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aanoia · 11 months

Text

Crazy

Kaz Brekker x reader

Summary; the enemy of your enemy is your friend... unless they are also your enemy

Warnings; blood?, knives, uhhhh violence lmfao, enemies to lovers

Words; 2,000+

This didn't end the way I wanted it to but that's okay

The inspo was from the song Trouble by Valerie Broussard

I'm prolly gonna make a pt. 2 bc im cool

Btw,, when introducing the Night Scarlets, each member will have their code name like this, name (code name)

We wear red so they don’t see us bleed

Kaz Brekker hated many, many people. However, there was one group, in particular their leader, that he hated most. The Night Scarlets. Or the Cardinal, their leader. She has been after Kaz since he joined the business. She and her girls have stolen countless of missions right from under his nose, always having his Crows do the work then swooping in and taking over. She infuriated her.

Hundred dollar bills under our sleeve

We intend not to sleep ‘til we’re dead

The thing Kaz never understood was how. How did she know everything he had planned? He had thought it was spies at first, possibly he had a rat in his nest. But no. Even when he went on solo missions. The Cardinal would always know.

Drink our problems right out of our heads

Singing oh, oh-oh-oh, oh

Trouble

(Trouble)

Singing oh, oh-oh-oh, oh

Here comes trouble

(Trouble)

“Now, not a word to a single soul about this mission. Hear me?” Kaz asked lowly to his Crows. “If the Night Scarlets find out about this and ambush us I will take each of your hands and shove them down your throats. Am I understood?” The Crows nodded nervously.

“Kaz.” Inej started. “You do know we’ve never said anything before, right? I don’t know how but they always find out, whether we talk or not. She always knows.”

Kaz sighed, “I know.” He answered shortly, turning to look out the window.

Dangerously havin’ the time of our lives

These boys are just poisonous thorns in our sides

“So what do we do about them? I mean, I love the ladies, don’t get me wrong. But these ones gotta go.” Jesper said, toying with his new gun he had just stolen.

“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do, Jesper. They’re practically non existent when they aren’t in action.” Nina responded.

“I mean, there has to be a way to catch them. No one can be completely invisible forever.” Wylan said, his brain running through thousands of possibilities. “Maybe we can set a trap for them?”

Matthias snorted, “They’ll turn that into a trap against us. Bad idea.”

“Well, we need to do something. I need money!” Jesper argued.

“You don’t need it, you’re just going to gamble it all!” Wylan said, raising his voice slightly.

Starting fires wherever we go

Watching ‘em gamble everything they own

The group stopped arguing as the sound of glass breaking filled the room. KAz swung his cane one more time and a strangled bird cry came out. He stuck his hand out the broken window and grabbed the bird. Throwing it onto the table in anger.

“A cardinal.” Inej whispered.

Kaz slammed his hand down on the table, “She knows! She knows! How does she always know!” He yelled, picking up a glass and throwing it all the wall, causing Nina to flinch and Jesper instinctively step closer to Wylan. Kaz looked up with death in his eyes. “Change of plans. We’re killing the Cardinal. No matter the cost.

Singing oh, oh-oh-oh, oh

Trouble

(Trouble)

“Ready girls?” Y/n whispered into the small, barely workable communication device that her Fabrikator, Aisha (Raven), had been working on for months.

“Yeah.” Luna (Eagle) whispered back.

“Ready, C.” Patty (Hawk) responded.

“Steph?” Y/n asked as she pulled her dark red hood over her head.

A few grunts were heard before Stephanie's ( voice filled their ears, “Yep, ready boss.”

Y/n smiled as she began to climb down the walls of the building to the top window, careful to stay out of the Wraiths' sight. “Great. Let’s commit some crimes. Shall we?”

Stephanie giggles, the clicking of her guns being prominent. “Oh, we shall. Ooo, my fellow sharpshooter, my favorite.”

The line went quiet as Y/n carefully crawled through the opened window, landing silently in the office. She walked briskly to the desk, quietly rummaging through the drawers. She let out a gasp as her arm was pulled back and a familiar cane wrapped around her neck, causing her back to be flush against someone's chest.

Trouble coming in the dead of night

Trouble making everything alright

“Looking for something?” Kaz said quietly into her ear, proud as to finally catch the Cardinal.

Y/n sighed with a smirk, “Yes. I am.” She said before kicking out his leg, being sure to not hit his bad one. He grunted and took a step back, keeping the cane around her throat. She took the chance to duck out of the way and push him back against the wall, raising her dagger in between the two.

“Y’know, I was very offended to find out you killed my bird.” Y/n said, her hood shielding her eyes.

“Should’ve told it to stay away. The Crow is stronger than the Cardinal after all.”

Y/n laughed, “Oh, Kaz. You should know by now strength is not the most valuable trait of this lifestyle. It’s intelligence-” Kaz’s eyes widened.

“In which I’d have the upperhand on both of you.” A new voice said as two arms knocked the dagger from Y/n’s hands, bringing them behind her back and ripping the hood from her head. Kaz stared at her as people grabbed him as well. He had never truly seen the Cardinal without her hood, and he hated to admit how her face made his heart stutter,

It’s in your blood

It’s in your bones

You cannot sleep for

The two hostages were dragged down the stairs to see their fellow partners bound in ropes. They pushed the two down on their knees next to each other, causing Kaz to let out a grunt as his leg bent weird. Y/n sighed, disappointed in her lack to see the real trap behind Kaz’s.

“Well, well, well. Look what I have found.” Pekka said with a disgusting smile, looking at each of the criminals tied up. “A bunch of little thieves who think they are so smart.” Pekka continued on his speech as Y/n struggled with her binds. If only she could reach her ear.

“Kaz.” She whispered quietly, careful to not let the boasting man hear.

“What?” He hissed angrily.

She sighed again, “I need you to kiss my ear.”

Kaz almost looked like he was going to hurl, causing the girl to roll her eyes.

“What the fuck? No way.” He whispered back.

Whoa, oh

Tro-tro-trouble, trouble

“Do you want to get out of this?”

“How will kissing your ear help?”

“Just do it, for Saint’s sake!”

“Hey! Quiet, little bird.” Pekka said, walking over and caressing the girl's face with her own blade. She looked at him in disgust and spit in his face, causing everyone's eyes to widen. Pekka calmly wiped the spit from his face before angrily sliding the dagger against her cheek, slicing her skin.

Y/n smiled at him, “Red is my favorite color, you know?”

Pekka glared at her in anger, “Useless slut.” He said before walking back to his men, pulling them into a circle and talking quietly.

“Now!” She whispered to Kaz who reluctantly brought his lips to her ear, ignoring the water pooling around his knees. His lips met a piece of cold metal and he pulled back, actually looking into her ear to see a weird device.

“What is that?” He questioned, eyebrows raised.

Y/n ignored him, “Raven, are you there?” She whispered to nothing, before a relieved smile came across her face. “Emergency. Help. Now.”

Woah, oh

Here comes trouble, trouble

After a few moments the door of the house burst open, letting in birds of all different kinds, all flocking around and clawing at anything they could get their claws on, Pekka and his men included and targeted.

“Hey, Cardinal.” A voice whispered from behind the girl as she cut her restraints.

“Raven, good timing.” Y/n responded with a smile, taking the dagger Aisha handed her. “Free the other Scarlets. Leave the Crows for now.”

“No, you let us go. I helped you.” Kaz protested as a few of Pekkas men ran out of the house.

“No can do, Brekker.” Y/n said before pulling her hood back up and going to fight off the men that weren’t scared by the birds.

After a few moments a disgruntled, furious yell broke out, “I will get you and kill you all!” Pekka screamed as he ran from the house, scratches littering his skin.

Y/n whistled to the birds, causing them all to stop and fly out the door, their duty finally fulfilled. Her Scarlets stood beside her as she studied the Crows, still tied up and on the floor, a few adorning bird scratches.

“Free them.” She demanded her girls, who broke out in protest. She raised her hand and they silenced. “They will not kill us. They need us, as we need them.” She addressed their concerns and they reluctantly cut the ropes binding their hands. Immediately Inej stood and got into a fighting stance. Her fellow Crows followed after, other than Kaz, who simply lifted his hand to tell them to be calm.

“We need you, do we?” He asked, taking a step towards the Cardinal.

“Yes, as do we, you. Pekka Rollins is, obviously, after us both. We are small groups. Six in yours, five in mine. Rollins has dozens of Dime Lions. It is simply impossible for one of us alone to take him down. You know that, hence why you didn’t let your Crows attack. Isn’t that correct?”

“Unfortunately it is. We shall work together.” Every bird in the room protested. “Until Pekka is down.”

Y/n smiled and held out her hand, “And then you can go back to getting bested by the Night Scarlets.

“I’m not planning on it.” He said, not raising his hand, and Y/n, ever so observant, had noticed his touch aversion ages ago.

“Air shake.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“It’s not a deal unless we shake on it.”

“No.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“No.”

“You don’t have weapons.”

“No.”

“I’m smarter than you.”

“No.”

“I’m cooler than you.” Everyone laughed, even Kaz had let a small, smug smirk fall upon his lips.

“You aren’t.” He said, pretending to shake the girl's hand without touching it.

There are dogs on the loose, there are snakes in the desert (in the desert)

I’m that knife in your boot, girl, I got ya (Girl, I got ya)

I’m your number two man in a fight (In a fight)

“And then, we win. Easy peasy.” Y/n said, finishing explaining the plan to the now group of nine.

“Easy peasy my ass.” Jesper mumbled.

“Language, Jes. A kruge.” Y/n smiled triumphantly as Jesper rolled his eyes and handed the girl a kruge. In the three months the two groups had been working together they had become quite close.

“Oh, yeah. I’m so ready for this. We’re so gonna win.” Patty said with a large smile, her arm linked with Nina’s who nodded along.

Y/n laughed slightly, “We will. Now go. Get rest. You’ll need it. We have a big day tomorrow.”

We are revolutionaries tonight

Singing oh, oh-oh-oh, oh

Trouble

(Trouble)

The office emptied, leaving the Crow and Cardinal. Kaz stared at the map, thinking hard.

“Kaz, what’s on your mind?” Y/n asked, placing her hand next to his to provide comfort without actually touching him.

“We can’t do it. We aren’t strong enough.” He muttered and Y/n laughed. Kaz looked at her in annoyance.

“Kaz. We are just about the strongest lot Kerch has seen. We’ve got this. We’re the coolest bunch in Ketterdam.”

Kaz shook his head with a smile he only let out around her. A genuine, happy smile. “Yes, we’re so cool. Do cool people always talk about how cool they are, though?”

Y/n nodded, “Obviously. Have you met me?” She asked with a teasing smile.

“Unfortunately, I have.”

Trouble coming in the dead of night

Trouble making everythin’ alright

Y/n put her hand over her heart with a gasp. “I’m hurt. You, Kaz R. Brekker, have wounded me right in the heart.” He smiled at the use of his real last names initial, something she had always done once she learned his last name was truly Rietveld.

It’s in your blood

It’s in your bones

You cannot sleep for

“Oh no, Kaz, I'm Feeling light headed.” Y/n said, stumbling back towards the bed. She fell once the back of her calves hit the bed frame. “I see the light!” She said, reaching her arm up towards the sky. “Oh, it’s getting brighter! Kaz! It’s getting brighter!” She portrayed blood spurting from her chest, before spasming and falling limp, her tongue hanging from her mouth.

She failed to hide her smile as Kaz’s oh so beautiful laugh filled the air. It was like music to her ears. Compared to most people, Y/n got through Kaz’s walls rather quickly, which surprised everyone, including Kaz himself. She had provided him a safe space, free from the water and cold skin and lifeless eyes.

Y/n continued to play dead even after the laughter stopped, not failing to hear the footsteps nearing the bed, causing her heart to speed up. In just a moment, a soft hand gripped hers and pulled her body up as Kaz pulled her into a hug.

“Thank you.” He whispered, before quickly pulling away before the water rose above his head.

Heat creeped up Y/n’s neck, “For?”

“Making me look cooler by your loserness.” He simply said before walking out, pretending nothing happened.

Y/n smiled to herself, falling back onto the bed, a dreamy sigh falling from her lips. She kicked the air while giggling in excitement. Oh, how whipped the Cardinal was for the Crow.

Crazy.

Woah, oh

Here comes trouble, trouble

#aanoia #romance #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker x you #kaz brekker imagine #inej gahfas #six of crows #six of crows x reader #crooked kingdom #shadow and bone #leigh bargudo #kazzle dazzle #Spotify

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revasserium · 1 year

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Can you do #154 with Hoshiumi or Bokuto ❤️🥺

send me a prompt and a character, and i'll write you a drabble (or ukno, like a 2k fuckin fic)

154. Leap into my arms @thisbicc

diving into the wreck

bokuto; 1,815 words; angst in the beginning, but its honestly more hurt/comfort, and the ending is fluffy ;) ish.

he is a volcano, he is a thunderstorm — he is every natural disaster poets have ever tried to tame with language and still, the truth remains — bokuto koutarou is a force of nature. but the thing about natural disasters is that they end. they pass and, like shooting stars, all that remains is the wreckage they’ve left behind, the imprint of light across a moonless night.

“losing isn’t everything, y’know.”

you run a hand down the curved planes of his back, trying to sooth the tantrum building just beneath the surface.

“it is! and you know it is! you just — you just don’t know how it feels! you don’t know anything!”

the words seep through the house, oozing blood like an open wound, soaking the carpets and weighing down the curtains, staining them till neither of you are sure what color they used to be when you first got them.

(”look! look! these are on sale! and they’re the design i like!” “ah, well if they’re the design you like, then i guess we gotta get ‘em, huh?” “oh shut up, you big goofball.”)

you pull back your hand and sigh.

“you’re right… i don’t know how it feels to lose like you do but —” you bite down hard on your lips, swallowing down the words —

i know how it feels to lose you.

he looks up, his expression desperate. he wants to reach out, to pull you close to say no, i didn’t mean that or no, i’m sorry, let’s get some icream or some popcorn or some new damn curtains but he looks away instead.

(”how do you jump so high?” “huh? me? oh… uh… well, i mean… i just kinda do it… i guess.” “but… aren’t you afraid you’re gonna fall and hurt yourself?” “nah. like, the floor’s not goin’ anywhere, y’know?”)

“bokuto… i — i think i’m gonna go stay with a friend for a while.”

bokuto feels the world press in, the walls inching towards him, the ceiling pressing down. he wants to curl in on himself till there’s nothing left, he wants to crush you to him, to hold you so tightly you become a part of him but his body won’t move. his lips are still. and there’s a part of him that wonders if he does this to himself just so he’ll have something to fight for.

because the truth is — he doesn’t know how else to love you.

he doesn’t know how else to love but like this — with no training wheels, with his eyes closed and fists clenched and wild hope pounding in his heart. and he knows he’s not good at this — he’s never been all too good at this but he never thought it would hurt — he never knew that the floor could disappear from beneath his feet and that sometimes, just sometimes, you really should look before you leap but…

“for… for how long?” he asks.

“i… i’m not sure yet but… i think —” you take a breath like gasping for air in a vacuum-sealed space, “i think it’d be good for us,” another heaving breath.

“some time… apart.”

bokuto feels the air leave the room like a scolded child, slipping away through the opened doorway, disappearing into the darkness of the hall. he tries to breathe and finds that he doesn’t quite remember how.

(”so… its like a trust exercise. with the floor.” “w-wha?? you still talkin’ about jumping?” “yeah! like… in order to jump that high, you gotta trust that the floor will be there to catch you, right?��)

“okay.”

the word burns through him, a comet with a too-long tail, singeing his tongue. it tastes like cinder and smoke and all the words he never had the courage to say out loud.

“okay,” you echo, with a tiny little nod.

he feels the ground beneath him crack and crumble, and for the first time in his life, bokuto is afraid of falling.

“i…” he nearly chokes on the word, but he forces himself to his feet, his fists balled at his sides. like this, he towers over you, like this, he’s a huge, imposing thing, but like this — he feels the smallest he’s ever been.

i’m sorry.

“i love you,” he says, finally. after a long-held breath.

you look up at him with wide, sad eyes and after a moment, you let out a small laugh. it shakes your shoulders and breaks something inside him. because this, at least, he knows to be true. he might not be good at it but he knows that he loves you. he loves you strong, and he loves you hard.

he loves you like a thunderstorm might love a lightning sea, too much salt, and not enough water —

“yeah…” you say, “yeah… i know.”

(”ahh… there’s no fixin’ that, is there?” “what, the dish you broke cause you put it in the dishwasher wrong? nope. don’t think so.” “mm… but what if we keep it anyway?” “aww, you big baby, i always knew you were the sentimental type.”)

you run a hand through your hair, leaning back against the kitchen counter with a deep, heavy sigh.

slowly, the air trickles back into the room.

“let’s go swimming,” he says. and you look up, all sadness gone and replaced by confusion, but bokuto is smiling, a hopeful, indulgent sort of thing.

“what, right now?” you blink at him. he rocks on the balls of his feet.

“yeah. right now.”

for a second, you narrow your eyes, for a second, you wonder what this might be about. but years with bokuto has taught you that there are moments where you don’t ask why or when or how. it is only the who that matters — and it has always been him.

the pool is closed but bokuto manages to find the key tucked in the gym manager’s drawer and you bite back an exasperated sigh as he unlocks the door and lets you both in. there’s a triumphant smile on his lips and you can’t help but laugh. when he cannonballs into the water, whooping out in joy, you stand by the poolside and watch him — and for a second everything is fine. for second, everything is forgotten — all the big fights, all the long nights, all the things neither of you really meant to say — washed away by the chlorine-scented water dripping down the length of his spine.

“c’mon! come in! the water’s great!”

bokuto motions for you to join him, and you only hesitate for a second before pulling off your shirt and slipping into the cool, temperature controlled water. you let yourself sink beneath the surface and you feel the world above you slip away.

you open your eyes to find bokuto there, right in front of you, his eyes just as wide open as yours. his lips are moving, bubbles streaming from his mouth as he speaks but you shake your head, feeling the laughter curling up within you.

“b-bokuto — i can’t hear anything you’re saying!”

you break the surface and reach out to pull him up. but he only shakes his head and drags you under again. you shake your head too, about to break away when you see him mouthing the words —

i’m sorry.

don’t leave me.

you still, and for a moment, you both hang there, suspended by the weight of water, the sheer lack of air. and for once, bokuto is thankful for it.

(”i — i’m not that sentimental! i just… i like holding onto broken things, sometimes.” “bokuto… but… we can just get a new dish —” “no, like… i just think… that it’s worth a try is all.”)

this time, when you break the surface, bokuto comes up with you, gasping for air like a drowning man. he takes you by the arms and shakes you, ever so slightly. water droplets cling to his hair like gemstones, glittering in the refracted blue lights.

“we — we’re not broken,” he says, his voice a bit waterlogged, his chest heaving like some great beached whale, fighting for every breath, for every word.

you purse your lips, a wave of something cresting inside your chest.

he gives you another shake.

“and… and even if we are…” he gulps, “i — i think we’re worth fixing.”

you let out a tiny sob, the hot prickling behind your eyes bursting out in a maelstrom of salt and water and bokuto holds you at arm’s length and lets you cry. he lets you scream and struggle and tell him all the things you’d never have told him otherwise.

he takes it the best he can. he weathers the storm. he waits it out like a patient beach, knowing that eventually, the tide will recede. that eventually, even a hurricane will blow through it’s course.

“i’m sorry,” he says, finally, when you’ve cried yourself out, still hiccupping with his hands on either side of your arms, both your fingers pruning in the water.

“y-you better be.”

bokuto laughs, nodding, finally pulling you in for a kiss.

“i am… and… i’m sorry that i’m so bad at apologizing.”

you let out a watery laugh and make a half-hearted attempt to splash him.

“as long as you don’t make a habit of breaking into the gym pool at midnight just to say sorry.”

“i dunno, it’s kinda nice though, isn’t it?”

“what, a midnight dip? i guess it is…”

for a moment, the both of you are quiet. and you both know this isn’t the end, that there are still words to be said, new curtains to buy, old dishes to mend.

“hey, wanna try something?” bokuto’s voice is hopeful, but as you turn to look at him, you allow yourself another smile. because isn’t this what you fell in love with in the first place? the highs and the lows, the sunlight days and the stormy nights.

“sure, what do you wanna try?”

bokuto points at the diving board hanging over the deep end of the pool with a wide, wayward grin.

you hike your eyebrows.

“c’mon! try it! i’ll catch you!”

trust me.

you hesitate for a moment longer before swimming to the edge and heaving yourself out of the water. bokuto whoops as you walk onto the diving board and look over the edge.

he opens his arms and waits for you.

you take a breath, and —

you jump.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu fanfic #haikyuu drabbles #bokuto koutarou #bokuto koutarou x reader #bokuto koutarou x you #bokuto koutarou imagines #bokuto koutarou scenarios #bokuto koutarou fanfic #haikyuu angst #bokuto angst #angst mcgee #floofy floof floof #haiCUTIES #OKAY OKAY LISTEN LOOK LISTEN L I S T E N #i knOW we all like to think of bokuto as a giant talented goofball but like #his manic-emo modes made me think of how it would extrapolate into a relationship and i mean nOT TOO GREAT is the answer to that but #we're all super flawed and we all say things we dont meant esp in the heat of the moment and i think #bokuto would be ONE OF THOSE PPL but like as his s/o u probably know that too!#and rly its how quickly he picks himself back up that matters the most like... he's learning!! and hes trying!!#and that's what matters!!! Right??#i feel like i keep on writing like... disserations in my tags LOL do yALL EVEN READ THESE. PLS LEAVE A COMMENT/MESSAGE IF U DO

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earlofbats · 2 months

Text

Western Au Furies

From the fic "What it Means to Love a Boiadeiro"

[Wits=Logic] A man's gotta be quick thinking. gotta be throwing together disparate thoughts and ideas to construct solutions and understanding. [Almanac=Encyclopedia] It's what a man knows, facts and information about the things and the world, knowledgeable and well read. [Preachin=Rhetoric] A man should know what's what, should understand the moral condemnation of right and wrong, of sinful and holy natures. [Artsy=Conceptualization] A mans got a poetic soul, a song to sing, a sunset to admire or just a plain ol appreciation of what's pretty. [Theatrics=Drama] Sometimes a mans gotta bend the truth, add a bit of flare or catch people on their bullshit. [Survey=Visual Calculus] A mans gotta get a lay of the land. map out trajectory and distance, know which direction the winds bound to blow.

[Gumption=Volition] A man should strive to be shrewd and keep an even keel. A steady mind and heart against the pains of life. [Lone Frontier=Inland Empire] A man's soul is a vast and lonely landscape he must travel all on his lonesome. [Silver tongue=Suggestion] A man is full of charm and panache and knows how to say the right thing at the right time. [Gravitas=Authority] When a man walks in a room, eyes should be on him, who is he? What will he do? Is he dangerous? A man is meant to be taken seriously. [Kahoots=Esprit de Corps] A man should always be knowing who knows who, its important to discern who's a friendly face and who's a foe. [Heart=Empathy] Sometimes a man is meant to feel, meant to love and meant to cry for his fellow man, to be human.

[Mettle=Endurance] A mans body is iron, it can hold itself upright, it can move even when its bound to fall. After all, it's only a bit further. [Sinew=Physical Instrument] A mans body is made of leather, bone, meat and most of all sinew. [Grit=Pain Threshold] A man is built to take it, the sun, the pain, the dust and the metal blood tang between your teeth, a man is built to let it hurt.

[Vice=Electrochemistry] Everyman has his poisons, whiskey, smokes, gamblin', women, Cardinal pleasures of the flesh that are meant to be indulged. You want em got em.

[Jitters]

[Instinct] Man is no different than an animal, built to survive the wild, built to know when danger is about. When to run, when to kill.

[Sharpshooter=Hand-eye Coordination] If a man carries a gun, he should know how to shoot it. [LookyLoo=Perception] A mans opticals, his peepers, his ability to take in the world around him. [Quickdraw=Reaction Speed] A man faces his foe, face to face, all that matters, is who draws first. [Swagger=Savoir Faire] A mans gait can tell you a lot about who he is, his status, his nature and his worth. [Know-how=Interfacing] Sometimes a mans just gotta fandangle it. [Stoic=Composure] Sometimes a mans gotta hide behind a stern face and a long hard stare just to keep it together.

#disco elysium #harry du bois #kim kitsuragi #harrier du bois #kimharry #harrykim #fic #Western au #cowboy au #cowboy kim #cowboy harry #outlaw harry

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sweaterkittensahoy · 1 month

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Ooh prompts okay - haven't seen this one yet so something on Harry/Bucky, please? I've always watched their interaction in the medical wing with heart eyes - Just thought Croz was really cute all flustered with Bucky like that, and I just think these two would be absolutely adorable.

The thing is, Crosby figures, everyone has a little crush on Bucky. It's not like it's difficult. He's friendly. He's sweet. He's smart. He's very tall and has wide shoulders and huge hands.

"And he sings better than you," Bubbles says.

"That, too," Crosby replies, two sips shy of finishing his third martini. He should not have ordered a third martini. He gets motor-mouthed and horny on his third martini.

"Yeah, I know, you say that every third martini," Bubbles says.

"Am I talking out loud?" Crosby asks.

"Oh, yeah," Bubbles says.

Well, that's no good. Now it's possible Bucky's heard him say that he thinks he's got a crush on him. Because Bucky's sitting across the table and smiling at him.

"Hey, Croz, come here a sec," Bucky says.

"Sure," Crosby replies. He finishes his drink and walks over to Bucky. There's no place to sit.

"Sure there is," Bucky says, leaning back in his chair and patting his lap. "Plenty of room."

"You're a whore," Buck says like he's reading the windspeed outside.

"Me?" Crosby asks.

"No," Buck replies. "Your chair."

"Oh, I should sit," Crosby says and does so right on Bucky's lap. "Oh, hi, Bucky."

"Hey, Croz."

This close, Crosby can smell Bucky's cologne and see his curls coming loose from the Brylcreem.

"Yeah, those little side ones do that," Bucky says. "Smooth 'em back, will you?"

"This is obscene," Buck says. "Bubbles, you wanna get another round?"

"Naw, it's better if I'm here to remember for posterity. Croz gets a little fuzzy after three martinis."

Crosby wants to say he does not--

"You do, too."

But he's combing the little curls over Bucky's ears, and it feels really nice.

"Yeah, it does," Bucky says. One of his hands curls on Crosby's hip, and the other he cups on Crosby's cheek. "Hey, can I give you a kiss?"

"Sure," Crosby replies because why wouldn't he agree.

"I can think of several reasons," Buck says as he comes back from the bar.

"Huh?" Crosby asks, but then Bucky's got his face in both hands and he's kissing him, and it's...

"Did he really try to keep narrating that?" Buck asks, looking at Bubbles.

"Oh, yeah, does it all the time."

Buck glances back at Bucky and Crosby. Crosby's still petting the curls by Bucky's ears, and Bucky's got both hands on Crosby's waist now. "Is he gonna remember this happened?"

"Most of it," Bubbles says. "He gets fuzzy, like I said, but it's not too bad. He might not mention it happened, though, if he decides he embarrassed himself."

Buck shakes his head. "Chances of that?"

"High," Bubbles says, and he and Buck share a grin.

Bucky pulls away from Crosby's mouth and looks at Bubbles. "He gonna think that if he wakes up next to me tomorrow?"

"Honestly? Maybe. You gotta catch him before he thinks too much about it. So...five minutes after he's up?"

Bucky wrinkles his nose. Crosby whispers something in his ear. "Just a second," he says to Crosby, kissing his cheek. "What if I walk up to him whenever I roll out of bed tomorrow and just plant another one on him?"

"That'd work, but he's gonna blush."

Bucky grins. "Oh, he's cute when he blushes."

Buck sighs and slouches against his chair. "You're shameless," he says to Bucky.

"Yeah, and look where it got me," Bucky replies, waving a hand at Crosby. "Lap full of the smartest guy in the room."

Buck glances at Bubbles. "You're going to let him insult you like that?"

Bubbles shrugs. "Not really an insult when it's true."

Buck finally cracks, laughing quietly and leaning over so he and Bubbles can tap bottles. "Good point."

"I am gonna pour this pretty thing into bed," Bucky says, standing up and putting Crosby on his feet. "Don't worry, Bubbles, I won't follow after him."

"I don't really believe you," Bubbles replies.

"That's a good instinct," Buck says.

Bucky waves at them both and holds Crosby close as they walk off.

"Thank goodness," Buck mutters once he and Bubbles are alone at the table. "Bucky's crush was getting ridiculous."

Bubbles laughs. "Told you, the third martini works every time."

#masters of the air #buckycrosby #harry crosby #bubbles payne #bucky egan #buck cleven #prompt #fic

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metalmaul · 1 year

Text

this Christmas season, let's remember the classics

* EDIT: I've thought about it and I feel like I should provide a transcript because this video isn't subtitled (I just ripped it from YouTube,) so apologies for this becoming a Very Long post but it's just the right thing to do. I tried to make it as accurate as possible but there might be some mistakes.

---

Joel: I think it's, uh, kinda hot to be wearing these scarves in here.

Crow: Oh, well, scarves are a must. You can't go caroling without a scarf, you'll catch your death!

Joel: You know, you are like one of those kids I remember in, uh, high school that used to sell the most candy bars for the marching band.

Crow: Haha, yeah.

Tom: President of the swing choir, too.

Crow: Ahaha, thanks Joel Robinson, thanks Tom Servo.

Tom: What a kiss-up, this guy...

Crow: Ah, okay, now, if you'll all look at your sheet music, uh, we can rehearse my new song.

Joel: You wrote a Christmas song?

Crow: Hey, there's no tradition like a new tradition, haha!

Tom: Wait a minute— "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas?"

Crow: Uh, yeah, yeah! Based on my favorite movie, Roadhouse.

Tom: C'mon, what the heck does Patrick Swayze have to do with Christmas?!

Crow: Hey, you keep Christmas in your way, and let me keep it in mine, okay?

Tom: Ugh, jeez...

Joel: C'mon, Servo, it seems like a nice enough sentiment. We can give it a shot.

Crow: Alright, okay, okay, uh: 12:8 time, key of A flat major— and, Cambot, shoot 'em the tune!

[instrumental melody begins briefly & ends]

Crow: Okay, you'll just have to stay with me, everybody, okay?

[Tom singing along with the melody]

Crow: All your parts are written out. "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas" by Crow T. Robot.

Joel: "All: 'Let's Have a Patrick—'

Joel & Tom: '—Swayze Christmas...?'"

Crow: Right. Hit it, Cambot!

[instrumental melody begins again]

Tom: Oh! Oh, I start! I get it.

Crow: Yeah, I'm sorry...

Tom: Okay, pick it up. Uh, mm...

[singing begins]

Tom: Open up your heart and let the Patrick Swayze Christmas in. /

Crow: We'll gather at the Roadhouse with our next of kin. /

Joel: And Santa can be our regular Saturday night "thing..." /

Crow, Joel, & Tom: We'll decorate a barstool and gather 'round and sing. /

Tom: Oh! Let's have a Patrick Swayze Christmas this year, /

Crow: Or we'll tear your throat out and kick you in the ear! /

[singing stops]

Joel: Oh, oh, hold it a second, Cambot stop it.

[music stops]

Joel: Uh, Crow, I don't know if I think this is an appropriate sentiment anymore for Christmas.

Crow: Hey, like a good action sequence don't belong at Christmas?

Joel: W-well, no, it's just that I've never heard of a action sequence in a Christmas carol before.

Crow: Well then, grab hold to your socks and read on, Joel Robinson!

Joel & Tom: Okay.

Tom: Pick it up from measure 20, Cambot.

[instrumental melody begins again]

Tom: Lovely intro, very tasteful.

Crow: Thank you.

Tom: I like that...

[singing begins again]

Tom: It's my way or the highway this Christmas at my ba-a-ar. /

Crow: I'll have to smash your kneecaps if you bastards touch my car. /

Joel: I got the word that Santa has been stealing from the till, /

Crow & Tom: I think that that right-jolly-old-elf better make out his will! /

Joel & Tom: Oh, /

Crow, Joel, & Tom: Let's have a Patrick Swayze Christmas, one and all! And this can be the haziest, /

[instrumental flourish]

Tom: Oooooo~ Haha.

Crow, Joel, & Tom: This can be the laziest, /

[instrumental flourish]

Crow, Joel, & Tom: This can be the Swayziest Christmas of them all! /

Tom: La, la, la, la, la, la, la, ha-ha~ /

[song ends]

Crow: How long before it becomes a standard?

Joel: I think you gotta come with me, c'mon.

Crow: Aaaaaaaahhh!!!

Tom: Ugh, we'll be right back, heh. Save a leg for me! Heheheheh...

[MST3K theme music plays]

#mst3k #mystery science theater 3000

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mysteryshoptls · 1 year

Text

SR Kalim Al-Asim Beastly Garb Personal Story: Part 1

"No can do!"

Part 1 (Part 2)

[Sunset Savanna – Sunset Villa]

Kalim: Aaah! Breakfast was so goood!

Lilia: I agree. The food from the street stalls sure were tasty, but a grand breakfast from a high-class hotel is also excellent.

Kalim: It's all thanks to Leona that I get to have fun and eat the same stuff as you guys.

Lilia: Alright, we still have a ton of time until the Catch the Tail tournament starts. What should we do?

Kalim: Then, let's head out to town! We gotta celebrate Tamashina-Mina in style!

Lilia: Yes, let's do that!

Jamil: So this is the Sunset Villa, where Kalim is staying.

Jamil: I'm sure he's still asleep. I should wake him up as soon as I can.

Jamil: Hey, Kalim. Time to wake up. I'll go over the plans for the day. First, we'll go pay our respects to the royal family…

Jamil: …

Jamil: KALIM'S NOT IN THE ROOM!! WH-WHERE DID HE GO!?

[Sunset Savanna – Market]

Kalim: Oooh, there's a huge crowd here today, too. Everyone looks like they're having sooo much fun. Oh, I love festivals so much!

Kalim: Ah! Look, there's some people playing some instruments over there!

Lilia: You're right. Street-side musical performances like this are quite charming.

Lilia: When I last came to this country, there were people singing and dancing to music in the streets, too.

Lilia: The people of this nation enjoy music in many aspects of their everyday lives. What a lovely culture of people.

Kalim: Oh, I know! Hey, what if we ask to play with 'em?

Lilia: Great idea! We can show them what the Pop Music Club can do.

Kalim: Heeey! We wanna join you guys!

Townperson A: Yeah, sure, you're totally welcome to! Pick whatever instrument you'd like.

Kalim: Awesome. Thanks!

Kalim: Ummm… Which one should I choose? There's so many instruments here I've never seen before.

Lilia: These are all traditional instruments from the Sunset Savanna. …Oh! I've played this flute before.

Kalim: I think I could pick it up easily if it's some kind of drum. I play percussion all the time back in the Scalding Sands.

Kalim: Alright, let's play!

[playing ♪]

Townperson B: Hey, you guys are pretty good! I dig it!

Kalim: Really? All your singing and dancing's super awesome too!

Townperson A: Thanks, man!

Kalim: Heheheh, this is sooo fun!

Kalim: It woulda been great if Cater was here so we'd have the whole band together. That woulda been so much more fun.

Lilia: Agreed. We have to have fun for his sake too! And we'll tell him this story when we get back ♪

Kalim: Yeah! Let's go, Lilia!!

[playing ♪]

Kalim: Let's go! Everyone dance!

Townperson A: Thanks to your performances, so many more people are joining in!

Lilia: Woah, I didn't even notice that we're completely surrounded by a ton of the city folk. The Pop Music Club's free performance grand tour is a huge success!

Lilia: Kufufu. Even in a foreign country, we were able to show everyone exactly what we're capable of.

Townperson B: Tamashina-Mina is rain festival. It's said that the more energy thrown into it, the more rain we'll get.

Kalim: Oookay. Then we gotta go even more all out!

Townperson A: Thanks. This fruit is for you. Take it.

Kalim: Thanks! I'll bring it safely back home with me.

Townperson B: I'll give you this accessory too. I handmade this!

Townperson C: You should take one of the ornaments I have at my store, too. Take it as a memento of our fun performance together.

Kalim: Thanks so much for everything! Ahahah! Man, I really love festivals!

[Sunset Savanna – Arena]

Scalding Sands Staff Member: DID YOU FIND HIM OVER THERE――!!??

Jamil: HE'S NOT HERE――!!!

Jamil: This is bad… The Catch the Tail tournament is going to start soon.

Jamil: Kalim has to watch the competition from the VIP seats, so where did he go…!?

Referee: We'll now begin the first bout of the first match of the first round!

Referee: First competitor of the Night Raven College Team! Please step onto the arena!

???: YEAH!

Jamil: That voice, there's no way…

Jamil: K-KALIMMMM!?

Part 1 (Part 2)

Requested by @mister-jedblack.

#twisted wonderland #twst #kalim al-asim #lilia vanrouge #jamil viper #twst kalim #twst lilia #twst jamil #twst translation #twst tamashina mina #mention: leona #mention: cater

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aconflagrationofmyown · 1 year

Text

A Whole Man is Hard to Find - chapter 12

An Elvis Presley Fanfic AU

I posted the AO3 link before and thought why not plop the chapter here as well. Much love ♥️

“Now, now hear me out, it’s a sensible plan but it’s got a major catch.” Elvis mumbled into Bean’s withers and got a derisive snort from his horse in return, “Nah, don’t call me a coward boyo, I’m just sayin Nevada Territory is a long ways away, Lord knows what’s even out there. What if there’s no water, huh? What would you do then?” Beans just nuzzled his leg with his impossibly soft muzzle, “Yeah, you’d look to me to get ya water but I’m not the Almighty, I can’t make something outta nothin, and then you’d die on me like er’ybody else, yes you would, don’t argue the point, you would. These are the things ya gotta think of before ridin into the sunset like you suggested. Sunsets can fry ya up, ya do know?”

Beans stretched his magnificent self lazily as he laid on his side, hoofs kicking out and shuffling round the hay they were both sat in. Every time his horse nearly drifted off to sleep he’d startle awake as if Captain Presley’s constant, four hour long monologue of romantic, spiritual and monetary woes intrigued him too much to snooze through. Or maybe it was the way the Captain’s hand would stall in its petting when he really got himself worked up recounting one betrayal or another. Either way, Beans would then shake his mighty neck in Elvis’ lap until Elvis remembered what was truly important in life and went back to braiding his mane.

“I know, I know I keep you shut up in here all the time and death in the great big desert sounds nicer than another day here, I know, I know and I’m sorry. I’m rather shit at taking care of anybody, aren’t I? Keep ‘em alive and fed but are they happy? Hell no, don’t know a single happy person or horsey in my acquaintance. Would you be happy in the desert Beans, hmm?”

Elvis let his head fall back against the rough wooden post he had his back against. He heard shuffling in the adjoining compartment next to the stables, in the boiler room, and in a few minutes voices raised.

Hymn sing. Had to be dawn by now.

His right leg was numb where Beans rested the weight of his neck, his mouth was dry as dust and his hands shook with chill, but he felt sober, rational, as much as he ever was which had always been a matter of contention with folks -was Elvis Presley naturally mad? Beans said he was, Beans said it was nothing to take to heart either. Beans understood him, except about the logistics of eloping with nothing but a horse and the shirt on your back. Beans was an idealist who didn’t think about where hay and water and the next brushing down would come from. Beans had never had to go in and apologize to a lying woman for being cruel to her. Beans didn’t know what it was like to love somebody ya didn’t really know.

Elvis ignored the pins and needles in his leg and gave himself five more minutes on the stable floor. Besides, he wasn’t finished with the braiding and you can’t leave a pretty fella like Beans half undone.

Five minutes turned to ten and he wondered idly if now that his pulse no longer ricocheted in his skull that perhaps he might catch a wink of sleep.

The swish swish of a skirt displacing hay caught his ear and he opened his eyes, raising his head to find Sister Rosetta approaching gingerly through the hay and dung, moderating her usual commanding gait as she picked a path across the stables, balancing a jug and greasy brown bag such as confectioners used.

“You sweet woman.” he murmured as he spied her goodies and she startled a little at him being awake, then smiled in gratification at the clear eyed greeting he gave her.

“How are you feeling, Captain?” she asked, gently kneeling down at Bean’s head and reaching for his shoulder.

“Lil better.” he assured her but his voice sounded like a croak.

“Did you manage any sleep?”

“No.”

“You need this.” she pushed the jug in his hands and he greedily drank down the melon water in it, his shakes calming for a minute. “And you’d best eat a little, so as to keep your strength up and your temper down.”

He wasn’t hungry but they both knew that wasn’t the point. He had removed himself from you last night in a bid to regain some fraction of sobriety and rantional before hearing a confession he was pretty certain he could recite beforehand -verbatim. But it had seemed the wise, kind, just thing to remove himself until he could hear it in a steady frame of mind. Even if it had felt a little cold to close the door on your tear stained face and “Elvis, Elvis please, don’t go!” echoing down the hall after him as you scratched at the door, sounding every bit the child he used to play with.

The half gnawed biscuit stuck to his throat and he had to gulp in more water to force it down. That alone took energy out of him. He flicked idly at the rest of it, tearing pieces and fiddling with them till they crumbled before they could reach his mouth.

“You are going to go to her, aren’t you?” Sister Rosetta asked and he was too tired to play dumb or tell her to mind her own. In fact he could use some womanly advice at the moment.

“Yeah.” he whispered.

“Jerry sent me to find you,” she went on, “the Colonel was about ready to break down the suite door, thinking you were in your room and unconscious since no answer came out. One assumes Miss Beaumont has either fainted inside or simply won’t deign a reply.”

“Oh Lord!” he exclaimed making to rise, puffing in effort to extricate himself from under Bean’s sturdy neck.

“Before you go,” she laid a delaying hand on his arm as he brushed off the hay from his trousers, “I’m not one to divulge a trust, and what that little woman told me as I dressed her last night was in strictest confidence despite her emotion, but seeing as how I have a sense you are about to make a very heavy decision in her regard, I think it excusable that I tell you a secret in her favor.”

“What’s that?” he whispered, fear and hope warring in his eyes.

Ten minutes and the damn brute still pounded on the suite door, rattling your overwrought nerves with every barrage and fruitless clamor of Elvis’ name. “My boy, my boy” again and again in that loathsome accent. You sourly hoped the Colonel’s deafening assault against the hinges stemmed from fear that he’d overdrawn the bank of life and killed his cash cow at last, as he truly almost had. You sat at the rickety vanity chair, not a bit of your outfit touched since the Captain had left you hours ago, only your boots taken off and the pretty pistol from them laying cold and heavy in your lap, pointed at the quivering door. If you were to be killed or rejected or taken to prison, you might as well have it done in the prettiest dress you had ever worn, bought by the kindest man you’d ever known. And if you killed Parker with the pistol Elvis had won for you, there was a poetic justice to it, even if he wouldn’t give you time enough to explain it.

Suddenly, there was quiet behind the door. Then the murmur of voices. You stood up and tip toed to it, pressing your ear to the wood in hopes to catch a snippet of conversation or a clue as to who had pacified Parker. You could not hear the voices clear enough, you could not make out if the pitch belonged to Elvis. You strained and held your breath, closed your eyes and tried to focus on the murmur outside, to give you some hint if he was coming in or not, if he was even there. If he was even alive.

A rattling from the famous shutters covering the windows opposite startled you out of your skin. You yelped and spun round, back pressed to the door and pistol raised at the hidden intruder currently picking the shutter’s lock after raising the window with remarkable quiet. The shutter kicked open and in streamed early morning daylight, painting a golden backdrop behind Elvis as he crouched in the window sill, hands raised and a look of pleasant surprise on his face,

“Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot.” he actually laughed.

You dropped the pistol to the floor in your shock, needing to clutch at the door handle lest you crumple to the ground on seeing him again, looking remarkably alive and whole, “I didn’t know it was you.” you explained hoarsely.

“Course, course.” he nodded, “Good girl, be it anyone else and I do expect you to blow their heads off.” he looked you up and down and took in the gala finery still laced tight and the pale color of your face, the way you stared dully at him as if you had not expected conversation to be made. Neither of you had done any sleeping, it would seem. He cleared his throat and shifted his weight on the sill, “May I come in?” he asked gently.

You frowned in confusion, “Of course.”

“Thank you.” he murmured and let himself down, knees creaking as he straightened out. “I went round the deck on the back way so as not to get caught, whole damn crew is after me with one thing to tell or ask. A-a-and I wanted to get here first.”

He was alive and stutteringly polite and your exhausted heart did not know what to make of it. While he looked like hell in many ways, he carried himself soberly, only dead beat weariness detectable in his red rimmed eyes. You had some flicker of hope that maybe he’d hear you out. A whole night to prepare and you still had no set speech, but you had an idea of how to begin it.

“I don’t deserve it,” you settled on as beginning while wringing your hands, more a gust of breath than a true voice coming out your throat, “but would you be so good as to hear me, as there was something I wished to tell you last night, and it can no wait.”

“I’ll hear ya out.” he replied gravely, his eyes had not met yours since he stepped down from the window into the room, they kept roving from the bed to the vanity to the double rataan doors. There was not an unstoried inch in the whole suite. “But first, you’ll hear me out, no, no really, you must.” he put his hand up as you went to protest and you folded meekly, too scared and tired to risk angering him. “Move dear, I wanna see that we’re alone for this.” and he motioned you away from your place by the door as he strode up to it and unlocked it with his key, flinging it open.

Seemingly satisfied that there was no one lurking, he shut it again gently and locked it once more. He picked up your pistol from the floor, putting it and the key on the dresser, his discarded overcoat flopping atop it. You now stood where he had by the windows, and he took to leaning on the dresser in his shirtsleeves, one hand rattling out a nervous staccato rhythm on its shiny top, while the other shielded his smarting eyes from the light.

Every time he looked at you it was as if his voice dried up, he wished now he had left the shutters closed, so as not to be tempted to make an inventory of the year’s toll on your face before he could get out what he needed to say.

“It’s come to my attention,” he cleared his throat gratingly, “that, that, I,” he coughed again and then straightened up, taking his hand down from his eyes and giving you the courtesy of meeting your startlingly famillair eyes, a penance for his sins he thought, “that I owe you a heartfelt apology for my horrid behavior last night.”

“You needn’t-“ you assured him in a hurry,

“No, no, I-I really must say I’m ever so ashamed, and I’m sorry.” his fingers stippled faster, “For all of it. Handlin you so rough a-a-and I dunno what all I threatened but Sister Rosetta informs me I’m an awful sorta man, t-t-to ya, and I’m sorry. I’m real sorry-“

“What did she say?” you paled, and made an aborted motion to go to him before thinking better of it, “I didn’t complain of you to her! What did she-“

“She said enough.” he ignored you gravely, “She said enough and I recall enough that I-I-I am real sorry for it, and I want you to know I didn’t mean it, that weren’t me in my right mind. I never,” his voice shook and his hand flew up to his mouth to force his lips to stop their trembling, he went on after a minute, “I’d never in a million years want to see you nothin but loved and cared for, none of that awful shit I said.”

You swallowed hard, torn between holding your peace, taking his unexpected gentleness to heart and using it to bolster your failing courage to confess, or assuring him that savage as he had been in his jealousy, you were not so deeply wronged as he thought. You were not so good as he yet maintained. You had wanted him, too.

“And for that…thing…with the Binder fella,” he interrupted your thoughts as he looked over your head, unable to keep eye contact, “I’m sorry to have embarrassed you like that. A-a-and for anything else I’ve omitted, i-I-i‘m real sorry.”

His sins were nothing, all things considered, not when measured against what you had done against him, and you felt a fool being made to listen to the apologies of a man who knew you had wronged him deeper.

“Are you -mocking me?” you asked in confusion, unable to make sense of it.

“What?” he startled, “No! Hell no, I-I-I’m very sorry. I’m askin ya to forgive me, if you can.” he added, giving you that strangely effective look from under his lashes.

“There’s nothing to forgive.” you muttered.

“There is, goddamn it!” he pounded his fist on the dresser top and you flinched, “Those days of you putting up with no good men and bastards are over, I’ve told you that! Now why won’t you listen to me? I done told you before to slap the next fella that was disrespectful to you! Why didn’t you?”

“I did.” you cringed backwards.

“You did?” he repeated comically, then looked spooked at the notion he had forgotten more of last night than he thought, “You slapped me last night?”

“Yes.”

“Well -good, good that’s, that’s good.” he rubbed his jaw nervously.

“Can I say my piece now?” you asked, timid and impatient all at once.

“Yes.” he agreed sullenly, leaning back against the dresser again, “Though we needn’t engage in dramatics or a listing of your goddamn family tree nor a drum roll reveal that you are who you are.” your heart pounded in your throat and you watched as his soured mirth turned shrewd, “Cause I know exactly who you are, Cricket.”

The shock you voiced at hearing that old nickname drop from those once familiar lips sounded closer to a sob gusting out than any word, forced out by melancholy sentimentality and a shaking relief at being known. “Oh Elvis.” you whispered, unable to think a damn thing except ‘I’ve missed you, my old friend’.

“Must've been real hard not to laugh every time you felt me trying to puzzle together why Savannah Beaumont would look so shockingly like the late Miss Maddy Hodgkins.” he went on, his cold tone and the bitter twist to his mouth stamping out your initial relief, “Bet you barely held it together every time I looked at you, asked you bout your folks, my folks, made goddamn fervent love to you, and only you knowing I was bein’ had every fuckin second of it.”

“No!” you wailed, and shook your head frantically, “No, no it wasn’t -I, I was only shy and terrified, it had been so long I didn’t know you any more!” you pleaded with him.

“You once told me you’d lost all your friends when MY women died.” he jabbed a finger at you, “What was that but a goddamn joke? MY women? That was your sister! Your mother! Those were your folks every bit as much as mine, more in fact. And my mother too, who loved you dearly a-a-and you stood there and lied about it! Said I was the one with the greater grief! Hell, you told me anythin I wanted to hear, this whole goddamn time I thought you understood and you did, oh you did but you played it, every step of the way, every hour or the day you played it.”

“No.” you moaned, “No, not, not after-“

“After what?” he demanded fiercely.

“I don’t know when! Helena maybe, or the bath, I don’t know, but I-I, when I stopped being scared, I stopped lying about, about, about the things that mattered!” you stammered.

“Oh?” he mocked, “Tell me, Miss Hodgkins, what things matter to a woman like you?”

“You!” you near screamed at him and that shook him out of his derision. You watched him swallow hard. “You, I have not lied in any of my sentiments in regards to you.” you swore solemnly, “And there has not a single passing moment I did not regret my choice to lie to you.”

He squinted hard at the full, formidable, womanly shape of you and the glare of sunshine behind you, and it was near unbearable to reconcile it all. He wanted to cry and fight and scream at heaven for making it all so warped. That this sweet child of memory should be so cruel and beguiling a lover. He had left you behind him one day a barefoot child and not thought of you since. You were stuck there, grinning and muddy in a daffodil patch, waving him farewell. His mind had buried you there, you couldn’t be the woman who saved him and goaded him and cared for him and stirred his blood.

“I’ve got this memory I’m tryin not to recall but,” he spoke up after a heavy silence, “but it’s got ya in pigtails, tooth missin so your words whistle when ya talk, barely coming up to my hip ya were, and you’re fussin over my scrapes and I-I-I shoulda seen it. Shoulda seen it the minute you couldn’t even manage to hide behind your fear that mornin I first l-I, ya just had to tend to me didn’t ya? God, I shoulda seen it, seen that lil girl in you, but see, no, no. That little girl was supposed to grow up and cause her father a little worry and her mother much pride and she was gonna make a feisty wife for some good man and she was gonna be good! Life was gonna be good to her, she was gonna have it good. She, she, she, she’s not you. She’s not this!” he swooped his hand up and down your rumpled glamor. “Not even life would be so cruel.” his voice broke and he sobbed, “God wouldn’t be so cruel, not to her.”

“Captain,” you hushed him, an impotent hand stretched out to stay his heartache though you dared not take the liberty of touching him, bewildered by the turn this had taken, “you needn’t lose your faith over this, over her. She’s happy now, can’t you see that? She has you, if she has you, then she has it good, life has been good to her at last.”

He took his fingers from his eyes and drug them down his cheeks, stretching his face into a wane pantomime of his exhaustion. “I’m sorry that I did not take more care to search for you when I returned to Memphis,” his voice shook terribly, “that I accepted your death. What’s one more? -I had thought when I heard, seemed like the world was gettin cleansed of all that I’d loved and all my kin. I just, I didn’t think of ya then. ‘Cept that, least you’d been spared growin old in this cruel world.” he laughed, mirthless and sharp, “God! God!” he screamed and thudded his fist against the dresser with each invocation.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered again, “I’m sorry but I’ve done alright,” you soothed, “I’m alive and I am here. I’m safe here, you’ve given me that!”

“Done alright?” he repeated in disbelief, “You’ve lived a lie and you’ve done murder and been sold and been defrauded and you’re so fucked in the head from it all you think that fallin in with me is a goddamn heaven sent reprieve. Ha! Fuck!”

“You didn't deserve what happened to you either, what you had to do to be here now, but I don’t see your faith crumpling in the face of it.” you struck back, miserably.

He shook his head as if trying to shake out your logic from his ear canals.

“You needn’t have lied! My god, not to me, not to me!” he looked like he was pleading with you now, as if you could go back in time and choose honesty. “I’m your, your, -Elvis.” he whispered, defeated, as he thought of all the times you’d called him Captain, never used his name even when he’d needed to hear it, even from the stranger he thought you were.

“Even if, upon being bought at a auction block, I had been tempted to tell you, to trust your hideous reputation with so demanding a truth I-“ you balled your fists and pounded them against your hips in futile frustration at your inability to impress upon him your rotten form of sincerity, “even then, Captain, I would not have been speaking much of a truth! You can call me by my given name all you wish, you can sentence me to any judgment you see fit with it written in damming ink but the truth remains that I have not answered to it in nigh on a decade! A decade! All this time you have been playing at whatever life you call this circus I have been embodying a corpse! I did not concoct this lie to hurt you, I was nearly a child when I took it on, and all I have learned of life has been in Savannah Beaumont’s skin. Who I am now, who you found in that brothel was no more the child you knew than the next whore.”

“That can’t be,” he whispered like he personally found it insufferable that you should have no recollections as clear as him, “that can’t, you must -you do- remember some of it.”

“A little.” you agreed. “But it is as if it happened to someone else. And I had not thought of it, of you as I remember you, until that afternoon in Helena. I am not myself and I am not miss Beaumont but, I-I,” your lip shook so badly you had to pause, salty tears running onto your tongue, “I I-I , or rather you, gave me the one firm notion of who I am. I am your Rosey.” you said simply, “And even if you no longer keep me, I’ll be yours all my days now you’ve made me into someone at long last. Can’t be undone, once someone’s born you can’t send them back. You cannot! Don’t, please don’t take that from me.”

You stretched your hands out to him, begging him to hear you. Understand. He looked at you through a sheet of black hair that had fallen across his forehead and into his glittering eyes. He was terrified he’d not met a mate but a mirror in you, and he didn’t know how to tell you his own soul was cracked beyond repair. The stupid, glimmering hope that maybe you were still repairable had him gentling his expression and murmuring in tender warning lest you come nearer,

“I need a reason, Cricket, give me a reason for all this, the lies, not to me but the world.” he sniffed hard and pointed towards the chair at the vanity, “Sit down dear, you’re shakin.” he commanded gently.

Obeying took you further away from him but you found it easier to breathe with the distance, and sitting felt a little less like standing before a firing squad. He was still being kind and it gave you hope for this last little test of his limitations. You forced your hands to uncurl and lay limply atop your lap. “They were going to blame Savannah Beaumont’s murder on an innocent freedman.” you summarized simply, relief palpable from sharing the weight of that truth that had been carried alone for all these years. “Not by accident or any proof, but because one of their own had done it, and they did not expect a soul to appear in his defense. They did not expect Savannah Beaumont to show in court and exonerate her supposed murderer.” it was your turn to laugh mirthlessly.

Elvis had taken to breathing out his mouth, his weeping having clogged the other route. His bottom lip shook with every inhale. “Who is ‘they’, honey?”

“Memphis City Council, a judge who was in on it, even the Secretary of State, I was later informed by Mr. Moore.”

“Why, why would you though-“

“I was asked.” you whispered simply, “The whole plantation came to the front steps and begged me to step in her place, for his defense and to keep Belle Mead. It was so outlandish it worked, all the women folk had been reclusive, none recognized her by sight save my father, the overseer. He pointed her out for slaughter in her own foyer. So you see, with the entire plantation swearing as my witnesses, those councilors looked like fools.”

“Bet you felt real clever.” his voice was flat but his eyes showed a memory of the precocious little girl you had been.

“I had a brief moment of elation when they ceded that the coloured man was to go free.” you bit your lip savagely, “Yes, yes it was very clever and I thought maybe heaven had blessed my efforts, to protect them and the place. That was before I learned the price.”

His squint eyed stare lifted and he looked suddenly gentle, worried, fearful, “And what was that?”

“My father, sir.” you stuck your chin out and smiled bitterly, “I killed my father, by my testimony if not by my own hands. You see, I had seen the murder, I saw Savannah be beaten to death by a Carpetbagger working for one of those northern investment firms, he stated his name and his occupation on the front steps as he crowed over taking away the roof and floors and last shred of hope we had. My father was with him, made me go and rouse the young heiress dying of consumption to make her come downstairs and cede the family property in person. Savannah came downstairs, sure enough,” he watched your eyes waver and then unblinking your mind went far away, “she came down and plopped all those due taxes in his hand. He’d been over hasty. My father said she was gonna die anyway, they could wait the two or three months the tuberculous needed to finish the job. No heirs to the place, it would be auctioned. But the man was in a great hurry, so many appointments, so many business ventures. I’ve never seen something so, so sudden, so unprovoked. Before or since. And when I went to stop him, I got a pair of hands around my throat for my trouble, and my father telling me over that demon’s shoulder that I could live if I would just cooperate. You may recall that is one thing I was never very good at.”

His laugh was watery and forced. This was familiar territory now, not that he knew this story, but he and countless others had lived their own version, peppered always with corruption and bribery. He nodded for you to go on, finish this, like the last death stroke to a dying pet.

“The man I meant to accuse, the man who did the deed,” was on this boat, was his friend, “he was nowhere to be found, but they had the freeman in his stead. There had to be a culprit, I had gone into that courtroom in a flurry of shock and applause only to find no one to accuse. Save one. One who had nearly let me die at the hands of a brute, who’d held me back as he turned Savannah’s brains to a melon.” you realized you’d picked your fingernail bloody when it smeared on the white silk in a pinkish stain, you met Elvis’ eyes and found him looking about as hollow as you felt, “So I told them my father had done it, for he had done enough. And you should have see the Judge’s look of relief at having scapegoat.”

“I bet.” he muttered.

“I thought I had not done such an abominable thing as it took two witnesses to hang a man and there was only me.” you began to plead, the weight of unconfessed guilt finally tumbling free. “I thought he’d only be confined!”

“But they offed him in prison, didn’t they?” he murmured in realisation, “Mr. Moore said so, but you knew why. You knew it was so they could cover the tracks of their botched scheme.”

“Yes,” you scrubbed under your nose miserably, “and they covered mine while they were at it. A mercy, that is what they called it back on the Plantation. A kind act of Providence.” you scoffed, “And so it was for all of them. Nearly ten years I lived the lie of a damned woman so they could be free, unbothered, diligent, prosperous even -once we had worked ourselves to the bone for it. And at times,” you stared hard at the floor, all of it out now, nearly all of it out, “at times I fancied God may have forgiven me, understood me, took into account the good I’d done. But, believe me, I never felt sure of it until you, you were forgiveness and reward and understanding all at once. Now I think you, after this, or life without you, that would be the cleverest judgment ever imagined.”

Sunbeams, reflecting off the river's surface, were dancing and cavorting and intertwining along the polished wood of his floors, slicing golden and playful through the rich carpets near his feet. It was the farthest your eyes could make up his figure as he stayed leaning against the dresser like a man cast up from the sea onto a rocky beach. Your eyes retreated to your own feet, pink toes sticking out from under silk. You stuck a toe out to catch a sunny fairy dancer, all it did was cast a shadow. Your lip wobbled in disappointment, then fear as the precious silence was cut by the heavy clunk of his boots closing the distance, a faint tinkling of spurs suggesting he gave some thought to fleeing in the night. As he came close and closer you watched as he trampled the sunny dancers on the carpets and then on the wood and then dark, worn cavalrymen’s boots were beside your pink toes, just short of crushing them, too.

You thought then of the princesses and the queens you’d read of who held their heads high when the executioner's ax sliced quick and cruel. You did so wonder where all your strength had gone. If you swayed forward one tiny bit you’d have your face pressed to the warm planes of his lean belly, you’d be anchored to the earth again. It was as if you spoke it into existence,

manifesting your weakness, suddenly it was a fact, your nose buried in the body warmed cotton of his shirt, the unmistakable poke of wiry hair separated by fabric coming to the fore at the wet ghost of a sob from your mouth. If you had any strength you would have wrapped your arms around his hips and clung. You wondered if his loneliness was so strong he’d take even a wretched sort of company like yours.

Your body nearly convulsed with the strength of the shudder that ripped through you when his warm hand engulfed your jaw, gently but inexorably tilting your face away from his body and up, upwards to his face, to the mirror of his feelings and my god, his face was morphing ceaselessly and his eyes churning in tormented unsurety until he saw yours. Yours was the look of a woman in pain, resigned to losing the man she loves. He would know that look, he had put it on Maddy’s face when he’d gleefully gone off to war and then found she’d had the right idea all along, nothing awaited him but strife and a dreadful weight of loss.

Here was something he could mend, could fix -that was his own intention with you all along, wasn't it? When had he gotten sidetracked and fell in line with you saving him instead? You were sent for him to mend, to forgive too, it seems, -if he could wipe away the bitter taste of seeing himself in you. That weak and sickening feeling of undeservedness in forgiving some part of his own wretchedness if he were to forgive yours. His hand spasmed against your jaw in his inner struggle, tan and elegant fingers digging into creamy plushness. To forgive you would be to forgive himself, to forgive what was necessary. What was necessary. He had never been ashamed of what he had to do, but my god he had not forgiven it. Suddenly that seemed very cruel, very childish, very lonely. He bent down, blue eyes locked on yours, closer and closer, his gripping palm searing your cheek.

He meant to say something, some absolution or assurance, but he could only choke and heave on his breaths as he bent and descended. And then his lips were slotted against yours, vigorous and unmistakably intentional. A kiss, searing and deep, his hands gripping your skull, bending your delicate neck back as he devoured you from above. A kiss of life it felt, this first interaction of your real self with another soul, and to be met with want and unashamed gusto? Your arms grew strong again and you grabbed him to you, elongating your body in your seat to push back into the kiss. Back and forth you two were grappling and kissing and plunging into the other's mouth, a near constant fight of “no, no, no you too! you too must know you are wanted!”

The chair creaked with the force of your passions, his knee pressed to the seat between your legs and you squeezed the muscle between yours, engaging every part of yourself in pouring out your devotion. He was shaking once he pulled away, just far enough to heave in necessary breaths and grip onto the back of your chair for support instead of snapping your shoulders. Your head lolled back, faint without his support. You gazed up at him dazedly, feeling small and nostalgic as he loomed over you. You savored it. Your hand, on its own accord it felt, raised to his face and you touched the gorgeous curve of his cheekbone, trailing down his jaw, his throat and down, down to his collarbones and the heaving width of his chest. You spread your palm out over the tacky skin guarding his heart.

“Is this really you, Cricket?” he took a shaky hand from the chair back and hovered it over your face, the face of a woman, the face of an old friend. He blinked rapidly. Clever and brutal and beautiful you were to him all at once. “Oh, you, you, you -you terrifying, magnificent, irresistible creature.” he thundered, hand descending to your throat and pulling you back in for another kiss.

“You see,” you gasped between his plush lipped assaults, “you see what kind of men I am used to? You see why I though I should fear you?” you had to know he understood, you had to get the whole of it out. He was pouring into you the very strength to land the final blow.

“Yes, yes I do.” he panted into your mouth, nearly crouching over you in your chair as not only his mouth but his body sought yours, “Gimme their names, and if there’s any left I’ll make ‘em scream for ya.”

“One of them is aboard.” you whispered into his ear as he attacked your neck with fervor. He went stock still. His lips pulled away from their suction listlessly. His hand tightened round your neck then dropped. He stood up in confusion.

Bleary eyes blinked down at you as his exhausted mind tore through possibilities and came up with nothing but a sinking feeling of being had.

Again . “What’s this?” he asked in a low and wounded voice, “Some goddamn riddle? Gonna quote some scripture and tell me ‘thou art the man’, hmm? Do you mean me?”

“No, my darling!” you sprang up from the chair and clasped your arms around his middle, pulling him close, “no, no never you!”

“Who then?” he asked wary, stiff in your embrace, watching as you fought with which expression to donn while delivering the truth. “No pandering or fudging now, goddamn you! Who?”

“Your benevolent colonel is the murderer, sir.” you got it out and the relief it gave you was soon replaced by dread as he looked very much as if he knew what you meant but did not agree. “Colonel Parker is the one who ought to have been hung in my father’s stead, but his contacts, your contacts, saved him. Made him vanish from the reach of justice. Ask Mr. Moore, he’ll tell you of it. The strange case of the vanishing man.”

The Captain’s eyes flitted over your face contemplatively, trying to see if he could yet define which expressions of yours were lies, truths and half truths. You had proven shrewd, and he could forgive you for that, but trusting you? That was a bit much to ask, right and good as it felt to have your arms around him. At worst you might be vindictive over the Colonel’s distaste for your presence aboard. More likely, or what he hoped was more likely, your head had been turned by the event, your memories muddy, recollections bending under the horrid strain of it. One tiny reminder and suddenly you thought you had your culprit, one stout foreigner was as likely to earn your accusation as the next.

He knew how it worked, an entire portion of his own life’s memories were very resolutely kept under lock and key, only when the Colonel hinted or Scotty accused did a searing flash of some nauseating recollection flash vibrant and unbearable across his mind and he was quick to shove it down. Many times over the years as he passed through the streets he thought he saw faces of men from hazy memory who were always faceless until they weren’t. The men had been strangers, blameless of the horror with which he recoiled from them on the sidewalk. He had learned the mind keeps back what it needs in order to go on, but it’s a delicate wardenship. He no longer recoiled from innocent pedestrians, and one day you too would grow strong enough not to suspect every foreigner of being the man who haunted your dreams.

Something of this thought process must’ve shown on his face since you began grasping at him frantically again, even as you kept a moderate tone when exclaiming, “You don’t believe me.”

“Honey,” he began, trying to keep his own voice light and pacifying as he patted your cheek, “I-I-I didn’t say that. It’s a lot to process, alright? Just, calm down and yeah, calm down, sit down.”

You let him back you towards the chair and sat yourself down again with childlike compliance. You kept your hands on his hips, loath to be separated after the emotional upheaval of the last few minutes. Every gentle touch and kind word of his had you startled, so certain had you been of his inability to forgive. After some amused deliberation on his part, looking from your hands on his trousers to your fretful face, he sat himself in your lap, sideways, as he had last night. The crushing weight of him was welcome, as was the sweet grin he gave you as he wiggled into a comfortable recline. You buried your face in his chest and tried to bite your tongue, allowing him a minute to ponder what you said. You tried to focus on breathing, on his gentleness and the heavy thud of his overworked heart beneath your ear. He rubbed your arms over the rough lace of your sleeves, just holding you and letting himself be held, biting his tongue as well.

“What on earth am I to do with you, child? Hmm?” he murmured into your hair at last.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” you observed again, miserably, forgetting why you cared now you were being stroked and petted.

“I-it’s not like that, honey, really it’s not. Time and pain -they muddle things, darlin. And I’ve known that man for the better part of a decade and now -here you come wantin me to believe somethin entirely uncharacteristic of him. This fella you’re after, why he weren’t with you for more than a few minutes! And I’ve had an entire decade with the colonel. So no, no, it ain’t a matter of believin it’s a matter of actin on it. And I can’t just act on it yet. I can’t.”

“I’m not after anyone!” you insisted, “And I don’t except you to trust me implicitly after all i've done-“

“-well that’s real sensible of you.”

“-don’t joke! Please don’t!” you begged, “I’m not after anyone, he is after me! He sat in that carriage last night and threatened my life and Cal’s!”

“What’s that now?” he pulled away so he could look down at your face and study you closely. You figured he thought he had mastered some trick to tell if you were lying or not. You were not, you had run out of lies, for good.

“He knows me, he admitted as much! And threatened Cal if I were to expose him to you!” you watched the Captain as he bit his lip and studied you, a thousand different puzzle pieces swirling in those stormy eyes, “Elvis I wouldn’t be so impertinent, so insistent that you believe me after what I’ve done if it weren’t so dire.”

“This is why you told me to watch the boy.”

“Yes! You have, haven’t you?”

“Calm down honey, yeah, checked him last night and then charged Jerry with the same. He’s fine. Now, you say the Colonel said he knew ya?” he pressed the point.

“Yes.”

“Well, darling don’t ya think,” he worried his bottom lip between his fingers and gave another moment to formulate his theory, “ain’t it likely he meant he knew who you were, that you were responsible for killin the dug up Yankee buried in your arbor? -speakin of, that case will rain down a heap of investigations on my head.” he added in a disgruntled mumble.

“No I- I don’t think he meant that.” you sighed, stroking his thigh absently, “it was all very metaphorical and shrouded but the threat was real! He knows me.”

“We don’t know what he knows!” Elvis grunted, “No, no you can’t hand me riddles an’ shit and say that you’ve been found out. You existin on this damn boat is enough reason to piss the colonel off, makin’ you a purser was sure to send him into a rage. I was hoping to give a few weeks to cool him off but then, sweet baby Jesus, you just had to have a Yankee buried in a shallow grave behind the house! Look honey, I’m real sorry he was an ass to ya but you aren’t the first, and I’d think a lil knife wielder like yourself wouldn’t be so shook by it.” he tried to tickle your neck but you reared back, you fear stoked by his maddening nonchalance.

“He threatened Cal!”

“Tell me what he said, word for word.” he asked, patient but in the manner of a professor about to explain that it isn’t the math that is wrong, but your own calculations.

You focused on his hand swooping up your arm in its comforting pace, the grounding weight of his body in your lap, the musky smell of him after a night of revelry and no soap. “He said he knew about your little causes,” you began, “and that Cal was a bright boy and that he suspected that if anything were to happen to him I’d be crushed. He then suggested that were the boy to witness some untoward behavior of the Colonel’s he counted on me to tell Cal that he did not see what he thought he saw.”

“The hell does that mean?” his eyebrow quirked in frustrated bewilderment,

“It was a threat! To put me off confessing to you.”

“You got all that outta…all that.” he waved his hand around.

“Do you not?” you cried.

“I dunno what the hell to make of it!” he declared, “After all, you two are the only ones aboard the damn boat carryin on in metaphors. You don’t see me an’ Jerry talkin in goddamn parables whenever it’s time to drop the anchor chain. A-a-and it ain’t no reason to start dreamin up threats and makin up fuckin history that you don’t share with him!”

“I didn’t make it up! You don’t have to believe me then.” you huffed resignedly, “But for god’s sake spare an eye out for Cal.”

He could see you were in a state about it, and that alone assured him you were not creating a narrative against his partner for mere vengeance sake. Your muddled little mind truly believed your own tale and he knew the Colonel well enough to fully accept that the fellow had probably tried his damndest to scare you off. This had been a long-standing habit, the Colonel running off women who got a little too comfy, domestic, protective of Elvis and he’d been successful up until now.

There were the occasional cases when Elvis himself had finally ground down their patience to nothing, and then they had gone. And that was that. Loyalty to your stalwart, though deceptive, attachment to him made Elvis more inclined to give some credence to your fears, if not your narrative. But it wouldn’t do to be hasty in a judgment of the situation, not with a cotton filled head like his own this morning.

“I’ll look into it, I will.” his tone suggested that this was the end of the discussion, his gentlemanly soothing only serving to drive you near batty with his seeming insouciance, “Now, how bout breakfast?” his grin was bright and you wanted to scream in frustration over it, “I can’t overemphasis how badly I need a half a dozen eggs and some sausages to mop up all that tonic and the maudlin display we just engaged in. Gonna take some grease to counterbalance that shit. Whadda ya say, hmm?”

“I’m not really hungry.” you admitted, watching him in a heartsick daze as he clapped his hands and rose from your lap, the topic of your greatest secret and terror shelved in favor of breakfast.

“Well, that’s cause you’re laced up within an inch o’yer spin. Get up dear, let’s give ya your stomach back.” he wagged his finger in command for you to give him access to your back lacings. “Y-you don’t mind me doing this after…ya know -after last night?” he added very softly when you turned your troubled face towards the window to give him access.

You flung your hand behind your back and grabbed one his own, bringing it over your shoulder to kiss his knuckles.

-I spent most of the night weeping over the fact I could have been a mother at this moment if I’d just allowed you- seemed too heavy a confession after all he had sustained this morning, so you held your peace and kissed his knuckles, savoring his heavy exhale that ghosted against your neck. As he worked on your fastenings you thought of that first night aboard, how tall and strong and virulent he had seemed. The way you’d braced and waited for ravaging, the way he had hummed a hymn instead.

“That first night,” you whispered, cool air hitting your back as more and more of the fancy dress began to slip off your shoulders with each of his tugs, “I thought you were going to take me, every day after I’ve been wondering when you would. And I went from dreading to wanting it. Because I’ve realized I was wrong, you’re no stranger, you’re still you.” the dress fell to your ankles and you yanked open the fastenings of your corset, taking the first full breath since last evening. You used it to tell the him, “I still love you. After all this time, I learned that I still love you, how could I not?”

Not a peep of sound came from behind you at this admission. Strangely this felt like the greatest confession of all, acknowledging you loved him. Peace came with having said it. You shucked your bloomers with more haste than decorum, leaving you in just your shift and turned to face him.

The bow of his lip was trembling in an effort to keep his mouth firm, blotchy red splashed across his face and that old pinched look around his sapphire eyes that betrayed an effort not to let the gathering tears spill. He hadn’t expected love. Not for the way he was now. A sentimental fondness and a perverse interest perhaps. Not love. Captain Presley was as little like the Elvis of your memory as Cricket was akin to Rosey. He had not expected to be loved for it.

“Child-“ he warned in a rough voice, stepping backwards.

“Elvis,” you stepped out of the pool of fabrics and followed him, hands outstretched and latching into his forearms, “I love you, I do, please, please look at me!”

Looking at you was to look at a woman, ripe curves faintly veiled through finely woven linen, cherry dark nipples always peaked when close to him, that mouth he’d taught and that throat he’d used and that face that belonged to a dead girl. He shook his head and turned his face away.

“Elvis, call me Rosey.” you demanded, fingernails biting into the meat his arm and he shuddered from it, “Please, I’m not a child, please don’t muddle this up, it’s me! Me!” you took his hand and tried to pry the stubborn fist open, to bring his hand to your breast in that old familiar way, “Please touch me.” you settled for that, voice trailing off in a whine.

You sounded like a child, desperate and petulant. If he’d just touch you would know you were forgiven. You needed him to touch you. In that way. That particular way that only he had. “You can’t teach me a language then tell me not to speak it!” you accused.

“D-don’t! I know but I-, please don’t-“ his voice sounded so near a whimper when he finally spoke you let go of his arm from pure, maternal instinct that somehow you were hurting him, “I will, if you ask me I w-w-will d-do anythin ya ask, I’ll t-t-touch, so please don’t. Please d-d-don’t ask me that. N-n-not now. N-not yet. Please, darlin. I-I-I just…” he scrubbed his face viciously, “I just want some goddamn breakfast.” he cried out into his hands.

“Of course!” you repented your selfishness ardently, backing away from the bed you’d chased him to in your wantonness. “Breakfast yes, yes, you need food. Rest, too.”

You couldn’t bear to stay staring at his shaking form and those elegant hands as they covered his face, you turned and hauled out the first sensible frock in the wardrobe and a day corset with it, intending to dress and leave him in peace. He had borne enough. And he knew you loved him. It was enough for now, it had to be.

You heard him crossing the room, away from you towards the door and your head swiveled to watch, fretful that he was leaving without another word. He opened the door with lethargic clumsiness and poked his head out again, “Bill, what’re you doin out here?” his tone was full of surprise at finding his friend in the hall, “Be a good fella an’ fetch Rosetta for me!”

“EP, you gotta listen to me, Mr. Schilling sent me to fetch you!” you heard Bill Black explain from the hall, “Says a couple of government officials are aboard and the Colonel's been giving orders to unload half the staff from the boat! Bastard just told me I won’t be needed for the coming trip, something bout not needing a House where we’re going? The hell does that mean? It’s pandemonium up there, boss.”

“You been drinkin, Bill?”

“Wha-? No man, really, all hell is breaking loose up there without ya, been trying to find you for the last hour. Thought you weren’t in here last night.”

“Who gives a damn where I was, none of y’all’s business.” Elvis snapped, “Well go on now, ya found me and delivered your message, go on and tell Rosetta to come down and dress my girl. And if Crudup doesn't have breakfast ready in fifteen minutes I will rethink his position aboard. Go!”

He shut the door with a pointed briskness and thunked his forehead against the wooden panel. He was going to need more tonic in order to endure whatever fresh hell today had in store. His stamina couldn’t take it at this rate. First few hours of the day had shown him that he’d spent that past month violating a childhood friend, how could it possibly get worse? He had a sinking feeling it could.

“You don’t need to bother Rosetta or yourself, I can dress on my own -go eat.” you whispered, already in the process of yanking up your own laces behind your back.

“No you ca-“ he turned round and his expression morphed comically from sullenness to an impressed admiration at the way you managed it solo with practiced deftness.

“I’ve been dressing myself all my life till I came aboard.” you admitted, and you saw his face fall and he rolled his eyes.

“Course ya have.” he muttered before starting to shuck his own party clothes hastily, hopping on one leg and strewing the materials about as he searched for fresh linens, “I want her down here all the same. Want her to keep an eye on you, and I want you to cooperate. You hear me?” he barked, wheeling round on your as he shimmied on fresh trousers -you couldn’t help but notice that he was finally flaccid, “If you’re sorry and if you really give a single shit about me, you’ll behave and you won’t do nothin rash, yes?”

“Yes.” you swore vigorously.

“Swear it!” he insisted, tucking in his shirt tails.

“I swear.”

“J-j-just try to stay outta trouble and d-d-don’t get killed on me, alright?” he begged, as he shrugged on a rather demurely embroidered waistcoat -silver fleur de lis on cobalt this time-, “If what you say is true, then I can’t do a damn thing about it right now, do you understand that? I can’t do nothin, my hands are tied and if I try anything hasty then we lose everything, got it? So if you wanna help, you’ll let me do it my way, test him as I tested you, and you will keep playing your part. Didn’t hurt you to do it all this time, what’s a little more, hmm?”

That stung but it was warranted. Bereft of his touch or the warmth of his spend in your mouth or the explicit admittance of his love, you were left to find contentment in his compliment of your impressive deceit. It would have to do. It was far better than you expected or deserved.

“I understand.” you murmured.

“Good.” he muttered, fully dressed now and with a hand pressed to his stomach as he tried to regulate his breathing. He picked up your dropped pistol from the sideboard and walked over to you, that same stalking gait he had when he came and kissed you earlier, but now he kept a respectable distance. “And keep this on ya,” he said, “just know, if you shoot my friend, ill not only be mad as hell but I’ll be in so much goddamn trouble with the law I might as well turn myself into the police right now, you understand?”

“Is he really so powerful?” you took it with a solemn nod, “Everyone nearly ignored him last night!”

“Liking and being beholden to are two different things, honey.”

“And to which camp do you belong?” you asked with a sad smile. He gave you one back.

“Both, I reckon, never was stupid enough to test it.”

“So he threatens you?” cold and bitter validation settled in your gut.

“He don’t have to.” he raised an eyebrow at you, “I-I-I wouldn’t speak of this to anyone else, but since you’re on the damn warpath and since you already know so much, I-I-I think you know…” his voice trailed off and his eyes flitted away from your face to, “Darlin, you gotta understand, men who’ve been where I’ve been, we don’t pull ourselves up and manage all this alone. Without him I wouldn’t have a cent to my name or the ability to hold my head up in the street. I don’t know how to disentangle that obligation, never wanted to before, not really. And I don’t know how to now, not now that I’ve got all these people who depend on me keepin on the course I’ve set. There ain’t no court of appeal! I’m sending Scotty down to Memphis to free daddy but I’m sending him with a fuckin chest of gold instead of legal arguments cause that’s the only language those damn judges speak. And that gold won’t come without what the Colonel does. And he could skip one month of payin them and arrangin contacts with them and off I go to prison -it’s simple as that, darlin. He don’t need to threaten me, he ain’t my enemy. We’re both two outsiders trying to squeeze the better folk.”

His mouth turned up in a winsome little smile, trying to prompt you to understand, but those soulful eyes were glazed and hopeless. You understood, you truly did, and it made you angrier than you’d ever been. “I’ll hold my peace.” you murmured.

He took a great breath in his relief at your submission and rubbed his eyes, “We’re gonna need him for Daddy and for the case of your Yankee buried in the arbor, we’re gonna need him real obligin and generous, you understand?”

“I’ll behave.” you insisted.

“I-I-I know it’s hard to let go, honey,” he conceded softly, as he stepped away, “but we all done things we regret, even the colonel. Maybe him more than most, but he’s done a lotta good.”

“He gambles the money you give him to do good things with.” you laughed scornfully, “And as for his job you think he does so well -Scotty says he’s keeping your father imprisoned.”

“Sweet Jesus, of course he does, he’s always had a chip on his shoulder over him.” Elvis groaned, “I’ll thank ya to behave yourself as promised, to mind your own business and to refrain from listening to Mr. Moore, ya hear me?”

If the Captain were not so exhausted and hoarse you were certain he would be shouting at you by now, his hands shook by his sides all the same.

A knock on the door saved you from a full outpouring of his wrath or the rash decision to press your point.

“What?” Elvis yelled at the harmless intruder through the door.

“There’s a Mr Binder coming up the gangplank, sir, Mr Schilling told me to send for ya!”

You and Elvis stared at each other with wide eyed horror for a good few seconds upon hearing this, both curious if the other fully remembered all the events of last evening.

“I could speak with him in your stead!” you gasped out, heartsore for him, “You need breakfast.” you added as if meals were not commonly skipped by adults weighted with responsibilities such as his.

“Sweet Rosey.” he murmured and your expression perked up hopefully at the affectionate moniker. He let out a ghost of a laugh at how easily pleased you were, “Nah, nah I’ll handle him, then I’ll eat breakfast. Ya never know, the delightful Mr Binder might have my girl’s pardon with him.” he pointed out cheerfully, though his expression suggested he doubted that to be the case.

You gave him a watery grin in return, feeling a fool for continually underestimating how easily he could multitask, how effortlessly he wore his own mask, provoking you with his unperturbed geniality when he was plotting his own rebellion all the while. It had been so long since you’d had a comrade in scheming, forever trusting only your own company on the plantation, that meekness and trust when the stakes were so dire was hard to manage. But you could see now that while he did not include you into his thoughts, Elvis was not so benign as he appeared.

“Godspeed then.” you commended him, chipper tone hiding the fear of knowing full well that Mr Bidner might be just as likely arriving with an arrest warrant.

Hands on your hips, dressed in sensible cotton with that familiarly brave grin on your face -he thought he must’ve known who you were all this time, just couldn’t stomach it until a month’s worth of gentle touches and cheerful care had somehow worn him down to this magnanimous fool who was about to risk his life to get you that pardon.

#elvis fanfiction #mine #a whole man is hard to find #austin butler elvis #elvis x you #elvis fanfic #elvis imagine #elvis x reader #elvis presley

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halo-chao · 1 year

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Twitter sings the 1st Pokèmon opening

(Gotta Catch ‘Em All)

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sovonight · 1 year

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the comprehensive xan x radri post! unlike their tag, everything here is categorized and sorted in nice chronological order 💖

last updated: 1 / 2 / 2024

— — —✧✧✧— — —

baldur’s gate i

— — —✧✧✧— — —

The Outline

—✧✧✧—

Xan: *sigh* Go ahead. Ask me why a mage carries a sword around.

Radri: Wh—what?

Xan: You were staring, and quite obviously. The sooner I satisfy your curiosity, the sooner we can direct our attention back to the dangers that surround us, so that we may endeavor to survive the day ahead.

Radri: O-oh, that's not why I... I'm sorry. It's a moonblade, isn't it? You don't need to explain.

Xan: So you are instead surprised that I so severely contradict the tales told of our people, for I do not sing songs and revel in the joys of life? *sigh* I've heard it all before, and I—

Radri: What? No! I'm sorry—I should just take my leave!

—

(In the early morning, at the inn.)

Radri, pleadingly: Imoennn, you know I need you to bargain with the shopkeeper for me!

Imoen: Bargain with 'em yourself. 'M sleeping.

Radri: Please, Imoen, no one else can do! You're so charming and peppy and disarming—

Imoen, pulling the covers back over her head: 'N exhausted! Jus' fork over the extra gold pieces, who cares.

(Radri steps out of the room, letting the door close behind her and falling back against it with a huff.)

Radri: Ugh! Really— (She freezes, realizing she's not alone in the hallway: Xan is there, mid-stride, just passing by.)

Xan: Is something wrong?

Radri, embarrassed, straightening immediately: No! Nothing. I—I'm headed to the store before everyone else wakes. Do you... need anything?

Xan: No; I have all I need, and an excess of supplies can just as readily doom a party as a lack of them. But shall I assist you?

—

(Xan glances over at Radri, who is very rigidly looking ahead, and sighs.)

Xan: I should not have said anything yesterday. It was presumptuous of me, and it is far worse to have your gaze avoid me entirely.

(Radri gives him a startled glance, then looks back away quickly.)

Radri: No, no—I'm sorry. It was rude of me. I'm just unused to being in the company of another elf... and a stranger.

Xan: You have known the others for a long time, then?

Radri: Oh, no. Imoen, sure, but I only met Jaheira and Khalid a couple weeks ago. But because they knew my father, they don't feel quite so much like strangers. Not to mention, one only has to nod through Jaheira's conversations to survive them... and Khalid does not ask more than pleasantries.

Xan: I see. Since I ask more than pleasantries, do I trouble you?

Radri, panicking: No! Not at all. It's refreshing, if anything. And really, I—I'm grateful for your help, I mean, to travel alongside a defender of Elvendom, is...

Xan, subdued: Do not think the moonblade makes me invincible, Radri. It is often more trouble than it is worth. And you should save your praise: I have not yet accomplished anything in service to you beyond placing myself in your debt.

(Radri glances over at him again, daring for the first time since Nashkel to actually catch a proper glimpse of his face: his expression is solemn, and his dark eyes are dull. The rest of the walk is spent in silence, until at last they reach the shop. Xan holds the door open for her.)

Xan: Imoen is usually the face of your transactions, I gather?

Radri, embarrassed: You heard all that earlier?

Xan: I can serve in her place, if you wish.

Radri: Oh—yes, thank you! Here, I have a list…

—✧✧✧—

Imoen: Radri... Radri! Whatcha doing, spacing out? You've gotta stir, or the stew's gonna burn!

Radri: Oh—sorry, Imoen.

Imoen: Really, if you'd had any chores back at ol' Puffgut's place, he woulda chewed you out already. What's on your mind, anyway?

(Radri's gaze drifts away from the cooking fire and back over to Xan, who's working on his spellbook alone. Imoen follows her line of sight, and looks back at her in apprehension.)

Imoen: Oh, no. Don't tell me you've let his attitude infect ya.

Radri: No, I… (She hesitates, wondering if she should share.) I walked with him in his memories, last night, of Evereska. It was so beautiful... his eyes shone as he spoke… but when we woke from reverie, it was all gone. Sharing his memories with me had only made things worse. And worse still, I didn't know what to say.

Imoen: I don't think even the best speaker on Faerun could brighten his day, Radri. Don't let it weigh on ya.

Radri: *sigh*...

Imoen: *gasp* He's already gotten to ya! Radri, quick, ya gotta smile—it's the only way!

Radri: Imoen, hold on—stop! I'm smiling, I'm smiling—the stew!

—✧✧✧—

Compounding Fluster [crossposted on ao3]

—✧✧✧—

Poor Substitute

—✧✧✧—

Special Treatment (skip the second one in the link, it comes later)

—✧✧✧—

Firewood

—✧✧✧—

By the Fire

—✧✧✧—

(Xan exits the inn with enough haste to send the lit lantern by the door frame swinging slightly on its hook. The lantern illuminates a quiet side street, and its light conveniently slants over the alcove in which Radri sits, quiet and curled up with a book, against the wall of the building. Radri looks up at his arrival; even from here, with a view only of the back of his head, she can gather that he's searching for something he lost.)

Radri: Xan? Are you looking for something?

Xan, turning quickly, relieved: Radri!

(In an instant, she recognizes that he was, in fact, searching for her. It’s a habit of hers to slip away—Imoen had assured Jaheira and Khalid of that, in the early days. Surely Xan had been met with the same exchange, and yet here he is. In a way, she can’t help but feel flattered.)

Xan: Why are you not inside with the others?

Radri: It's... a little loud inside. Too much noise…

(Now that she says it out loud, the reason sounds silly to her ears, but he doesn’t question it.)

Xan: I see. Still, I would feel better if you were not out here alone.

Radri, gesturing to the spot beside her: There's room for you, if you'd like.

Xan: If a shadow in the night emerges to slit our throats, I will not have the awareness or the speed to protect you, I fear. But perhaps my death would grant you some time to escape…. Very well, if you will have me.

(He joins her, and at this angle, catches the name of the book she's reading.)

Xan: The Dead Three? Of all the books that you have rifled through in search of spells and gold in our travels, I did not know you had deigned to take any one title with you.

Radri: This was Firebead's reward; I couldn't bring myself to sell it.

(She returns her gaze to the book, and sighs.)

Radri: I don't know why I keep returning to it. I'm not even reading the words anymore. I know the story, I just…

(She hesitates; what lingers on her mind is something she has been unable to utter to the others, and that she has even avoided confronting in words herself. It is a fear, really, one that the others would surely attempt to talk her out of… but not Xan. Haltingly, she speaks.)

Radri: …Do you ever feel like you're standing on a precipice? …At the very edge of falling. And it's as if… the body knows what lies beyond the edge, and is pulled to meet it… but the mind holds it back.

(With her eyes gazing distantly through the book’s pages, Radri fails to catch the responding quiet, longing glance that Xan sends her way.)

Xan: ...Yes. (Then he looks away, disappointed in himself to admit,) I experience the sensation daily.

Radri: I fear it, I think, but there's no use in dread, nor anticipation. What waits for me is already here. And I… and I….

(Radri falls into silence, feeling a chill move up her neck; on the book's open pages, her hand has begun to tremble. She flips the book shut, and grips it closed tightly.)

Radri: But never mind. It's getting cold, and late, and I shouldn't keep you here any longer. Shall we go to bed?

(She stands, and offers her hand to him. Xan stares at her.)

Xan: To bed?

Radri, pink: Oh—I'm sorry. To reverie, I mean. (Her offered hand withdraws partially, subconsciously, as she reflects to herself,) Though I suppose after so many nights, you must long for quiet, too. N-never mind. I'll ask Imoen—

(She doesn’t want to be left alone tonight, and Imoen’s unconscious company is better than none. But then Xan, composed again, accepts her hand before her doubt can rescind it.)

Xan: No, let us go together. Though it can only be a temporary illusion, I find a peace of mind in our rest together.

Radri: Really? (She ducks her head, her gaze drawn to the comforting sight of their joined hands, a touch which has already begun to take the chill away.) I'm... I'm relieved that I have not yet imposed on your kindness.

Xan, distantly, to himself: "Kindness." I wonder if it is….

—✧✧✧—

[crossposted on ao3]

"Will you guide me?" Radri asks.

"Guide?" Xan echoes, then gestures around them with a shrug. "It is a standard estate. There is the entrance hall, the drawing room, the parlor—"

"I lived in Candlekeep, Xan," Radri says, "The structures of "standard" living spaces are not exactly known to me."

"You say this as though there are no tomes on floor plans and architecture—but, no, I see that they must have been too dry for you to grant them your attention," Xan says.

He sighs, and holds out his hand.

"Very well... I will give you the tour."

Her hand slips easily into his, and a familiar jolt of joy and disbelief flits through her heart, unchanging no matter how many times now she has taken his hand. Unlike in the waking world, where their clasped hands facilitate the link between their minds, here, the gesture holds no practical use. For how readily and naturally he offers, this must all be second nature to him—but somehow, she's unable to reconcile the image of his offered, open hand with the way that she has so often seen him draw his cloak tighter around himself, as though the fabric were a barrier that could close him off from the world.

As they walk, Xan speaks in his low and solemn tone, describing to her the history in these halls; in the portraits, and artifacts; in the people that walk past, the figures of memory, their faces bearing a dreamlike quality. Radri finds herself staring, turning to look at them as they pass, subconsciously slowing until Xan's hand on hers acts as a tug.

"Come," he says, "We have almost reached the garden." She notes that they are already leaving the interior after only having passed through the common areas—wherever the chambers may lie, they are above, or further within.

Scattered sunlight spills in through the windows, filtered by the leaves that rustle gently against the panes from the outside. Warm yellow and deep green tones, abstracted by the thickness of the glass, make the windows appear to glow from within. Ahead, a rectangle of sunlight marks the presence of a set of glass doors, and they pass through them to a veranda, where the greens and yellows of earlier burst into detail and bleed vibrancy into the air around them, filling their surroundings with color.

Here, her hand falls from his, and her feet take her ahead on their own. A path, lined with flowers, winds into the swaying shadows of the trees, and her steps slow in these shadows, falling easily into silence.

"Radri?" Xan calls, with some worry, to have seen her disappear—but Radri does not call back, her hand pressed to her silent smile. There is no danger here in the calm of the past; perhaps she will loop back and surprise him, or perhaps he will follow. There sounds a rustle of leaves, a dragging of fabric—yes, he will follow.

She keeps two steps ahead, and yet traces a rhythm that she remembers easily, a pattern that she had learned at Candlekeep. Its memorization had been inevitable seeing as, for years, she'd had only the same set of shadows to train in. It is no wonder, she thinks idly, that her skills had remained in plateau until she had left. Her eyes, half lidded, can make out the obstacles now: this path to silently round the hay bales... these steps to slip past the barrel... this way to reach the door, and with practice, open the door without a sound. To her surprise, her hand, outstretched in memory, finds a handle. It is not crafted in an elegant arc, like the ones inside the estate, but bent into the bold angles of a firm, humble bracket. A flash of dread passes through her, but it is too late: she pulls.

The man behind the door turns at her entry, and his eyes gleam in satisfaction and glee.

"Oh, goodie goodie!" He cries, "I've gone and found ye first! You are the ward of Gorion, no doubt?"

Her mouth works, but her voice is gone, stolen by the sensation that has numbed her and turned her legs to lead.

"Not much of a talker, eh? I apologize for this sordid business, but I must have your head," he says, and advances upon her, bearing the tell-tale glint of a blade. With a vicious grin, he drives the dagger forward to meet her, and though her body tenses, knowing how to escape, she can't move—she can't move—

Her eyes shut tight, and a hand grasps her arm, pulling her sharply back. There is a clatter, followed by a heavy, dead thud, and she is spun around by her shoulder, as another hand comes to her cheek—trembling, light—Xan.

"Radri... Radri? Please... look at me."

But when she looks, she does not meet his eye; her gaze drawn away, cast back over her shoulder at the fallen man, who lies not dead, but unconscious.

"It is only a memory," Xan reminds her, drawing her away. The door closes, and they are back in the garden—but, her heart beating fast and high in her throat, she pulls away.

Away, away, and out of reverie. The night air is cold on her skin; her pillow is damp against the back of her neck; and her hand, clasped in Xan's, is nearly slick with sweat. Tugging herself free, Radri curls onto her side, moments before Xan gasps belatedly awake beside her.

She hears him shift, turning to her... then pause, silent, no doubt forming what he wants to say.

"Candlekeep," Radri says for him, cutting his unspoken question off before he can say it. "It happened in Candlekeep."

"I had thought that the first attempt on your life happened at the Friendly Arm," Xan says. "The others...."

"I never told them," Radri says, and her voice begins to tremble as her words spill out, "I—I mean, you saw it, what a... what a poor attempt, the... the man wasn't even armored, that—that dagger was all he had... what kind of leader would—would—"

"Would have frozen?" Xan says, quietly. "You were home, where you had been safe for decades, as long as you can remember. You were not prepared, and a moment of fear is nothing to be ashamed of."

"I can't have any moments of fear."

"Oh, but you should," Xan says. "I recommend it. No one is invincible, and the few true fearless are bound to foolhardiness and doomed to an early death."

Slowly, Radri lifts her head, gazing back at him. Her eyes are still damp with tears, but no pity shows in his; his gaze only softens, bearing relief. She wipes the tears from her face with the side of her hand, until Xan silently offers a handkerchief. He is quiet for another beat, and then,

"That day," he begins, slowly, "will you tell me what happened?"

She had thought that she had long swallowed the words, but now they rise, pressing against her closed lips. There is no magic at play, here; only time, and memory, and his quiet patience.

"He missed," she says. "The dagger, it... it only cuts me above the brow... and lands in the wood beside the door. He wrenches at it... there is an unruly nail, you see, Dreppin always did swear he would fix it... and though I have my opening, all I can do is stare. I had driven my blade into the hearts of countless illusions just earlier, but—but I'm too afraid to stab him. Then, I hear the wood crack, and I panic: I knock him out with a blow to the head."

Radri laughs, weak, and empty; Xan remains silent beside her.

"You know, the funny part is, I stepped back out into the sunlight and it was like nothing had happened. Parda asked, but... I thought that was it, so... I didn't say a thing. But then—but then—you have to guess," Radri says, feeling almost lightheaded, like something in the air has sent her mind spinning. Judging by the grave look on his face, she doesn't expect Xan to humor her—but he does.

"There was a second attempt," he says. "Just when you had thought it was safe again."

"You're right," Radri says, faintly, feeling strangely empty now. "I stabbed him that time... there was blood, on my new armor... surely Karan had seen it, and yet... I still couldn't say a word."

She falls silent, clutching the handkerchief in her hand, her eyes dry now, and her cheeks sticky with tears.

"I'm sorry," Radri says.

She ducks her head, unable to see the way Xan blinks from compassion into puzzlement, blindsided by her apology.

"For what?"

She doesn't know; she can't put it into words, knowing only that shame fills her chest. Shame, for being here in front of him—for craving his attention so deeply and totally when she has done nothing with it but worry him. Danger did not used to follow her; things did not happen to her. She had always been quiet, inconsequential, like a shadow in the halls.

"F—for," Radri begins, and then her hitched breath overtakes all other words, and she can only shake her head silently as she attempts to hide herself again.

Xan sighs. She curls in tighter on herself, sure that whatever he had seen in her has lost its luster now. Perhaps, if she had not accepted his offer of shared reverie, she would have been able to bear the facade for even just one day longer.

But then, fabric shifts, and instead of standing and walking away, he leans in, holding her.

It is a tentative embrace, and to some degree, it is awkward: she has brought her knees up to her chest, hunching in upon herself, so Xan is left to drape himself over the mountain she has made. His head tilts against hers, but it is held rigid, and leaves no weight upon her; and there is the slightest tremor in his fingers, whose touch is similarly feather-light, although they curl into the folds of her blanket, still draped around her. This balance is held for one frozen moment, until a sob escapes her, and whatever restraint he had had breaks, pulling his warmth and weight to her as though a new source of gravity had manifested in her chest.

"Forgive me," Xan says, quiet and low, "My arms can provide little comfort, but I am afraid that my words would provide even less."

She wants to speak; memories crowd in her chest, memories of Candlekeep, so unchanging across the decades that they all merge into a blur. She is the obedient child, quiet as she is told to be; the daughter of a storyteller, able to pluck the morals from any tale; the reader staring down at a thousand pages, for whom the world starts and ends between the covers of a book. She is an observer, nothing more. She is not seen. She is not seen.

And yet here she sits, painfully present in the real world, in the grounding weight of Xan's embrace. A great part of her wishes dearly again to hide—but a budding fraction feels nothing but sweet relief.

When at last she can exist again, she lifts her head, and Xan releases her immediately. She raises her gaze to meet his, and Xan looks pensively back at her, until he reaches out to tuck her hair back behind her ear. He places a kiss upon her forehead, and though fleeting, weightless, and gentle, with that kiss the last of whatever insecure words she'd held on her tongue are gone.

"The next watch is mine," Xan says, unfazed, as though he had not just turned some layer of her reality over. "If you wish, you can join me until you are ready to return to reverie."

He holds out his hand to her, and she takes it, allowing that familiar spark of elation dance through her fingers and up into her heart again.

—✧✧✧—

Friends

—✧✧✧—

Then I Shall Stay [crossposted on ao3]

—✧✧✧—

Newly Vulnerable (the second one in the link)

—✧✧✧—

Art Exchange

—✧✧✧—

First Impression / Attention

—✧✧✧—

United in Misery

—✧✧✧—

Waiting [crossposted on ao3]

(extra art)

—✧✧✧—

Recognition [crossposted on ao3]

—✧✧✧—

Stealthy Care

—✧✧✧—

Fever

—✧✧✧—

[Next is two versions of the same idea—I couldn’t pick one to throw out]

Radri: I think I've perfected my system—see? (She begins unfolding pages out of her journal, which each expand to a size larger than the journal's cover itself.) Map. Local maps. Open quest list. Closed quest list. Inventory—

(A regularly-sized page flutters out from the complicated arrangement; Xan retrieves it for her, then pauses.)

Xan: What is this ominous page of untitled dates?

Radri, freezing: Oh, um, a record of every... quail I have seen. I mark down the day.

Xan, raising a brow: I did not know you were a quail enthusiast.

Radri, quickly taking the page back: Well, we still have a lot to learn about each other.

—

(A quail passes by in the underbrush.)

Xan, flatly: Ah, there is another one. Will you mark it down?

(Radri, who’s about to reach unwillingly for her journal, pauses, then huffs.)

Radri: Fine! It's a record of every day that I have seen you smile! I am sick of marring it.

Xan, stunned: What? Why would you feel the need to conceal that?

Radri, annoyed: Because you'll say that I'm silly for keeping it, that we will all turn to dust, and that the work I put into recording these things is pointless because it is futile to preserve anything—a struggle which one would think I am intimately familiar with given that I spent my entire childhood in a giant archive.

Xan, fond: Oh, Estel'amin, even in your anger, your beauty is breathtaking to behold. Come here.

(Radri looks at him, and grows even more annoyed, though she still lets him gather her into his arms. Her face is now pink.)

Radri: I am still not marking down today.

—✧✧✧—

(Radri’s head rests against Xan’s shoulder as they rest together; he brushes absent-mindedly through her hair with his fingers, watching the way the last of the day’s sunlight plays across the strands, as they did so many nights ago.)

Xan: Do you remember that first night by the fire, when I arranged your hair?

Radri, eyes closed in contentment: Yes… it's a memory I used to revisit often. It was the first time I saw you smile.

Xan: I... I did?

Radri: You had this faraway, peaceful look on your face... I was unable to return to reverie for hours afterwards. I just kept picturing your smile when I closed my eyes.

Xan: A restlessness that I can relate to all too well. But... you spoke in the past tense, earlier. Is the recollection no longer to your liking?

Radri, defenses low, drifting off: It was a beautiful smile, but once I loved you I couldn't bear it anymore.

(The brushing stops.)

Xan: What do you mean?

Radri, realizing what she confessed: I-I mean… Well, I… My glimpse of it was clearly stolen, and it was not meant for me—you were no doubt recalling a memory. (She sits up, looking away, embarrassed.) When I began to wish dearly that you would look at me like that, I didn't want to see it anymore.

Xan: Well, it is fortunate that you now have memories to replace it, then.

Radri: ...

Xan: …Estel'amin, I know for a fact that I have smiled more with you than I have in the past four decades.

Radri: ...

Xan: *sigh* My beautiful, beautiful Radri, what doubts yet linger in your mind? What reason would I have to be false with you?

Radri: None.

Xan: None.

Radri, unable to contain it anymore: But sometimes, surely, you're just smiling at the beauty of nature around us! How could I presume to have factored into any part of that joy? I merely happen to be present.

Xan, dryly: Yes. Surely, you just “happen to be present” in all of the happiest memories of my life. Radri, there is coincidence, and then there is causation. You can believe me when I say that you are the cause.

Radri: ...

(Xan tilts her face towards his, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek.)

Xan: If the countless words I have spouted in our months together have not been enough to convince you, what shall I do to show you? (As he leaves his kiss, he catches sight of the welling tears in her eyes.) Oh, Estel'amin...

(Radri turns her face quickly away again, covering it with a hand.)

Radri: No—I'm not sad, just touched!

Xan: Your earlier laments are wasted on yourself; you should lend them to me, who seems only capable of making his beloved cry. Though, it gives me the opportunity to kiss away your tears. Shall I?

Radri, lowering the shield of her fingers a fraction to glance back at him disapprovingly: That sounds unpleasant and salty for you.

Xan: And yet I would readily perform the gesture. Do you glimpse now the depths of my devotion?

(As he waits for her acknowledgement, her eyes widen in surprise, and she forgets to shield herself entirely.)

Radri: Oh... you're smiling.

(In his own realization of it, the smile is gone in an instant—but the memory remains.)

—✧✧✧—

A Gift [crossposted on ao3]

—✧✧✧—

Radri: I used to dream of finding someone to share all that I am with. I still cannot believe that I've found you.

Xan, touched and blushing a little, hiding it quickly: I dare not ask if I am all that you dreamed of. —And yet, there are the words now, hanging irrevocably between us. Let me guess: you envisioned gallant knights, white horses?

Radri, laughing: Do you think I immersed myself in love stories? That would be Imoen, not me.

Radri: I… It may be silly to say, but… I couldn't bear them. They were other people's stories; there was no place there for me.

(Xan looks at her softly, understanding; embarrassed, she doesn't meet his eye.)

Radri: B-besides! Even when I dared dream, I could never have imagined you.

Xan, unsure if he should be flattered or insulted: …

Radri: I mean—! You're… so… you.

Xan, unimpressed: I am… so… "me". Surely, in another life, you could have been a wordsmith.

Radri: Agh, just give me a second!

Radri: You were… so… intimidating, to me. Speaking to you felt like walking on a tightrope. ...As a child, I imagined that I would feel instantly at ease. That no matter where I was, with this someone, I would feel a sense of belonging… like I could finally come to rest.

Xan: …

Radri: And that's you.

Xan, blindsided: Radri—you very clearly defined how that is not me.

Radri: Not in the beginning, but it is now. (She waves a hand to the side idly.) A lot had to happen, of course, which I could not have imagined as a child—but, anyway. What about you? (She leans into him, wearing a lighthearted smile.) Am I all you dreamed of?

Xan: If you must know, I dreamed of little; I felt early on that I would not be one to continue on the family line, and chose not to dwell on romance.

Xan: But…

Xan: You have been all that I dared not dream of, Estel'amin. In knowing you, I realize that I have starved myself, for a long, long time…

(He kisses her hair, and she accepts it shyly, too touched to say anything. Xan gives her silent, flushed face an amused look.)

Xan: No response? Ah, I must still intimidate you, I see. (Smoothly, he takes her hand.) Perhaps more exposure will help.

—✧✧✧—

Xan: Sigh…

(Xan glances over at Radri, who hasn't looked up from her journal.)

Xan: Sigh…

(Xan glances over at Radri, who still doesn't look up. Xan sighs for real.)

Xan: It used to be that you would look up at my every sign of distress. (Radri finally looks up at him, but Xan looks away) Oh, how I wish big, strong Radri would come here and comfort me…

Radri, laughing a little: Alright, I'm here. What is it that troubles you? A general malaise?

Xan, frowning a little: Is malaise not already general?

Radri: …

Radri, pulling away and cupping her hand around her ear: My apologies, my lord, but I'm getting another call, from Lady Adventure—

Xan: Wait—

Radri: And she doesn't mind if I don't look up my every word in a dictionary—

Xan: Radri! (He sighs and turns away, giving up) I should have known better than to ask for your attention.

Radri, with a little smile: Oh, but I just remembered that I prefer your company to hers, so I redirected her call.

Xan, feeling sorry for himself: If only that were true.

Radri, teasing: Is what I'm hearing a general malaise?

Xan, still too sorry for himself to meet her eye: It is something, alright.

Radri: Well, perhaps I can work my magic.

—✧✧✧—

Rational Grief Response

—✧✧✧—

Storyteller / Return to Candlekeep

—✧✧✧—

[The first rest after being freed from Candlekeep’s jail; they’re still underground.]

(Radri has hidden herself away in shadow; it’s only through their bond that Xan is able to find where she’s retreated away from the rest of the group. He can’t see her, but he knows she’s nearby.)

Xan: Estel'amin... Will you speak to me?

(For a moment, he fears that he’s mistaken, that she’s not here and that he is only speaking to dust and cobwebs—but at length, she responds.)

Radri: We have nothing to talk about.

(Her voice… he’s facing the wrong alcove. He turns, searching for her direction.)

Xan: You are displeased with me, and for good reason. What I said was uncouth and unwarranted, and it will never happen agai—

(She interrupts his apology, barely listening, her tone clipped and dismissive.)

Radri: You should return to the others. I want to be alone.

(This alcove. He’s sure of it… he thinks. Something is off about her tone of voice, and he realizes that it suggests she’s not angry at him. If not him, then….)

Xan: …I do not think you should be alone in a time like this.

(A bitter laugh—and a fortunate scrap of light hits the familiar crimson of her cloak. There she is, in the darkness: her back is turned to him, and her hair spills dark across her shoulders, which are hunched in on herself as she hugs her knees to her chest, her form made small and cut off from view in the shadow of a cracked pillar. He would like nothing more than to rush over and embrace her—but he waits.)

Radri: Why? Are you afraid that I will spontaneously burst murder and chaos into existence around me if I am left unsupervised?

Xan: Radri—

Radri: The prophecies are written, after all, and I have already been dragging trouble around with me since I stepped out of Candlekeep. All of these spells, these nightmares, and that damned book—I knew it, I knew something was wrong with me! (In the midst of her anger, something in her voice breaks, leaning into sorrow.) You saw it too—dread filled your eyes when you looked at me. And yet when I pleaded with you, you stayed. We sealed it all with a bond that must not break... oh, how deeply you must regret it now. I will never be anything more than an unwanted burden, shuffled between keepers—I am sick of this life!

(He feels for a moment like he’s looking into a mirror—not this lament, but another, though are they not in a way all the same story retold—and the sorry hatred and bitterness in her voice seep readily into his thoughts like an old, unwanted friend. For that moment, he feels it; in the next, he lets it go.)

Xan: Rage at me for my thoughtless words as you will, but do not malign our love. It is true that I once sought to leave you, but it was nothing but the act of a coward, so afraid of the thought of losing you that he believed he would rather live with a hole in his chest than stay and love you. Indeed I knew nothing, for now that I have known your love, nothing across all the Planes could ever convince me of abandoning you again. I have never regretted our bond, nor dreamed of breaking it.

Xan: And what of Gorion? Was he not a father to you—did he not love you as his child? You do yourself and his memory a grave disservice to speak of yourself this way!

(Radri, who had remained unmoving, flinches at his words then with a choked, muffled gasp of breath; he pales, pulling back, worried now that he has overstepped his bounds. And yet, still, he cannot bring himself to leave her entirely to her suffering.)

Xan: If you truly wish it, I will leave. But I fear I cannot believe your request if you do not face me and say it. Please, Estel'amin... will you look at me?

(His heartbeat, loud in his ears, keeps him from any internal estimate of the passage of time. A thought, persistent at the back of his mind, tells him to leave now before he ruins what he has with her any further—and yet he stays.)

(Her cloak slithers across ruined tile, and her form retreats fully behind the blocking pillar… and then she emerges, standing, facing him as he’d asked. Her expression is solemn, and her dark eyes are dull, though something in her gaze still glimmers.)

Radri: I wish I were nothing.

(It is not the truth, and he is relieved for that. He takes a cautious step towards her—and as though he had broken some sort of silent stand-off, Radri’s lip begins to quiver, and then she’s crying, her tears spilling freely down her face. She makes no move to wipe them away; and neither does he, really, because when he rushes to her, he holds her, pulling her to his chest and kissing her atop her head, uncaring of whatever cobwebs certainly cover them both.)

Xan: If you were nothing, how could I hold you? How could I kiss you?

(He kisses her again; she has made no move to hold him in return, but this is a fatigue he understands, and he holds her tightly enough for the both of them.)

Xan: It is painful, I know, but you are here, and my heart is with you—and so is that of your sister, and of your father's old friends, who have through your just leadership become your own. (After just the barest pause, he adds reluctantly,) And I suppose even Viconia must feel some tiny, miniscule shred of supportive, positive emotion somewhere in her heart for you, which is a miracle in itself.

(She is silent, but then,)

Radri: …You referred to her as my sister… Imoen will be overjoyed to hear this.

(It’s too early for her to jest in earnest, but he finds himself holding onto the unlikely hope anyway.)

Xan: Ah, of course, out of everything I have said, this is the one word that sticks. Does this bring a smug smile to your face? I will imagine that it does.

(Radri pulls away from his embrace, which he relaxes, but does not release entirely—nor does she make the full effort to leave. Instead, she gazes quietly at him, seemingly merely in want of the sight of his face. He appreciates the sight of hers in return, but while some life has returned to her endlessly deep eyes, sorrow still lies within. He runs a gentle thumb across her cheek, still stained with tears; he has never truly regretted his nature, but he comes close now.)

Xan, quiet: What should I do, Estel'amin? I am no use in lifting spirits without a spell; that craft has always eluded me. Shall we return to the others, who will surely do what I cannot?

(Rather than accept readily, she glances down and away.)

Radri: I'm... not ready to face them yet. Can you stay here with me... just one moment longer?

Xan: Then I will.

—✧✧✧—

Desire [crossposted on ao3]

—✧✧✧—

(In the early morning, in Baldur’s Gate. Radri rouses from her reverie, only to see Xan already packed for his journey, and making his final preparations before he is off.)

Radri: Were you going to leave without waking me?

(Xan turns to face her; his expression holds some disappointment, but also a resignation, and to a subtler degree, a quiet gratefulness.)

Xan: That was my intent, yes. Though I should have known that it would not be so easy to slip away from you undetected.

(He leaves his backpack on its chair, and sweeps back over to the bed, leaning down to lay a gentle kiss upon her forehead. Radri gazes up at him, still blinking away the last sensations of her reverie.)

Radri: But why?

Xan: Why? If you could see yourself now, you would understand why. It was hard enough to muster the will to pull away from your resting form, let alone resist the pull of your vulnerable, open gaze.

(She snags his sleeve as he begins to pull away.)

Radri: I will walk you to the city gates.

Xan: You will not. If I let you accompany me to the gates, the moment I step through them you will declare, “I will walk you to the next town,” and so it will continue until your next words are “I will walk you to Evereska.” No, I must hold you here, and hold firm.

(She's a little put out—he's got her dead to rights. Radri sits up, glancing about the room.)

Radri: You have everything? Spellbook, components, potions—?

Xan, dryly: Yes, you have provided me with enough health potions to outfit a full adventuring party, and I thank you for your confidence in me.

Radri: …Perhaps I should accompany you to the next town anyway.

(She moves to swing her feet over the edge of the bed, ready to get dressed—but Xan stops her with a firm, unamused gaze.)

Xan: Radri, what am I, a fresh-faced youth being sent on his first adventure? (He sighs, and sits at the edge of the bed, taking her hands in his.) I would like nothing more than to take you back to Evereska with me, but its gates are closed to you. Would you have me be so cruel as to force you to wait outside for me as though you were a stranger?

Radri: You could.

Xan: No. You are my hope, my world, and my soulmate. I could not. Besides, it is you who insisted so adamantly that I keep our relationship a secret—not that I planned on telling my superiors anything in the first place, since it is a personal matter. If we were seen together, the nature of our relationship would be known instantly.

Radri: How so?

Xan: Estel'amin, have you forgotten already how you have transformed me? I would need to study for a hundred years to conceal the love I have for you—and I have no desire to, for I would wish for the whole world to know.

Radri, red: Surely not the whole world.

Xan: Indeed, the whole world. Were this land not ripe with our enemies, I would shout it from the rooftops, and spell it out in the sky... but you have already begun to shrink away from me in terror, I see. Do not worry; I will be discretion itself.

Xan: So, are you satisfied with our farewells? May I take my leave now?

(Radri looks at him, and at the backpack on the chair, and at the ceiling and walls of the room that surround them—a room that, without him, will surely feel large, cold, and empty. She will not be alone after he is gone; the others are still here in the city, ready for adventure, wherever it may take them. Still, she feels as though she is about to return to the loneliness she had lived in in Candlekeep: surrounded by many, yet seen by none.)

(Xan, after waiting and watching throughout her silence, begins at last to pull away—but she holds on, one last time.)

Radri: Are you not going to kiss me?

(A deeply tortured look flashes through his dark eyes, which she recognizes now to be of the kind that he used to send her in their early months together. It spells a yearning for that which he believes he should not have—and before she can wonder what it is that he has forbidden himself this time, he leans in, kissing her. He lingers, tender, savoring the moment… as does she. As they part, at last, he gives a soft, gentle sigh.)

Xan: Now I will think of little else but the taste of your lips. You have ruined me, Estel'amin, and yet I carry your soul with me happily, with all the contentment of a man oblivious to or uncaring of death...

Xan: I promise, I will return to you as soon as I am able.

—✧✧✧—

Sad Influence

— — —✧✧✧— — —

baldur’s gate ii: soa

— — —✧✧✧— — —

Reunion

—✧✧✧—

Birthday Wish [partially crossposted on ao3]

—✧✧✧—

Promise [crossposted on ao3]

—✧✧✧—

Innate Evil

—✧✧✧—

Xan: Do you think your father would have approved of me?

Radri: Hm? My human father, or my divine father? Because from what I've read, Bhaal was a cruel and difficult god to impress, and you haven't the temperament for his methods of worship.

Xan: (shivers) No, and I am glad I do not. I meant Gorion, of course.

Radri: ...

Xan: ...You are giving it more consideration than I thought. Never mind, Radri—it was a foolish question, and perhaps I no longer wish to hear the answer.

Radri: I think he would have liked you. We shared a similar sense of humor; he would have enjoyed your jokes.

Xan: Yes, these famous jokes that I myself am not aware of. I see, so I would become a court jester to not just the princess, but the king, as well.

Radri: I think if you were a court jester, it would be to the king first, and to the princess second. —And did you just liken me to a princess?

Xan, red: A slip of the tongue, I am sure. Though given the abysmal attitudes of nobility in the human lands, you deserve far better than to be compared to—well, let us just move on so that I do not inflate your ego any further.

(Xan turns his gaze back to his spellbook, ready to return to their earlier comfortable silence—but Radri takes his hand in hers with a soft smile.)

Radri: You make me happy, Tahlimil. No matter what he might have thought of you... he would be glad for that.

(The corners of his lips rise slightly, in what has almost become a regular occurrence… then the smile falls.)

Xan: I... mentioned before, my dreams, where my parents disapprove of our relationship....

Xan: I think they would have their misgivings. Certainly about the way that I have thrown everything aside for you, like a lovesick fool... a fool that perhaps I am. I have left my career... left Evereska... and indeed, one could say I will begin to shirk my duty next, though I have not been struck dead yet.

Xan: But I think if they had the chance to know you, they... they...

Xan: *Sigh* Never mind. This is a pointless line of thought. I cannot imagine what they would think, and I will not see them again for an eternity, and that is only if I am lucky. I regret having brought it up.

(Radri gazes quietly at him, then tilts her head against his shoulder, the contact gentle and light. He does not tense, so she squeezes his hand lightly, pressing their palms together: for the briefest moment, some of what burdens him is shared with her.)

(He sighs again—not sharp this time, but soft—and he tilts his head against hers.)

—✧✧✧—

[A while after this exchange:

Xan: I wanted to enchant a ring for you, but this one overshadows everything I will ever be able to give you. How ironic that it comes from the Shadowmaster of Athkatla.

Radri: And how unfortunate that none of us can even wear it, our equipment being what it is. I would rather have your ring, instead.

Xan: A mere bauble will not protect your life, and I have no time to enchant it properly. Perhaps in the future... but no, I have distracted myself from what I wanted to say.]

Radri: I've been thinking about your ring.

Xan: My ring...? Ah, the one that has yet to be made.

Radri: But it already has, hasn’t it? You’ve carried a ring with you ever since you returned from Evereska.

Xan: You noticed? I can slip nothing past you, I see. But it is not complete, Estel'amin—as I alluded to before, it is unenchanted, and as such, it is yet nothing.

Radri: It is not nothing. Its current form is to its advantage: enchanted, it would have to compete with the other enchanted equipment I carry, but unenchanted, I can wear it always.

Radri: Even now, it would bring me courage—or, would you rather that it raise my sense of self-preservation, although as I keep trying to convince you, it is already appropriately high?

Radri: I... I suppose we speak so much of the future now, and of dreams of a quiet life, and when we’re so far from all of it, I’d feel one step closer to…. Oh, never mind. I feel like I’ve stolen a secret from you; I'm sorry, I won't mention it again.

(She looks away, out across the cityscape; in the sunset, even the slums district appears awash in glittering gold. Beside her, Xan remains quiet for a moment, then retrieves something from the pocket of his robes.)

Xan: This ring has been passed down in my House. Through trial and tribulation, and the endless march of time, its magics are gone, having long served their purpose; it holds only its history now. I carried it with me from Evereska thinking, perhaps, that I would give it new life—that when it was ready, I would present it to you in ceremony...

Xan: But perhaps I have been thinking too long.

Xan: Here. My ring, unfinished and unpresentable as it is. If it pleases you, even in such a state as this, it is yours—but I promise you, I will strive to make it worthy of you someday.

Radri, meeting his eye warmly as she accepts it: I love it, Tahlimil. It is already worthy.

Xan, embarrassed and relieved: Why does my mind insist on tormenting me with thoughts of your judgment, when my heart already knows what you will say? Though now that it is on your finger, perhaps it is time to let go of my frivolous dreams of holding a formal ceremony. We may as well just find a quiet spot in which to say our vows.

Radri: No, we must still have the ceremony. Because you wish for it, it must be so, and it will be grand and beautiful.

—

Radri: I lost it.

Xan: Lost what?

Radri: I lost it! Linvail's ring! I had already been thinking of getting rid of it since it only takes up space in my backpack, but—to not even be able to recoup the barest fraction of its value by bringing it to a shop?! Oh, I can't believe I—Xan?

(Radri looks up in time to see Xan shaking in silent laughter, which then bursts out in a full laugh.)

Xan: Of course! Of course, you would care so little about a ring powerful enough to belong to royalty that you let it be misplaced! What an absurd life it is we lead!

Xan: Meanwhile, mere trinkets are given the treatment of kings—even the blooms I had set upon your hair a year ago were kept carefully preserved in your journal, as though they were imbued with a lifetime's worth of magic and not merely painfully ordinary. Sentiment will not save your life, but you hold it dearer than the things that could.

Radri, half insulted: I think I strike an appropriate balance between sentiment and practicality.

Xan: Oh, Estel'amin, smooth the furrow in your brow; I do not laugh at you, but at myself. I see that even if I spent centuries in study, you would not love the ring I enchanted for you for its boons, but for my efforts. What pointless, pointless jealousies I bear…

(His rare mirth fades as he sobers once more.)

Xan: But I am sorry that the ring was lost—it was truly in a class of its own, and now you will earn nothing for it.

Radri, still in shock and awe of what she’s just witnessed: No, I... think in the end, it paid for itself.

—✧✧✧—

Dragon Slayer [crossposted on ao3]

—✧✧✧—

Just Friends (a direct redraw)

—✧✧✧—

A Monster

—✧✧✧—

The Graveyard Encounter (an outline of changes)

[At the inn, after Xan survives and Bodhi lies dead:]

Xan, at the tail end of asking Radri a question: ...What do you think?

(He turns to her, but Radri has her head down, and clearly hasn't been listening to him.)

Xan: Radri?

Radri, quiet: You nearly died.

Xan: I know. Admittedly, I am still shaken by the encounter. If it were not for you and my moonblade, I would have been transformed into something abhorrent... once again, you have my gratitude, Estel'amin.

(Xan seems content to leave it at that, but Radri isn't. She lifts her gaze to his, revealing the tears in her eyes.)

Radri: But it was so close.

Radri: If I hadn't formed a connection to your moonblade—If I hadn't asked the right question that day—

Radri: W-would you even have told me on your own? That it was possible? Or would you have kept silent, and died today?

Xan, worried by how shaken she looks: Radri... none of us are ever far from death. Though it may not look it, every day is like this one. Luck, coincidence, and sheer miracles save us—

Radri, firm, distraught: Our actions save us.

Radri: And today I could do nothing but watch—Don't you understand?

Radri: I-it's not like I couldn't get there fast enough.

Radri: I was right there—but it's like I was frozen again, and—

Radri: And I would've had to watch you die—

(Radri's voice breaks, her tears falling—and Xan, truly concerned now, goes to hold her)

Xan: You did act, Estel'amin. I could not have been saved without your will.

Radri: ....

Radri, unable to word the turmoil she's feeling, just repeating: It was too close.

Xan: I know.

(Radri just lets herself be held for a moment, instinctively searching for him through their bond again, but it's too faint for her to feel anything close to what she did in that moment in the graveyard, when the urgency of the moment had lended her a single-minded determination. She pulls away to look at him—the dusty shoulders of his robes, his combat-mussed hair, the fading scar on his cheek... his worried eyes. She'd caused that, by making a bigger deal of this than he had.)

Radri: Tahlimil?

Xan: Yes?

(She'd wanted to ask that he not leave her sight for the time being, but holds the words back.)

Radri: You... you were asking me something earlier, weren't you? I interrupted you.

(Xan can tell that's not what she wanted to say, but lets her change the subject—and knowing how affected she still is, he changes his question, too.)

Xan: I asked... if you wished to join me in the bath.

(The tub the Copper Coronet provides is barely big enough for one person to soak in, let alone two; Radri tries to communicate this, but in her current state, it comes out as:)

Radri, caught off guard, puzzled: I... but... the inn, it doesn't... what, take turns?

Xan, warm, amused at her sentence fragments: No, no. Would you believe that I discovered a bath house nearby? Far too late to enjoy after our escapades in the sewers, but perhaps it was waiting for when it would be most needed. There is a private room we can share. What do you think?

Radri: Oh. I... I think that sounds nice.

(Xan's small smile becomes relieved as he sees the tension in her shoulders already relax a fraction.)

Xan: Then follow me.

— — —✧✧✧— — —

baldur’s gate ii: tob

— — —✧✧✧— — —

World’s Saddest (Hypothetical) Chosen

—✧✧✧—

Innate Evil, Self Accusation Edition

—✧✧✧—

[The TOB scene where Xan cooks her an omelette.]

(While Radri begins to eat, Xan just leans his chin on his hand, gazing contentedly at her.)

Xan: When this is over... when we have made our home... I would cook breakfast for you each morning.

Radri: I see you don't wish to suffer through my meager skills in the kitchen.

Xan: I could never find any aspect of my lady wanting, and your skills will grow with time. No, I would cook for you to love you.

(It’s been so long, and he’s said that he loves her so many times, that Radri imagines she should have developed at least some resistance to it by now—but she hasn’t. She blushes, touched.)

Radri: Are you not going to eat, too?

(Xan gazes dreamily at her blushing features, fully content.)

Xan: Oh, I have already been fed, and most heartily. If I had known even earlier the extent of what shy expressions you reveal in private...

(Radri blushes harder.)

Radri: Each day it becomes harder to believe that you are the same man who spent ten minutes gathering the words to ask if he could kiss me.

Xan: Ah, but I am not the same man. I am remade each time I wake and meet your eyes; each day I walk at your side; each night I rest my beating heart beside yours. I have been transformed a thousand times over, and wish to be again.

Radri, gathering him a forkful: I think you should be transformed by this omelette.

(Xan takes the bite from her fork, and his expression falls, disappointed.)

Xan: Oh... I do not think I added enough salt, after all.

—✧✧✧—

silly alternate universes

radri was raised “evil”

radri was raised in evereska

#i didn't even know what to title this. 7000 words of me getting this ship out of my system??#sovo writes #baldur's gate #honestly though the way he was like 'she'll get over me' after the effect he had in HERE is like. i dont think so my man #xan x radri

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