s penthouse Peter remembers. Mr. Stark got him a whole room once Peter started hanging around more often, surely the man won’t mind if he uses it for a quick nap?

The fluorescent lights of the elevator burn his retinas and Peter squints. When did he get here?

“Hello Peter,” FRIDAY’s disembodied voice echos through the elevator car. “You seem to have a temperature, do you want me to let Boss know you’re here?”

Does he want Mr. Stark to know he’s here? Yeah he does. He wants someone to take care of him – he’s so tired and he feels awful and he can’t do this alone what was he thinking?

“No,” his voice is quiet and broken from all the vomiting and from not drinking and it hurts to talk holy shit. He clears his throat once and winces, gripping tightly onto the rail that runs around the car and grimacing when he feels it warp. He didn’t mean to do that. He’ll fix it.

FRIDAY’s silence is telling and judge mental and Peter has things he wants to say about that, many things actually, but he doesn’t. He kinda feels like vomiting again so he needs to keep his mouth closed.

The elevator stops on the penthouse floor and Peter stumbles out, listing into the wall and panting as he exits. He’s got this – his room is just down the hall. He can make it.

The floor tilts threateningly in front of his eyes and he keeps both hands on the wall as he walks down the hallway. He’s so close. He can’t give up now. The door to his room is closed and it takes some doing but he gets the door open; the room is dark, the windows opaque and blotting out the weak morning sunlight. His bed is still in disarray from the last time he stayed over and it looks so inviting.

Peter lets go of the wall to walk in the room.

His vision tilts again and starts to grey and tunnel and he stops dead where he’s standing to sway in place.

Oh he’s definitely going to pass out.

“FRI…”

It’s all he gets out before the floor rushes up to meet him.

—————————————

“Penthouse FRI,” Tony says brusquely as he boards his private elevator, loosening his tie and popping the top button of his white dress shirt as he goes. There’s nothing he hates more than pointless budgeting meetings except for long pointless budgeting meetings that ruin his whole day.

The car starts to move and Tony goes to lean against the railing; the metal in his left hand is the smooth, burnished steel he is used to but the left side… He glances down and see the railing is warped and bent, clearly in the shape of a hand and he frowns.

“What happened here?” He asks himself, running his index finger over the blemish curiously. Oh well. He can easily ix it and he can look through the video footage later to see how it happened but his money is on the kid. The only problem with this theory is that if Peter did this he would have been falling all over himself to apologize and he’d be trying to fix it himself.

Strange.

The elevator opens to the penthouse and Tony steps out, pulling of his tie fully and allowing it to drape around his shoulders loosely. Something feels off and he can’t quite put his finger on what; whatever it is warrants further investigation but he wants to change first – his workshop jeans are calling his name.

The hallway is darkened as he makes his way to the room he shares with Pepper except for a square of light from Peter’s doorway. Tony frowns – he’s sure the door was closed this morning?

Quickening his pace, he approaches the door and peers in the room.

Peter’s laid out limp on the floor just inside the doorway, limbs sprawled out and face pale except his cheeks which are bright red with fever and his nose which is purpling and bloody from where he clearly hit it passing out.

“Shit!” Tony says, dropping to the floor next to the kid and rolling him onto his side in the recovery position. He’s positively burning, sweating through his clothes and matting his hair to his skull. “FRI how long’s the kid been here?” He asks as he checks Peter’s pulse (rapid and thready) and breathing (congested).

“Two hours,” she responds. “He didn’t want me to alert you he was here.”

“Update that protocol dear,” he snaps at her, moving Peter’s bangs out of his face. “And call down to Bruce and Helen in the MedBay to let them know the situation. Can I move him?”

“He should be safe to move”,” FRIDAY tells him, “Dr.’s Banner and Cho are preparing for you now.”

“This is going to be so bad for my back,” Tony grouses to the unconscious kid as he rolls Peter fully onto his back and slips one arm under his back and the other under his knees. He takes a deep breath and lifts, stumbling a little – the wiry and corded muscles Peter developed from the bite are heavy.

The elevator ride to the MedBay thankfully is quick and, soon, Tony is dropping Peter gently onto one of the beds and stepping back as Bruce and Helen converge on him, setting up monitors and sticking a thermometer under his tongue.

Bruce hisses at the thermometer readout when he pulls it from Peter’s slack jaw. “One hundred and four point one,” he declares, stripping Peter’s hoodie off and leaving the kid in just his sweats and a loose t-shirt. “We need to get him cooled down before he boils his brain.”

“How did he even get here?” Helen asks, confused, as she sets up an IV catheter and a bag of plasmalyte.

“Kid’s stubborn,.” Tony says sardonically as he scrolls through his phone for May Parker’s contact info – he’s willing to bet a few billion that she has no idea that he kid decided to go on a unapproved field trip today. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Probably the flu,” Helen says as she places the catheter and starts running the fluids. “It’s been going around and the strain is particularly awful this year.”

“Great,” Tony says, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “I’ve got to call his aunt.”

Tony just hopes that the tentative rapport he’s built up with May over the past few months will prevent her from gutting him when she finds out her kid was under his roof for two hours without him noticing.

—————————————————

When Peter wakes up he feels loads better. The ache in his head is subsiding and everything feels more clear, sharper somehow. He takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh, the nausea’s gone.

“You awake kiddo?”A voice asks next to him and Peter’s eyes shoot open in panic and, oh shit, Mr. Stark is sitting on one of the uncomfortable MedBay chairs beside his bed with a tablet in his lap and his glasses low on his nose.

“Oh shit,” he says again, out loud this time and his mentor chuckles at him, setting the tablet aside.

“Yeah you’re not wrong,” he agrees with a grin. “Once you’re better you, May and I are having a discussion about self-care.” Peter groans and closes his eyes, throwing an arm across his eyes dramatically and hears Tony snort.

“Sorry,” Peter apologizes, coughing a little as talking irritates his throat and he swallows, trying to wet his throat. Mr. Stark passes him a cup of water and Peter takes it gratefully and sips it slowly, the coolness like ambrosia. “Uh… how did I get here?”

“You took the subway apparently,” Tony says with an eye roll. “Although I have no idea how you got here in one piece – your fever was over a hundred and four. Bruce and Helen say you ‘re lucky you have a healing factor or it could have been much worse. You have the flu by the way.”

“Great,” Peter mutters, picking at the tape covering the IV in his arm and letting out a yawn. He’s so tired.

“Go back to sleep,” Tony tells him, leaning forward to run his fingers through Peter’s hair and lower the bed some so that he’s more reclined. “May won’t be here for a few more hours.”

“Thanks Mr. Stark,” Peter breathes, letting his eyes close. He falls asleep to the even breathing of his mentor sitting vigil next to him.

#summerofwhump #summerofwhump21 #Prompt: Panic #irondad #spider man #Summer of Whump 2021

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nox-et-stellae · 3 years

Note

thanks for your sweet replies,, how about yahashira 86 or 93? if you feel inspired! have a great day!

you're welcome, i hope today has treated you well (so far)! ❤

***

"I'm home," Shigeru announced to what he already knew would be an empty apartment.

Or, at least, so he thought.

Kenjirou's beaten up Converse high tops still stood neatly against the edge of the genkan, the way they had been when Shigeru left for classes. Kenjirou's housekey still hung on its designated hook by the door, the keychain his high school volleyball teammates made for him swinging in the breeze Shigeru had brought inside with him. Kenjirou's signature jean jacket was still lying on the floor where he'd haphazardly dropped it the day before.

Which was strange, since Kenjirou usually spent his time studying at the nearest library until it closed, dragging himself inside their shared apartment a few minutes before ten in the evening.

As if on cue, the sound of labored coughing forced its way through the thin walls and the gap underneath the nearest door. Swallowing the surge of worry, Shigeru toed off his shoes, set down his bag, and peeked into their bedroom.

The curtains were mostly drawn; only a sliver of late-afternoon light illuminated the shape curled up underneath the covers of their bed.

"Kenjirou?" Shigeru said softly, approaching the bed. Kenjirou's brows were knitted together, the duvet pulled up to his nose, his back facing Shigeru. "What's wrong?"

Only when Shigeru gently brushed Kenjirou's bangs away from his worryingly warm forehead did he seem to notice Shigeru's presence, and he slowly turned his head toward him. His skin was shiny with sweat and his cheeks were flushed.

"Back already?" Kenjirou croaked, regarding Shigeru's looming shape with slitted eyes.

"What do you mean, 'already'? It's nearly evening. Have you been home all day?"

Kenjirou let out a sound that balanced the border between a hum and a groan. "I only meant to take a quick nap..." He slung an arm over his eyes and sighed. Shigeru took a few seconds to realize he wouldn't explain further.

"You stay here," he said, running his fingers through Kenjirou's bed-mussed hair. "I'll be back in a bit."

Kenjirou didn't react, but Shigeru hadn't expected him to.

Switching on their hand-me-down tv as background noise, Shigeru got to work on cooking some broth -- he suspected, considering his current state, Kenjirou hadn't eaten much, and probably wouldn't want to, either. For himself he found some leftover onigiri to munch as he searched their medicine cabinet for something to help combat Kenjirou's fever.

A while later, he re-entered the bedroom with a tray in his hands, carrying a bowl of steaming broth, a tall glass of water and some painkillers. He gently woke Kenjirou, got him to sit up against the headboard with lots of grumbling and complaining. He handed him the meds and the glass and urged him to take them, watched as Kenjirou gulped down the water eagerly.

Then he sat at the edge of the bed and fed Kenjirou the broth, spoonful by spoonful, pushing through even when he started to protest. He tied back Kenjirou's bangs with a clip he found on the nearest nightstand, so they wouldn't stick to his forehead anymore. He soaked a washcloth in water and wiped down Kenjirou's face and arms, cooling him down and removing the layer of sweat that covered his skin.

For a moment, he left to dispose of the used dishes and tidy up the kitchen, fetching Kenjirou a fresh glass of water and quickly slipping into something more comfortable in the process.

When he returned, Kenjirou had slipped back underneath the covers, pulling them tightly around him. A shiver shook his whole body as Shigeru softly closed the door behind him.

"Are you cold?" Shigeru asked.

Kenjirou made a sound Shigeru took as a yes. He drew the curtains closed, opting for the soft hue of the nightlight that stood by his side of the bed. He joined Kenjirou under the covers, and before he could make himself comfortable in a sitting position he felt Kenjirou's arms wrap around his waist.

Kenjirou's head appeared on his lap, face pressed into his stomach.

"Mmm, warm," he mumbled, rubbing his cheeks on Shigeru's t-shirt.

"You're running hotter than me right now, but okay."

Kenjirou just hummed, entangling himself with Shigeru more and more, clinging to him like his life depended on it -- he probably felt like it did, Shigeru supposed, with the way he was feeling at the moment.

Shigeru just chuckled and combed Kenjirou's hair with his fingers, stroked his back in soothing circles. From his nightstand he grabbed a book he'd been meaning to finish, and leafed through it as he rubbed some love into Kenjirou's skin with every touch, hoping it would drive the sickness away.

Within minutes, Kenjirou's breathing evened out, and his grip on Shigeru slackened. Despite the long day Shigeru had had, despite the worry fluttering deep inside his chest, Shigeru relaxed right along with him. His hand kept moving on Kenjirou's back, both for Kenjirou's comfort and his own.

He almost felt guilty for thinking it, but he couldn't say he'd mind Kenjirou being sick more often, if it lead to evenings like this.

***

[Send me a number + a pairing for a ficlet]

#yahashira #shirayaha #shirabu kenjirou #yahaba shigeru #haikyuu!!#i'm tired i can't tell if this is good anymore. just take this #emory writes #em takes writing requests

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voids-colourful-creations · 3 years

Text

Ships Passing in the Night and Sailing Together Until Morning - Chapter 3

Between the Two of Us

Summary: Satoshi visits his family. Goh gets some advice. Kaki does what he knows how to, and it's more helpful than one would expect.

[Read on Ao3!]

[<Prev. Chapter] [Next Chapter>]

It was relatively quiet in the plane’s cabin, save for the steady hum of it’s engine. It was an odd sort of noise, reminiscent of a vacuum, but surrounding them on all sides.

Night had fallen over the plane, or rather the plane was gently gliding through night, and would inevitably part ways with it soon. But for the moment, at least, it was night.

Most were silent, with the few exceptions being a flight attendant here or there whispering to one another or the odd still awake passenger with a request.

Most were asleep.

Satoshi and Goh were not most.

Satoshi had gotten the seat by the window, Goh the one on the aisle, Satoshi having won rock paper scissors for the right to the view.

Arguably there wasn’t much of a view at the moment, though at least the deep blue sky had sprawling clouds drifting across it, obscuring the landscape beneath. The light from the regions below shone bright enough to reflect against those clouds, casting the sky in a brighter hue than the pure shadow inside the plane.

The plane’s seat felt huge, Goh made smaller just by sitting in it. His head tipped to one side, leaning against the too-large head rest. Though his eyes were shut, he could not sleep. It might’ve been the hum of the plane, but then again he had never been quite able to sleep on car or train rides, so maybe that carried over to planes as well.

He had tried to sleep, the flight was to be a long stretch across the globe after all. Alola took nine hours to travel to via plane, with their flight scheduled to land sometime in the morning.

Normally Goh preferred to travel during the day, but this was a last minute trip, and he was grateful for what he could get.

Keeping his eyes shut as though opening them would somehow make him more awake, Goh rubbed his thumb against his palm.

He was excited to go to Alola, he knew this. That was why his heart was racing, that was why he couldn’t fall asleep. It was exciting. There would be new things to see, new pokemon to catch, new people to meet.

Well, new to Goh. Because to Satoshi, they were family.

Perhaps Goh wasn’t being entirely truthful to himself. Meeting someone’s family was a big deal after all, and when they lived in an entirely different region…

Satoshi had explained to Goh throughout their long trip through the airport all about his trip turned residency in Alola. Admittedly, Goh hadn’t followed all of it, there was a lot of confusing talk of wormholes and star candies and bug racing for some reason, and Goh had been more focused on getting them through the airport without issue. One thing he was sure of though, was that Satoshi loved Alola.

Not just because he could spend the entire forty minute trip through the airport check in and subsequent two hour wait at the gate talking about how interesting it was that in Alola, people said “Alola” as both hello and the region name, but because of just how happy he had seemed to share any little tidbit about the place. Even as they boarded the plane, Satoshi happily rambled about the time he almost died via Nemush while camping. Goh listened intently to that one, concerned more so at how nonchalantly Satoshi recounted the whole affair. Now that the plane’s internal lights had been turned off for the night, he had fallen silent.

Or… as silent as Satoshi could be. He wasn’t a very quiet person. Goh could hear how kept pushing at the button on his phone, a rhythmic sort of clicking sound.

Click. Clicky-click. Click-

The rotom inside let out an angry buzz, seemingly unhappy at being fidgeted with.

“Ah… sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.” Satoshi’s voice came hushed from Goh’s right.

Goh let his eyes peek open. His vision came blurred at first, eyes squinting as they took in his surroundings. The seat in front of him sat imposingly, still seeming impossibly large, though he supposed he was just short in comparison. Messon had opted to curl up asleep on Goh’s lap, it’s fin gently twitching as it let out a sigh in it’s sleep. Goh wondered what it was dreaming about. He let his hand rest on Messon’s back, the pokemon feeling somehow both scaly and soft.

He glanced to where Satoshi sat.

Similarly, Pikachu had curled up in Satoshi’s lap, his head leaning against the window. Satoshi’s fingers combed through Pikachu’s fur ever so gently, though Goh thought he could spot Satoshi's phone poking out of his vest pocket, likely having been shoved there a few moments earlier.

It was a bit hard to make out the exact objects and shapes, the inside of the plane being dark enough to turn Satoshi into a silhouette with a few features if Goh squinted enough. The only lights came from the tiny walkway in the centre, and the lights bouncing off the clouds out the window.

“Satoshi,” Goh whispered, his voice coming out breathy.

“Goh,” Satoshi replied equally quiet, though his surprise still came through. “You’re still awake?”

“So are you,” Goh answered, though it wasn’t really the response Satoshi was asking for.

Satoshi let out a light laugh.

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep.”

Something about his voice made Goh let out a contented sigh as he smiled, equally as soft.

“Too excited?” He asked, on the verge of teasing.

“Yeah…” Satoshi said, “I just… I can’t wait for you to see everything and meet everyone, it’s all so amazing and bright and… it’s great. You’ll love it. I hope you love it at least.”

Goh let one hand rest on the chair’s arm between them.

“I’m sure I will.”

The drone of the plane’s engine filled the gap in their conversation.

“What about you? Are you excited?”

Goh smiled into the darkness.

“Of course… I just hope they like me.”

Which is more than Goh probably would’ve shared had this been anyone else, but things were different when he was with Satoshi.

“They will, I know it. My family in Alola are some of the sweetest people in the whole world.”

And Goh knew he could take that as truth, Satoshi had seen most of it.

Though he could not sleep, the exhaustion from the travel so far was setting in.

“Mm… tell me about them?’

A ring of light shone around Satoshi, illuminating him from behind.

“Of course.”

Goh tried to listen, but something about the dull roar of the engines and Satoshi’s hushed voice was the perfect lullaby.

“I went to school in Alola with five other students, all around the same age as us. The school was all about pokemon, it was way way better than the schools I had to go to back in Kanto.”

A flight attendant walked by, the clicking of their shoes growing as they grew closer and fading as they continued to walk along.

“I’ll start with the tallest person in class, Kaki.”

Goh idly wondered why Satoshi decided height mattered in this context, then remembered it was Satoshi, and it probably made perfect sense to him, which was good enough for Goh.

“He’s so cool. He knows all these amazing things about Alola, and especially Akala Island, which is where he lives. Alola has four main islands, and I guess Aether Paradise kind of counts? Not as one of the main islands, it doesn’t have a deity or anything but it is floating there, so maybe it’s an island? Suiren said it was a ‘large floating structure’ once, but I don’t know if that was a joke or the official name for it. I wonder if it’s the same for the stadium...”

Satoshi’s head slid down as he whispered, eventually coming to rest on Goh’s shoulder. Goh lost track of what Satoshi was saying momentarily, becoming hyper aware of Satoshi’s jaw moving slightly as he spoke, his mouth dangerously close to Goh’s shoulder.

“-really the kindest guy though, he cares about his sister so much and is really dedicated to the whole region, he’s got so much pride for it all and I really love him for it, yanno? Some people say he looks intimidating but I just don't see it.”

Goh let his head drift downward in kind until it rested against the top of Satoshi’s. A strand of Satoshi’s hair brushed against Goh’s cheek. He ignored it. For now, he would listen silently, happily.

“Next is Lillie, I think, no wait- Mao was taller wasn’t she? Why did I think Lillie was tall- oh it's the hat. Never realized how much shorter than my classmates I was. Huh. Mao’s really cool and also really nice, we don’t have a class leader but if we did it would be Mao-“

The plane drifted across the sky lazily, set to reach Alola in the morning and slowly making its way there overnight. Whether Goh or Satoshi fell asleep first, neither could say, but by the time they woke up, the Alolan sunrise was greeting them through the window.

Despite Satoshi mainly using onomatopoeia and wild hand gestures to explain his friends in Alola, when Goh met them he understood exactly what Satoshi had meant.

Professor Kukui had come to pick them up at the airport, and had asked friendly questions about Goh’s pokemon and Satoshi’s battles the whole ride there. While Goh couldn’t muster up the confidence to reply in anything more than simple answers, there was something so genuine about how Kukui spoke to him that he appreciated more than he could say. It wasn’t too much to worry about anyway, Satoshi was more than happy to answer on behalf of the both of them.

Satoshi just sprung to life in that way he did when talking about his passions, and Goh was more than content to watch and chime in when needed. Despite the fact he was sure Satoshi had to have filled his friends in Alola in about at least some of these things— they had to have known about the research fellowship and Goh’s existence in advance, right?— Kukui replied with genuine interest to everything Satoshi said. And, if Goh was reading him correctly, fondness as well.

Kukui himself was a bit of an enigma, at least in how he related to Satoshi. He was a pokemon professor, the class’s teacher, and Satoshi’s roommate as well, though looking at the way they interacted and how Satoshi described him, Goh didn’t think ‘roommates’ was the best word to describe it.

Satoshi’s words from the plane rang in his ears.

He started to understand what he meant by family.

Goh didn’t quite know how to feel about that, but he took comfort in Satoshi and Kukui’s happiness around each other.

Professor Burnet was similar to Kukui in many ways, passionate and excitable, yet much more dialed back. He supposed that had something to do with being a mother and all. Though, by the way she looked and acted around Satoshi made it seem as though Lei wasn’t her first child. The way she smiled at him, asked him about how training had been coming along, told him about Mokuroh falling asleep on a pile of laundry the other day, all of it was so gentle.

Goh kept thinking about how she had smiled when she had opened the door, how she sounded as she called Satoshi Lei’s brother.

Awkwardly, he stood there, feeling as though he was interrupting a family reunion. No, not feeling. He was fairly certain he was.

But Satoshi was too kind, and the professors were too welcoming, so he was ushered inside the house to greet all sorts of affectionate, Satoshi-like pokemon.

It was all a bit overwhelming, though not necessarily in a bad way.

Thankfully, Satoshi was as excited to show Goh the beach and the rest of the island as he was to show him the house, and they soon waved the professors goodbye, at least until they returned there that night.

With boundless energy, Satoshi dragged Goh across the island, eager to point out every little crack and crevice where anything remotely interesting had happened.

“This is where I talked to Gladio on the beach the first time, and a little bit further down the beach is where I talked to him and he told me he was starting his trial but more importantly where we held the wedding- oh and even further down the beach is the place where I almost got poisoned by Hidoide on a class beach trip, and over there-“

His mouth ran like a broken faucet, but Goh was glad for it. Something about hearing the retellings of Satoshi’s past adventures made him feel closer to Satoshi, even if it could never compare to actually being there. In fairness, he probably rambled on about Alolan pokemon Satoshi had come to see as commonplace, but never once did Satoshi utter a word of complaint.

Goh liked that about them, how Satoshi just got him, like that. He wondered if Satoshi thought the same, vice versa.

Then he got distracted in his pokemon hunting and fell off of a cliff.

Admittedly, it took Goh far too long to realize that this was the same Suiren that Satoshi had been telling him about only hours prior, but in all fairness he had just fallen off of a cliff and that can shock a person.

Suiren explained something or other about schools or parties while she drove him back to dry land, though Goh was more focused on admiring the ride pokemon that carried them across the crystal blue waters. Thankfully, she seemed to have some experience with easily distracted people, and somehow managed to get them to the Pokemon School without incident.

The Pokemon School was in the running for one of the coolest structures Goh had ever seen. It was massive and yet so open that in some places he hardly felt like he was indoors at all. In Alola he supposed that was the point, with the warm sun and fresh breeze carrying into the classroom. Goh agreed with Satoshi, he would enjoy school much more if he went here instead. Maybe then, he would go to school every day, and not just for tests. Goh pictured it for a moment, going to this school and learning about Pokémon every day, Satoshi by his side.

Goh wondered when Satoshi became part of this daydream.

He was ushered through the hallways by an excited Suiren, pushed until he was sitting at an open desk and swarmed by what were presumably the rest of Satoshi’s school friends.

Satoshi’s friends were... loud. That was the first word that came to mind. Loud and excitable, and very very curious. He didn’t really blame them, from their perspective he was probably just some strange guy who their old friend had hauled back here with him. Of course they’d be curious.

But Goh could feel his anxiety growing with all the watching eyes. Mentally, he prayed for Satoshi to hurry up and get here already before he ended up yelling or crying.

Still, even with all the shoving and questions and attempts to fish his phone out of his pocket to experiment on, Goh could see it.

That passion and excitement that Satoshi had so fondly recalled.

Still, he was relieved for a moment when Kaki showed up and pulled the rest of the class's attention for a moment.

Of course that relief was subsided a bit by Kaki’s incredulous reaction to finding out he was exactly a huge battler, but he’d take what he could get.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry for long, as soon enough Satoshi returned, a strange, floating sort of Rotom Index accompanying him.

Goh felt his entire body relax as Satoshi entered the room, a smile rising to his face subconsciously.

Pulled again, taken from room to room in a blur that didn’t quite make sense, but wasn’t as unpleasant with Satoshi alongside him.

Soon enough, he was sitting for lunch with Satoshi sitting next to him, a buffer between him and Mao.

This was nice. The food was good, the conversation was much easier with Satoshi next to him. It was wonderful, truly, to hear about all Satoshi’s classmates' dreams.

But though he cursed himself for it, when he glanced around at the table he felt his stomach tie in knots.

Satoshi looked so comfortable with these people, so happy here. Even when jealousy would begin to bubble up, Goh could never really find it lasting longer than a fleeting moment.

Satoshi was so happy, he wouldn’t dare take that away. It was everything, seeing his face alight like that.

The only thing Goh had to be upset over was his own selfishness. His wish that he could be the thing to make Satoshi smile like that.

He didn’t have time to dwell on it, though.

Kaki was firmer in his request to battle than Goh had initially given him credit for. And despite the rest of the class's gentle urges to back down, Kaki stood with purpose. Goh could respect that. More importantly, Satoshi could respect that, and Goh knew he’d want to see.

So for the sake of his so-called pride, Goh agreed.

This was a fight he never could have won. Even without the Z-Moves— which Goh thought were incredibly interesting, he’d have to bother Kikuna and Renji about them later— Kaki was stronger than him, more experienced, just better than him.

This was not Kaki’s fault, Goh had agreed to this, so it didn’t feel in any way unfair. Only… uneven.

If anything, he regretted dragging Rabbifoot into this, a flame on flame battle was a poor choice when he knew he was the weaker competitor in nearly every aspect. Still, Namakobushi had been caught only a few hours ago and surely it was rude to toss it into a match just like that. Messon was never even an option, and he hadn’t brought any other pokemon with him.

Despite Rabbifoot’s best efforts, they never stood a chance.

A flaming inferno was staring him right in the face, and Goh was frozen, powerless to do anything.

Something in the back of his mind registered the flames as beautiful, and while certainly true, likely not the thing that should be going through his mind at that moment.

He wondered what Satoshi was thinking, if he was disappointed. Would he fear for Goh? Pity him?

Satoshi’s words from the plane spoke out to Goh again. Satoshi trusted Kaki, he knew Kaki.

So Goh decided to trust him too.

Goh blinked.

He wasn’t sure exactly when he had grabbed onto Rabbifoot, but seeing as he and pokemon were decidedly not burnt to crisps, nor flecks of ash blowing in the breeze, it would appear as though his trust had paid off.

Garagara waved and cheered, and Goh realized dimly that Kaki had tasked Garagara with rescuing them from the hell flames.

Good. That was good.

Even if Goh felt the tiniest bit bitter he lost, it was a fruitless endeavour anyway. Still, part of him wished he could’ve won. If for no other reason than to see the look on Satoshi’s face.

Kaki wasn’t about to let him sulk for long though.

Standing in front of him, arm outstretched, Kaki met Goh’s eye with a smile. Not one of superiority or condescension, but of friendship.

“Look after Satoshi for me, alright?”

It clicked in Goh’s head that this was part of a challenge, to see if he was good enough for Satoshi. And that the challenge may not have started and ended at his battling skills. With the way Kaki was smiling at him at least, it didn’t feel like a failure at all. A new, refreshing feeling.

Perhaps with too much force, perhaps on purpose, Goh took Kaki’s hand and pulled himself to standing.

“I may not be his rival, but I can certainly look after him for you!”

It wasn’t until after the words had passed through his lips, and with such confidence too, that it registered that this was the second time he had made this exact promise. Third, if he counted Pikachu.

Kaki threw his arm around Goh's shoulder, pulling him close. As Satoshi had said, he truly was a kind guy. The embrace was firm, and in contrast to the near inferno, comfortably warm. Kaki simply ran hot, in the same way Satoshi did. Maybe that's why they were 'rivals', something Goh wasn't sure he'd ever really understand.

Then again, maybe he didn’t really have to. Satoshi didn’t need another rival, Kaki was already doing a great job of that.

But Goh thought that perhaps he could do with another friend. Or at least, he hoped so.

They had bickered back and forth, in the friendly manner Goh found they so often did, over who would sleep on the floor and who would sleep on the couch bed. Satoshi insisted that Goh should take the couch since he was the guest, while Goh argued that he slept in Satoshi’s bed at his house in Kanto, so it was only fair that it was Satoshi’s turn to sleep on the closest thing to a bed in Alola.

After a heated but ultimately light hearted battle, Goh emerged victorious with the argument that he refused to sleep on the couch because being directly under the skylight would bother him. A blatant lie, but Satoshi either decided to take that as proof that Goh was serious, or didn’t notice. Either way, Goh found himself lying against the wooden floor with a futon and some spare sheets. It was admittedly quite comfortable.

That night, Goh had bid Satoshi a quick good night before passing out almost immediately, Rabbitfoot and Messon curled up with the blankets with him. The exhaustion of the travel, the new surroundings and social interaction had caught up with him all at once, and he promptly slipped into uneasy dreams. When his eyes blinked open, the light shining through the skylight was the soft starlight of night, much to his dismay.

Goh groaned quietly, trying not to wake Satoshi. He gently patted the blankets around him in an attempt to find his phone. He was tempted to just sit up and look for it, but that risked accidentally knocking over Rabbifoot, which was the last thing Goh wanted.

After a few attempts resulting in nothing but a handful of pillows, Goh finally managed to retrieve it. The screen was cool to the touch as Goh unlocked it.

Digital numbers reflected back at him. It was early, too early to be awake. At least for Goh’s tastes. Beneath the numbers was a small line of text.

“Sunrise in twenty minutes.” He read to himself, voice so quiet it was closer to mouthing them.

Sunrise, huh? That sounded pretty nice. And it wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

So minding the sleeping pokemon and sleeping Satoshi, Goh slipped out from under the blankets, tiptoeing across the wooden floor and without bothering to put on his shoes, wandered out of the house.

The sand was squishy beneath his feet, yet dry. It hadn’t rained last night. Without the sun's warmth, the ground was cool beneath him.

The ocean was quiet, as still as something as alive as it could be. The growing light trickled across its surface in flowing patterns, colours and shades that shifted imperceptibly. The water stretched out endlessly in front of him, incomprehensibly vast. The water breathed steadily, the tiny waves greeting the shoreline in a taunt, being pulled away just as fast.

Goh let his eyes drift upwards. Cloudy, not enough to block out the sky, but enough to make shapes out of. The stars had already faded out of view by then, a disappointment.

He let his feet guide him as he walked without looking where he was going. He stumbled for a moment, foot slipping into a small hole. Goh attempted to catch his balance but ultimately tipped over, ending up having fallen on his back.

He could see the sky better this way, watching the stream of pink begin to flood the horizon.

It was calming, the gentle breeze, the rush of the waves, the motion of it all. It was though the very island itself was breathing deeply, slowly, alive.

Goh closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in, trying to match the breaths of the island. He was here. Here was nice.

His attention was caught by the sound of flapping wings in the distance, breaking his concentration.

His eyes snapped open, scanning the skies for the sign of a flying pokemon. Fruitless, considering he hadn’t brought anything to catch them with, he realized a few moments later. Still, he kept looking, past the clouds, against the sky slowly growing in its pink hue.

There, between a cloud that looked vaguely like a Denjimushi and one that looked like an Amamaiko on it’s side. A Lizardon, no- someone was riding a Lizardon.

They were surprisingly close actually, and at an odd angle. Goh would’ve expected them to face the direction they were flying, but instead it almost appeared that Lizardon was staring directly at him.

Hold on. Goh blinked, his eyes tricking him into thinking Lizardon was growing bigger.

No. Not bigger. Closer. And closer. And closer.

And before Goh had fully gotten it through his head, a strong gust of wind sent sand scattering into his face as Lizardon and it’s rider landed on the sand beside him.

“Augh!”

Goh sat up spluttering, trying to get the sand out of his mouth. One hand propped him up, the other being used to try and swipe the sand away from his face.

“Ehh, what was that for?!” He asked, still brushing sand away from his eyes, unable to see who he was speaking to.

“Ahh, sorry! I didn’t realize how much sand we would kick up. Are you alright?”

Goh instantly recognized the voice. Being mindful of stray sand particles, Goh blinked his eyes open to a familiar sight. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Kaki was standing above him, offering a helping hand.

Goh accepted it, gentler this time, either out of embarrassment or reluctant acceptance.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Goh replied as he stood.

Kaki breathed a visible sigh of relief.

“Oh, good. I saw you lying on the beach so I had Lizardon fly down here, but it seems I only made things worse.”

Goh shook his head.

“It’s not a problem, really.”

Kaki nodded, though he didn’t quite seem to believe Goh.

“What are you doing out here this early then?”

Straight to the point.

Goh shifted slightly.

“Well, I could ask you the same thing,” He replied defensively.

Kaki raised an eyebrow.

“I’m doing deliveries for my family’s farm. I do them every morning.”

He gestured back towards Lizardon, holding the aforementioned cargo.

Goh kicked at the sand a bit with his heel.

“Ah. Sorry. I- I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to come watch the sun rise.”

Kaki nodded, turning to face the ocean. The waves lapped up at the edge of the beach, rushing away just as fast, taunting the shoreline.

“It really is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Goh nodded, breath catching in his throat just a tad at the sight of the sun spilling onto the horizon.

“Listen,” Kaki began, “I’m sorry I scared you with dynamic full flame yesterday.”

He offered a gentle smile, turning to meet Goh’s eye.

“I-I wasn’t scared!” Goh stuttered as he looked away.

“Sure.”

Still looking out at the ocean, Goh responded tentatively, letting the words sit on his tongue for a moment beforehand.

“So… you don’t hate me. Right?”

Kaki looked genuinely bewildered.

“What? Of course not.”

Goh nodded, shoulders relaxing.

“Good, I’m glad.”

Kaki shook his head.

“I never meant to scare you. Intimidate a little, maybe, but more…” He trailed off, seemingly frustrated as he stumbled to find the right words.

Goh sighed, the sun’s soft light bouncing off the water and shining across his face.

“I think I get it, kind of? Like… you wanted to protect him, right?”

Kaki nodded, evidently relieved.

“Satoshi’s important to me- to us. All of us-“

“Care about him a lot.” Goh finished.

“Yeah.”

Goh smiled just slightly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“So. It was a test, right?”

Kaki looked taken aback, though he quickly covered the surprise on his face.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Goh’s smile grew.

“How’d I do then? Did I pass?”

His tone was lighthearted, clearly having fun joking with Kaki. As soon as Kaki registered this, he relaxed in kind.

“Yeah, yeah, you passed. Flying colours and all that.”

Goh raised an eyebrow.

“Oh? How so?”

Kaki rolled his eyes, but there was something soft about the motion.

“You stood your ground, even when you were outmatched. You stood for your ideals, you made it clear you were willing to work hard. I admire that in a person. Ambition, dedication, drive.”

Goh hadn’t been expecting a proper response, but nonetheless listened intently to Kaki’s words.

“Not to mention your little outburst there. I mean, I don’t take too kindly to the implication that Satoshi isn’t my friend, but the rest of it had heart. More importantly, all that stuff you said, about dreams being within your own power and all. It just reminded me of him. You looked a lot like Satoshi.”

Goh tilted his head to the side.

“Looked like Satoshi…?”

Despite the rest of Kaki’s face staying the same as before, something in his eyes gave Goh the distinct feeling he was being laughed at.

“Listen, Satoshi’s my rival and my friend. We can be both. He’s my friend along with all our other classmates, because of all the things we’ve done together. He’s fun to be around, I’m sure you know that by now.”

Goh nodded, unsure of where this was going.

“But he’s my rival too. A strong fighter- strongest in Alola if you ask some people, someone I truly have to work hard to fight against. It’s an exhilarating feeling, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Kaki paused, looking Goh up and down.

“But you… you don’t have that. And I don’t think you need to either.”

Kaki met Goh’s eyes directly as he spoke, though Goh got the feeling that he was looking further than that, speaking to something deeper inside him.

“I see how you look at each other, how you act around each other. It’s different, and I think it’s good too. Don’t go proving me wrong, alright? He cares about you, and you better not screw it up.”

Though his expression was stern, that of someone emotionless, Goh could feel the emotions that sat behind those words as if they were tangibly in front of him.

Goh cleared his throat, trying to hide his surprise at what Kaki had just said.

“I know, I won’t. Satoshi hasn’t told me everything about his time here, but if there’s one thing he made clear, it was how much he loves you all, and how much you all love him.”

“Yeah. Satoshi means a lot to all of us.” Kaki said, stone faced. However, to Goh’s surprise, a smirk spread across his face. “Though, not in the way he means to you.”

Goh felt the blood rush to his cheeks and quickly attempted to cover for himself.

“W-wh-what’s that supposed to mean!?”

Kaki laughed, reaching a hand to playfully slap Goh’s back.

“That’s not my place to say. You’ll figure it out soon enough, I’m sure.”

Goh glared.

“How is that of any help?!”

The grin on Kaki’s face persisted.

“Who said it was supposed to be?”

Deciding that was apparently enough explanation, Kaki walked across the sand, returning to Lizardon’s side as he waved goodbye.

“I’ve gotta get going, can’t let the deliveries be late!”

He called, climbing up onto Lizardon’s back. Goh waved back, though Kaki’s words were still bubbling in his brain.

“Don’t forget what you promised!”

And Kaki flew off past the clouds before Goh could even respond.

Promises, promises, he’d been making a lot of them recently, and all of the same nature. The question was if they would hold weight. And what on earth had Kaki meant by all that?

Taking a deep breath, Goh took in the smell of the ocean, the sand, the Alolan breeze. And then, he shook himself violently, sending tiny specks of sand scattering across the beach.

Enough thinking about all this for now, he decided. With confident strides, Goh headed up the beach to wake Satoshi so they could inevitably argue over what they would eat for breakfast, and soon enough, fly home again.

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kaminobiwan · 4 years

Text

where the heart is

pairing: obi-wan kenobi x ambassador!reader

summary: He meets the fam.

a/n: I did this request while taking a break from my drabble prompts, but I’m steadily working through those! The idea for this just came to me in the shower while I was listening to “When You Believe” the most inspiring song ever and I had to crank it out. Here you go anon!

At the end of a two-week security detail for the Ambassador to Cantonica, Obi-Wan is quite certain he’s got your daily routine memorized.

So when you dismount the airbus home at a different stop than you have been for the past dozen nights, he doesn’t fail to notice. Your smile is secretive when he asks you about it.

“Family gathering,” you explain airily, and a tremor of apprehension runs through him. “It’s a monthly tradition. I knew if I told you earlier, you’d have a Coruscant Guard take your shift instead.” You’re right, of course, because it isn’t exactly within the Code to go accepting evening invitations from the subjects of his protection. More than that, he’s not exactly jumping at the opportunity to meet your family.

It’s not born out of dislike. Quite the opposite, actually. The two of you are close — maybe closer than the aforementioned Code would prefer — and he enjoys your sharp wit and even sharper tongue, particularly when you’re going after venal Attorney Generals from the Corporate Sector Authority alongside Senator Amidala. But your liking for him was hard-earned, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous at the thought of having to win over your kin, too.

Not that it mattered all that much. It wasn’t like you two were anything more than close friends. Would it really be the end of the world if your family didn’t like him?

“As entertaining as that sounds,” he clears his throat, “I’m afraid I’ll have to take my post outside.” His voice lowers as you lead him past the gates of a small neighborhood. “Though I do appreciate the gesture.”

“You don’t want to come in for dinner?” You throw him a questioning look over your shoulder as you shuck off your coat while walking. “I’ve been with you the whole day, and I haven’t seen you eat once.”

“I don’t want to impose,” he responds, the mild uneasiness growing as you approach what he assumes is your family’s residence. Even at a distance away, he senses the foreign hum of homeliness buzzing in the air. It welcomes you, but offsets him. “And I assure you, I’m not hungry.”

His stomach chooses that precise moment to contradict him. Loudly.

He slaps a hand over his abdomen as if that’d quiet it, and looks at you sheepishly as you hide a laugh behind your hand. “Maybe a little.”

Shaking your head at him, you pause before the entrance. “It’s not an imposition, trust me. I’m sure my sister would be ecstatic to meet an actual General. The ones I work with aren’t nearly as combative.” You motion for him to take off his shoes before entering the house. “Well, physically, anyway.”

He swallows one last time as you knock swiftly, knowing you’ve won the conversation. “Fine,” he says, to give himself a semblance of willingness, and the door swings open.

———

Your siblings don’t look anything like you.

He’s surprised to discover it, and mentally admits that at first glance, you all do look quite similar. But he’s acquainted himself with the slope of your nose, the point of your eyebrows, and the shape of your lips long enough to be able to easily single you out amongst them.

You are kindred in demeanor, however, and it calms his fluttering nerves minutely to find that your inviting warmth and congeniality is familial.

He’s especially taken off-guard when your mother pulls him down to greet him with a customary embrace that he recognizes from the Core Worlds, and he’s pretty sure he sees your brother stifle a snicker at his expression. He recovers quickly, though, and flashes his best smile.

“We’re pleased to host you, Master Jedi,” your mother tells him. “Dinner is almost ready.”

“The pleasure is all mine.” He clasps her hands in return, summoning his regular charisma as you stare at him. “I see the ambassador's beauty is hereditary.”

Your brother cackles louder, and Obi-Wan spots your hand extending to pinch his side as your mother blushes delightedly.

In the middle of setting the table, he’s bombarded with questions from your family about the Order, the war — you’re right in predicting your sister’s interest in his involvement. Her enthusiasm signals a similar intellect to yours, and he’d be lying if he claimed that didn’t make him smile. To his further amusement, your brother manages to ask if he can hold Obi-Wan’s lightsaber before you scold him with the cadence only an elder sibling could possess.

Seeing you in such a cozy setting with your loved ones is interesting, to say the least.

Finally, your father brings in a pot of some of the best smelling broth Obi-Wan has ever tasted. Never mind the fact that it hasn’t even touched his tongue yet.

Internally, he blames the long day for rendering him so famished, but even the most satisfied stomach would agree that whatever your family has cooked is downright enticing. For a split second, his brain has the gall to be thankful to the assassination attempt two weeks ago for bringing him into your life, into your home, and in front of this heavenly-smelling dinner.

Obi-Wan cringes. He sounds like Anakin.

If there was any indication he was losing his mind, it was descending into thoughts similar to that his Padawan would have.

His self-diagnosis of insanity is interrupted by your mother asking him if he’d like a bowl of soup, and he accepts much quicker than his ego would have liked. “Thank you,” he enunciates while cooling a spoonful of the light green broth, “it smells delicious.”

“It’s topato stew,” you explain, between gulps of your own. “My father is from Batuu, and he uses his mother’s recipe.”

At the mention of his homeworld, your father seems to sit straighter, and looks at Obi-Wan with a smile. “Have you ever been? Any of your adventures take you that far into the Outer Rim?”

“Unfortunately not,” he replies, “though I have heard stories of the Trilon sector on my travels to other Outer Rim planets.”

Your father’s eyes glint with recognition, impressed with Obi-Wan’s correct identification of the planet’s location. “You know your way around a map, son. But stories are nothing compared to what it used to be. Before all the hyperspace lanes opened, Batuu was as big of a hub as any of those resort planets are nowadays.”

“Dad, I don’t think Obi-Wan wants a millennium-old history lesson right now,” you interrupt. He catches a smirk from behind your silverware as you glance back at him in beguilement. “He sits through enough political droning during the day.”

Still, he turns back to your father politely. “I’d love to hear it, though perhaps when I’m not preoccupied by such a fine entrée ahead of me.” He swallows another sip of the savory liquid to punctuate his sentence, and your father looks positively charmed as you roll your eyes in reaction.

“I’m glad to hear you like it, son.”

———

You walk him out before it gets too late, and he finds himself slipping his shoes back on slower than usual as you lean against the doorway.

“They seemed to like you.”

“Did they? I couldn’t tell by the way your brother flicked his garnish at me.”

One side of your mouth upturns in a half-grin, but he’s peering back at you with the same merriment. “It’s his way of showing affection. You tend to bring that out of people. It’s almost hypnotic.”

Sarcasm drips from the end of your words, and he straightens above you. “Unfortunately, I’m not a hypnotist.”

“Being a Force wielder is basically the same.”

He turns the doorknob with a scoff. As he steps out into the cool night air, you tread halfway out of the entrance, a final smile playing on your lips.

“Gonna be okay getting home?”

“I’m protecting you, you know.” It’s funny, the way he’ll now think of yours when he hears the word ‘home’. It certainly has the right feel to it. “But yes, I will be. I trust you’ll stay out of trouble until the morning?”

You slink back into the warmth of the building with a tempting sway of your hips.

“I make no promises.”

#rini writes #obi wan kenobi x reader #obi wan kenobi imagine #obi wan x reader #star wars imagines #lolol this was hard bc it’s harder to make it general when everyone’s family is so different and i want my fics to be relatable to everyone #but obi would definitely charm the pants off your fam no matter what #anyways i hope you guys like it :-)#also ambassador!reader 👀👀 switching it up

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10-porgs-in-a-trenchcoat · 3 years

Text

Ask Me to Stay

Pairing: Riyo Chuchi x Commander Wolffe

Premise: @lilhawkeye3 proposed Riyo/Wolffe post-Order 66 and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Word count: Approximately 2.3k

Warnings: Allusions to sex but nothing is described in explicit detail. Light steam, no smut.

AO3

----------------------------

Coruscant, 16BBY

At first, the idea of returning to Coruscant filled Riyo with trepidation. Getting caught by the Empire was the least of her worries. What she feared was seeing ghosts everywhere: of her friends, of her colleagues, of the Republic itself, of the man she loved and lost.

Perhaps Fulcrum sensed what Riyo was thinking and feeling, and that was why they assigned her to work in a neighborhood on the planet’s surface far away from the hustle and bustle of the city and far away from the Senate complex. Riyo had been assigned a cover as an administrative assistant in a public records office, where she could relay coded messages between street-level informants and Fulcrum. The work wasn’t fraught with peril or all that exciting, yet she joked to herself that it was more meaningful than being a Senator was.

She eventually found comfort in routine: keep her hair dyed black to hide her natural shade of purple, cover the markings on her cheeks with blue makeup and use yellow face paint to paint dot-and-line patterns around her eyes, visit the markets every day after work, spend her nights reading or watching holovids, and check her personal messages. Sometimes she would engage in friendly chatter with Ahsoka or Bail on a secure channel, some lighthearted conversation to take their minds off things. Rarer than that, she would receive messages from him, letting her know she was still on his mind even though they hadn’t seen each other in person for nearly a year, and she treasured those messages more than she treasured a perfectly brewed cup of caf. If she had a secure means of messaging him back, she would tell him the same. She never imagined that she would be able to love again after Fox, but the universe proved her wrong … right before duty pulled them apart.

One evening after work, she went to the market as usual, picking out what to eat for dinner. Somber gray clouds covered the sky. Riyo checked every crosswalk and every person that crossed her path, always on alert as Fulcrum advised her to be. When she finished her shopping, she turned to walk home but froze in her tracks when she looked across the street.

He stood outside a café, the hood of his coat over his head to obscure most of his face. But there was no hiding that bright white cybernetic eye, especially when it looked at her with such intensity and focus.

At first Riyo thought she was hallucinating; she had barely slept the night before, and perhaps seeing him was a byproduct of that. But as she crossed the street to meet him, and raised a hand to touch him, only to have him take her raised hand in his own –

“Wolffe,” she gasped. “How are you here?”

“I took a transport,” Wolffe replied dryly. She could see his mouth curve into a small smile under his hood.

“No, I mean- I thought you were in the Outer Rim somewhere … is this about your mission?” Not that she wasn’t happy to see him, she couldn’t help but be confused. She glanced around, making sure the other people passing through didn’t notice her talking to him. No one paid them any attention, all intent on going about their own business.

“No, the mission is on pause right now. So I came here.” Wolffe kept his voice low as he talked. He paused, looking over her head for a moment, then he looked back down to her.

“I wanted to see you. I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Riyo replied. “I can’t believe you’re here.” Questions about how he knew where to find her could wait. All she wanted to do in that moment was throw her arms around him and kiss every inch of his face that she could get her lips on. She could sense that he wanted to do the same. The sooner she got him in her apartment, the better.

Next thing she knew, though, she was being grabbed around the arm and yanked into the narrow space between the café and the shop next door. Wolffe pinned her against the wall, caging her in with his body, and the stubble on his jawline scratched against her forehead. She looked past him to see a dozen Stormtroopers marching in formation down the street.

“And I don’t like that you’re here by yourself. Especially with all these Stormtroopers crawling around.”

“I can handle myself. I can call for extraction if it ever gets too dangerous.” Riyo placed her hands on his chest and pushed him softly, allowing herself to look up and make eye contact with him.

“If you need to make that call it’s too late,” Wolffe protested.

“It wasn’t too late that one time on Corellia,” Riyo reminded him.

“We got lucky on Corellia.”

“Maybe.” Riyo smirked playfully at him.

A beat of silence.

“How is the mission going?” she asked.

Wolffe sighed. “Could be better. We found Bacara, got his chip out, but the trail’s gone cold for the others. Back at base Gregor’s taking care of his recovery and Rex is working with Ahso- I mean Fulcrum – to find new leads to chase. Rex knows I’m here, doubt anyone else does.” He paused. “Eh, that’s all there is to talk about. What about you?”

“You know I can’t talk about my work.”

“Not even to me?”

Rain began to fall, starting as a trickle of small drops and sprinkles but soon turning into a steady shower from the sky. “We should get inside,” Riyo said. Her hair was steadily growing wetter, as were her clothes, and they stuck to her skin.

“Lead the way,” Wolffe answered, taking a step back from her.

She took his hand and led him along, the two moving quickly to an apartment building three blocks from the market. Riyo’s apartment was on the third floor: a small studio with a kitchen and dining area, space for her bed, and a narrow fresher.

“It’s not much, but it’s home,” she remarked as she brought Wolffe inside. After she cast off her coat and shoes, she went to set her bag of food down on the dining table. She swept her hand across her face to wipe some raindrops off her face, and some of her yellow face paint came off with it. So much for being waterproof, she thought.

“I’m going to wipe off my makeup really quick, make yourself comfortable. There’s some spare towels in the closet if you want one.”

Wolffe nodded in response before making to remove his boots. Riyo went into the fresher and quickly cleaned the makeup off her face, revealing the crescent-shaped markings on her cheeks. She then went back out to find Wolffe standing by the kitchen counter, wiping his face and neck dry with one of her towels. His face brightened when she walked over to him, like he was seeing her for the first time.

“I near forgot what you really look like,” he remarked as he dropped the towel and reached out to her. Riyo grabbed his hands and let him pull her close. “Lost my picture of you like this somewhere around Felucia. I’ll need another one.”

“I don’t keep pictures of myself anymore, or even any devices with a camera, but I’ll see what I can do.”

His mouth curved into a small smile. He moved his hands out of her grasp up her arms, gliding along with the gentlest touch, across her shoulders, and on up until he cradled her face in them. Riyo’s hands rested on either side of his waist.

“Not a day went by that I didn’t think of you,” Wolffe confessed. “And I half-expected Fox to appear from the beyond to give me an earful for leaving you alone.”

Riyo chuckled. “Did he?”

“No, he must have known I would fix that mistake.” Wolffe stroked his thumb along her cheek, tracing along the path of her marking. He then leaned in, and Riyo closed her eyes and craned her neck up so she could meet his lips with her own.

Kissing him was like taking a drink of cool water after being parched for days, or reexperiencing warmth after only knowing cold loneliness for so long. She didn’t know just how much she had missed him until that moment, and she let her hands roam to become reacquainted with his body. He must have been thinking the same thing as he let her head go so his hands could travel down her sides and to the small of her back.

They eventually broke apart to catch their breaths. Riyo felt heat rising in her cheeks, heat in her skin under his hands, and an aching craving deep within her. All she wanted to do was envelop herself in him, to touch and taste any part of him she could get her hands on.

“I want to take you to bed,” Wolffe said breathily, his pupil dark and blown wide.

“Then take me.”

Hours later, all of her energy was spent. She was sore between her legs, and her limbs felt like jelly, but she felt blissful and at peace. It amazed her, how he still knew exactly where and how to touch her to make her come undone, how in the throes of passion her name sounded like a song on his lips, and how secure and treasured she felt in his arms. For a brief amount of time, nothing outside of her apartment mattered: not the Empire, not her assignment, nothing except her and him. Knowing that he would have to leave again increased her desire to live in the present moment forever.

Riyo lifted her head from Wolffe’s chest to look at the chronometer on the nightstand, seeing that it was a little past midnight. Rain still fell, droplets tapping against the windows and reflecting lights from outside. When she lay her head back down, Wolffe shifted underneath her, moving slightly so his nose was in her hair. She heard him inhale slowly, and when he exhaled she felt his breath tickle at her scalp.

“What’s your natural hair color?” he asked, his voice hinting at his tiredness.

“Purple, like the Alderaanian lavender that Bail keeps in his garden.”

“Hmm. Didn’t even know you dyed it until now. Smells like the stuff Gregor used on Rex one time to make his hair blue as a prank ….” He lifted his hand from her shoulder up to her head, where his fingers combed through her hair. “That purple sounds nice. Hope to see it one day.”

“I’m sure there are pictures of me from my Senator days on the Holonet.”

“Maybe, but I want to see it in person.”

“Get to ousting Palpatine and dismantling the Empire then.”

“Yes ma’am.” Wolffe pressed his lips to her hairline.

They were quiet for a few minutes, laying still, listening to the rain fall outside, and content to be with each other. Riyo’s hand rested on his chest close to her face, his skin warm under her touch and right above where she imagined his heart would be. She could hear his heartbeat, a dull thud in her ears. It took most of her willpower to not drift off to sleep, because she didn’t want to miss a single moment with him.

“When do you need to go back?” she asked.

“Soon as I hear from Rex. Could be in an hour, could be tomorrow, could be in a few months.”

She responded by nuzzling into him deeper, holding him tighter.

“But I’ve been thinking, I might not go back at all. Not if you want me to stay. I can watch out for you as you do your work.”

Riyo shot up, propping herself up on one arm and looking him dead in the eye. “But, Wolffe, your brothers-“

“I can help them from here. Sniff out some useable intelligence. Surely someone on this miserable planet knows where Cody and the rest of them are. Once Bacara’s fighting fit, he’ll be more useful in the field than I ever was.”

“You’re a good soldier, Wolffe,” Riyo reminded him.

“Not as good as I was before,” he retorted, gnawing on his lip.

She glanced up to the side of his head, at the dark curls that hid a scar marking where his inhibitor chip had been removed. She knew all about it, how the events of that day affected him, and there was no need to reopen old wounds. Maybe reducing the risk of him having to revisit Cato Neimoidia would be best for him.

Yet as much as she liked the idea of him staying on Coruscant with her, her mind only filled with reasons why he couldn’t. It was too dangerous, he was needed elsewhere, Ahsoka and Rex would never go for it-

“Riyo,” Wolffe said, snapping her back to the present. He looked at her with such tenderness and adoration, she couldn’t imagine denying him anything.

“Ask me to stay, and I will.”

Riyo leaned in to kiss him. She felt his lips chasing after hers as she pulled away, and when she rested her forehead against his he caught the corner of her mouth.

“Will you stay here, with me?” she asked, her hand resting against his face. Her thumb traced along his scar.

Wolffe brought a hand up to the nape of her neck, and the other rested between her shoulder blades on her back. He closed the distance between their mouths in another kiss.

“I will.”

#does the ship have a name idk #been calling it Wolffiyo in my head because I'm not creative #commander wolffe x riyo chuchi #riyo chuchi #commander wolffe #clone wars #star wars #my writing

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not-close-to-straight · 4 years

Text

Hexes and Honeysuckle (Final)

The ultra fluffy end to our magic verse!

Enjoy!

MASTERLIST HERE

******************

“Holy crap, I’m human.” Tony held up his hand again and flexed his fingers, smoothed his palms down over his thankfully fur-less chest and sides. “Bucky, we did it. I’m human.”

“You’re also naked.” the witch pointed out and Tony waved him off with a casual, “Oh don’t worry about that, I’m basically naked all the time anyway. Who needs clothes?”

“You do!” Tony oophed when a towel splatted over his face. “Cover up, Tony! You don’t have fur anymore!”

“I know.” Tony spread his legs and wriggled a little bit and Bucky made a strangled, squawking sound. “Don’t be such a prude, you’ve seen me naked before it was just in cat form. This isn’t very different.” and then with a sly glance towards the witch, “Well I mean, there’s like seven inches worth of something different, but who’s counting?”

Bucky just looked at him and Tony finally rolled his eyes and spread the towel over his lap. “Better?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Bucky inhaled sort of shakily. “So um-- what does this mean, Tony? What does this--” he motioned to the other witch. “--what happened? You learned your lesson? Your hex ran out, what is it?”

“I learned my lesson.” Tony touched gingerly along a faint scratch of scars on his chest. “Humility and empathy and you know, the only thing stronger than a witch’s curse is a witch’s love, right?”

“Humility.” Bucky repeated. “And empathy and--and love?”

“Humility cos I realized I couldn’t do everything alone.” Tony counted off on his fingers-- he had fingers! He had never loved fingernails and knuckles so much!-- “I couldn’t do normal day to day things alone, much less save you. Empathy cos being with you is the first time it occurred to me that maybe the universe doesn’t revolve around my whims and that my actions affect other people just like they affect me. I get it. I was self centered and terrible and now I’m only mildly self centered and quite a bit less terrible.”

“That’s why you were a cat.” Bucky said flatly. “That’s it right there. Cos you think the sun rises and falls based on your wishes.”

“It’s exactly why I was a cat.” Tony agreed with a quick nod. “And um-- love. I think even if I hadn’t learned my lessons the hex would still break since you love me and everything.”

“... if you hadn’t learned your lesson I definitely wouldn’t love you.” Bucky retorted, and Tony was quick to point out, “But you aren’t denying you love me?”

“I--” Bucky paused, scratched awkwardly at his chin. “-- I care a lot about you, Tony. But you were a cat. I cleaned up your hairballs and had to pick fox tails from your fur and threw shoes at you at god awful hours of the morning when you had the zoomies.”

“Which is clearly true love!” Tony exclaimed, and clapped his hands. “You do love me!”

“Tony.”

“I know it’s weird.” the witch finally sobered, finally quit teasing long enough to be honest again. “I know it is. I was a cat and now I’m not, we were really starting to get along in both dream world and waking and now I’m not cursed to familiar anymore. It’s weird and that sort of sucks but before you decide whether or not this whole experiment is over and send me away, could we just--”

“I’m not sending you away.” Bucky interrupted. “Why would you think that? Do you want to leave me?”

“No!” Tony nearly shouted, hands out stretched. “No! I don’t want to leave you and I don’t want you to send me away and--whew.” he shook his head. “-- I really do love you, don’t I? Never thought I’d say those things out loud. Bucky listen, things are going to be different after this but it doesn’t have to be all that different, okay? If you’re willing to deal with me as human, then I want to stay.”

Then softer, “Can I stay?”

Bucky was quiet for a few minutes, and Tony waited with a pounding heart for the verdict.

“Do you still want that stupid box or can I throw it out?” the witch finally asked and Tony breathed out a relieved laugh. “And are you going to stop shedding, cos I gotta say that’s my least favorite thing ever.”

“If I wasn’t so happy you aren’t throwing me out, I’d be tempted to bite you.” Tony grinned, all sharp teeth and sharper smiles. “Right there on your ridiculous pecs.”

“I feel like you biting me doesn’t have the same connotation as it used to.” Bucky shuffled his feet and got a little pink cheeked when Tony’s smile only stretched wider. “Please don’t leave, Tony. This is gonna take some adjusting to, but I don’t want to be without you anymore.”

“That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” Tony whispered gratefully, honestly. “Can I kiss you?”

“Don’t know if I’m ready to be kissed by my former cat.” Bucky said bluntly, but not unkindly. “Can we work up to that? Cos I wasn’t opposed to kissing dream you but…”

“We’ll work up to it.” Tony scooted back on the bed and patted the spot next to him, biting at his lip anxiously to ask, “Will you come lay by me? Sleep next to me? Is that okay?”

“Hell yeah, that’s okay.”

They fit together perfectly, legs tangling and chests brushing with every breath, Tony’s head tucked under Bucky’s chin and both arms wound tight around the witch’s waist.

“This is so much better when you don’t have a tail to twitch in my face when you need attention.” Bucky mumbled and Tony sassed, “Don’t worry, I still have something to twitch in your face when I want attention!” and the bed shook with their combined laughter.

Then Bucky lay a very soft, very gentle kiss on Tony’s forehead and combed his fingers through the thick hair, smiling when Tony immediately snuggled closer and purred up against his throat.

“That’s so sweet.” he whispered. “Don’t ever stop purring for me. Don’t care if you’re human now or not.”

“Kay.” Tony budged in as tight as he could go and closed his eyes tight, exhaling years worth of worry and stress and choking fear and inhaling Bucky’s sweet honeysuckle scent and letting it warm him from the inside out.

Perfect.

But then-- “ACHOO!” he sneezed and Bucky cursed and flailed away, a hand to his heart and eyes wide.

“Okay.” Tony sniffed at him. “Don’t need to be that dramatic about it.”

“Oh my god, your sneezes were so much cuter when you were a cat.”

“Well now you’re just being rude.”

*************

Epilogue

Bucky nodded to a witch who smiled a hello as they passed, held up his left hand and waved when someone else called to him from across the market square.

It had been a whole month now since Tony had created him a new arm in brilliant silver and bold copper, the pieces connecting and fitting up over his shoulder to frame the red star from Lehigh.

The arm was beautiful, a gift of love, pure effort and affection on Tony’s part, born of a wholehearted wish to help, to make Bucky’s life easier, to reinforce what Tony had told him that last, awful nightmare with the Hydra-- “You aren’t broken, just hurt.”

And these days Bucky didn’t feel broken, not with two working hands and a skill in magic that was growing by leaps and bounds every day thanks to the daily insight Tony offered since his full powers had been restored.

Magic linked to love always shown brighter anyway, and every day the spells were easier, the more complicated incantations more natural and now Bucky walked tall and proud through the town, chin up and eyes sparking and a smile curving the corner of his lips because he was finally fulfilled, finally happy, finally--

“Why are you smiling still, that person is long gone.” The witch got a tail across his face for his lingering grin, and Bucky sputtered a few times and knocked it away. “I’m just saying you look weird walking around smiling all the time. Witches are supposed to have some mystique and no one who grins like a goofy goober has any mystique.”

“Thanks for that.” Bucky batted Tony’s tail out of the way again. “By the way? It’s cool you figured out how to shape shift and can go back and forth to cat as you please but would it kill you to get off my shoulders and walk a little bit? You have beans again, use them for something useful!”

“After some very serious thought, I’ve decided I only want to be human when we’re in bed.” Tony stretched out lazily, settling himself more firmly across Bucky’s broad shoulders. “Unless we’re kissing or losing clothes, I’d much rather be in this form, resting my beans. They’re so delicate, you know.”

“You only want to be in cat form so I have to feed you, brush you and carry you places.” Bucky complained. “You are the worst witch and familiar in the world.”

Tony only grinned cat-sharp and purred in Bucky’s ear and by the time they passed Magic and Magnolias, they were laughing together.

“Do you hear that, darling?” Pepper nudged Natasha as the pair passed. “That sounds to me like a match well achieved, don’t you think?”

“I’d say so.” Natasha agreed. “And since Tony’s magic has apparently shifted enough to allow him to retain some of the familiar form and spirit, their bond won’t dissolve as we feared. An excellent match, but now we need a new project. Who should we shift our attentions to next?”

“I think Samuel.” Pepper handed her wife a thin file folder. “He is so drawn to the avian familiars and after losing Red Wing two summers ago, he’s never quite recovered. And Clint is avian you know, he keeps getting rejected because the witches complain he shifts between Hawk familiar and awkwardly winged human at abrupt and inopportune times.”

“Samuel would pluck Clint’s feathers if the bird tried to scare him that way.” Natasha said slowly, then nodded. “Yes. An ideal match, they will balance each other nicely. Who else?”

“Steven is in desperate need of a familiar as well.” Pepper pulled another folder free from her stack. “He’s had several but none have fit him quite correctly. Do you suppose Thor…”

“Thor.” Natasha repeated blankly. “The full size lion familiar that stands at Steven’s chin when fully shifted? Pep, Thor would sneeze and knock Steven away, we need someone delicate, better suited to Steven’s size.”

“No.” Pepper made up her mind and shook her head. “No, you won our argument with Tony and Bucky, I’d very much like to see Thor and Steven together. Thor needs to learn a lesson about his ego and Steven needs to learn to bring down some of his defenses. They are perfect.”

“What about Wade?” Natasha mused. “Ever since his accident and the damage to his form he’s refused a witch, even goes out of his way to spite them.”

“Until Wade learns to manage his rage and violence, I don’t think it’s safe to put him with anyone, my love.”

“Peter has been five years a witch and has never had a familiar.” Natasha mused, holding up the two pictures and studying the pair. “His stubbornness and morals are equally as resolute as Wade’s violence, plus there isn’t a creature alive who could resist those soft eyes. He would balance Wade beautifully.”

“Natasha no.”

“Alright.” the witch pushed those folders to the side. “We’ll let them be…. For now...”

**************

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