#ardbertxwol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fheythfully · 4 years

Text

only if for a night [NSFW]

She turns in a slow circle and notes the thorough recreation of her most cherished space, where none but those dear to her soul have been. She’s not alone, she finds with dream-like surprise: Ardbert stands solid and uncertain by the entrance, tracking his eyes over every inch of the room with a look not unlike hunger. Their eyes meet and she falters in her comfort, reality bleeding in with concern--has he been pulled in alongside her dreams at Feo’s insistence? Has she dreamt him up, too?

Oldroses bud and bloom behind her with the speed of seasons, all coalescing in the blink of an eye and the steady beat of a heart. A rock has appeared in her throat that she swallows past. The waking world pulls at her with its worries and she bats them all away with a thought, a flutter of invisible wings sweeping across her furrowing brow.

“Ardbert,” she calls out his name. Real, she decides stubbornly, with all the insistence of a dreaming, tired hero. “Dream with me.”

Click here for AO3 or the read more.

She’s dreaming of home. Pixie laughter echoes in her ears and wings flutter against her cheeks, dusting her skin in glitter. Feo Ul’s comforting voice whispers promises of rest and she lets the King take her away, past flashes of Vylbrand’s coasts and Coerthan snow until she awakens in her own bedroom. Sunlight blesses the room in some indecipherable dawn or noon, the world outside blinding and unknown. Comforting light, familiar light; of sunshine and late spring, so unlike the angry sky she finds herself under day after day.

“Ardbert,” she calls out his name. Real, she decides stubbornly, with all the insistence of a dreaming, tired hero. “Dream with me.”

She falls into her bed, bedroom meticulously recreated by memory and pixie magic alike. The edges of the room blur into a pleasant hue and the stairs behind Ardbert leading above are hazy, unapproachable. She is happy with her small corner, familiar flowers and lanterns casting her in their pink, soft glow.

She beckons for him to join her and hesitantly he does, armour and all. At her sullen look he removes what he can, fingers stiff over an action not performed in a hundred years. It disappears into air once gone from his body.

“I missed you,” she tells him as he slowly sinks into sheets as soft as spun pixie cotton. Her body seeks out his and she props herself up on one elbow, the other running fingers over the simple shirt on his chest. “Do ghosts dream?” She wonders aloud, but the thought is swept away in the ease of Feo Ul’s affectionate magic. “I wondered how you and yours fared,” she continues, gazing into the ocean of his eyes in a moment of clarity. This conversation between them is a familiar one, gone over many times before in her room at the Pendants--except now he lies beside her, warm to the touch. She wants to cry and marvel at the dream both.

Her palm rests delicately against his throat, thumb lingering over his unsteady heartbeat. “I'm sorry for all that's happened.”

She feels him swallow against her skin. “Is this real?” He asks.

“I don't know,” she tells him. “I don't care,” she affirms and presses herself alongside the line of him, aching in how familiar he is. Time flows rich and heady around them as they gaze at each other, together in a way they haven’t been since he returned back to his world--the world she is on now, whole and physical yet he is nothing but a ghost wandering the realm.

“I don't want you to be so alone,” she murmurs, finding a space for her between his neck and shoulder. “ I don't want to be alone. Please dream with me, Ardbert.”

Slowly, his arms settle around her and she falls into his embrace. Inhales the scent of ash and leather and ocean brine. Her lips find skin and she presses a kiss there, tender and patient; when he trembles beneath her she lets him adjust to the sensation.

When his fingers travel up her arm, she sighs into it; when they curl at the base of her skull into her hair she murmurs in encouragement. It had been only once, before, but she remembers him as well as she knows her own self. Pixie magic or dreamstate, Ardbert or not Ardbert; she wants this, desperately and achingly.

She lets him set the pace, her ghost unseen for such a lonely, tragic century. She allows her head to be tilted up as he leans down and presses his mouth against her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes and at last her lips. It's slow and unsure and she pulls back, one hand cupping the side of his uncertain face.

“It's okay,” she tells him. “We don't have to be alone anymore.”

Her words undo him: relief flashes across his eyes and then he's upon her, body over hers as he flips her to her back and brackets her between his arms. His mouth against her burns as much as it aches, desperate and needy and sweet. She wants him everywhere, needs him like a long sought missing puzzle piece sliding into place.

His mouth leaves bruises on her neck and collarbone. She arches into him with a demand for more and the dreamscape gives her what she wants: her naked chest brushing against the soft cotton of his shirt. The groan he gives at seeing her inflames the inferno building within her. She catches his face in her hands before he can move to skin now unclothed. “It’ll only be what you want,” she tells him. In lieu of answer he turns his face and kisses the flat of her palm. In moments he too is bereft of what's remained of his clothes.

It's been too long , some waking part of her worries: how to move, where to touch her partner, how to watch for their telltale signs of pleasure. The dream sweeps it all away as she moves her arms over his body, cataloguing scars and muscle familiar from so long ago. His tongue swirls around her nipple and then the other and she arches off the bed, a cry at her lips. He travels further down, pressing reverent kisses between her breasts and down the tight skin of her stomach, until he's settled between her legs and she is the one left trembling. There is no time for fear anymore; only anticipation. He places a kiss at the juncture of her thighs and then his tongue finds her folds. Slowly, as if they have all the time in the world--in this dream we do, we do she murmurs to him, hands buried in his hair--he drags his tongue up towards her aching clit. Her moan of pleasure is piercing and she feels such relief as he continues working her, as if she's waited all this time since the last for him to come back to her. As if she's known the feeling of him all her life and can't imagine ever going without.

She comes against his mouth faster than ever before, shaking as he slows and waits for her body to settle. When her breathing evens out he glances up to meet her eyes, the air between them electric, and slides two fingers deep into her.

His name spills from her lips. “Ardbert,” she begs, worships, aware of his gaze devouring her as he moves inside of her. It's too much but not nearly enough. When he presses his tongue again against her she's lost once more, clenching around his fingers as they find the spot that aches so sweetly for him and press up against it. His name is a broken mantra on her lips. It's so good, he's so good to her as if he knows her as intimately as she knows him--tears slip from her eyes as she recognizes this fact, remembers the last time she had been able to touch him and how she cannot now. She chases them away, determined to enjoy this dream, this gift, whatever it is, to its fullest.

His eyes are intense on her as she comes down from her orgasm, and in them she sees that same knowledge, the same desire to forget. So she beckons him up against her body again and rises up to kiss him. She tastes herself in his mouth, chases his tongue with hers and bumps teeth against teeth. The feeling of him is hot and heavy against her, chest to chest and thigh to thigh; when her hand wanders down to wrap around him the groan he gives against her lips is world shattering.

He murmurs her name and then drops his head against her as she begins to move, breath wet and comforting against her breast. She wants him in a way so heartbreaking that it pulls at her, this image of them together in bliss in her own bed. Her bookshelves are familiar--the scent of ever blooming oldroses--a novel open and dog eared the way she'd left it--

She presses against him and they turn. Beneath her, he lies flushed and wanting. His eyes trace her body in the dim glow of her room, over every curve and scar; she does the same to him, drinking him deep with her eyes. She does not want this dream to end.

“Ella,” he says her name--in reverence, in heartache, in knowing . The truth hangs like a sword poised above them. She sets her jaw and leans down to kiss him behind his ear, the way she remembers he’d enjoyed. Down the column of his neck, continuing her descent. Her tongue lingers over the dusky nipples catching her attention. All the while her hand sweeps over him delicately, from head to base and over his thighs. Her fingers are wet with pre-cum. She wants to taste him, take him in her mouth and watch him come undone before her the way he had, but when she moves lower he catches her chin and shakes his head.

She bites her bottom lip. Next time , she promises herself, determined that there will be one. Settling back on her thighs she watches him take her in: her legs bracketing his, the rise and fall of her breasts as she guides herself onto him. At the first feeling of him she can't hold her composure any longer and moans, breath hitching as she sinks deeper.

“I missed you,” tumbles out of her mouth. Her eyes are shut and it feels like coming home. “It wasn't the same--not after you--”

Warm, calloused hands grip at her waist and her eyes flutter open to meet his. He looks as debauched as she feels: mouth open in pleasure, red flushing his cheeks and pupils so blown she can no longer see the ocean blue of his eyes. She trembles over him, waiting as the moment settles over them.

“I missed you,” she repeats herself softly and then moves. The slide of him is heavenly within her, and the sound he makes with his eyes still focused on hers is even more so. She sets the pace as she talks, a slow and teasing rhythm as she edges them both close to completion. “I'd look at the ocean and think of you. I took up an axe and thought of you. I’d study the stars and think of you.”

Her voice breaks as his hands spasm at her waist, gripping her tighter. She stops her tenuous movements over him and leans forward to link her arms behind his neck, her breath fluttering against his earlobe. “I’d touch myself and think of you,” the confession is whispered. He twitches within her and she presses her face against his hair, loving and sad as her fingers run through the short strand at his neck. “I'd have these dreams and it was always you. So please, Ardbert--” she pulls back to gaze into his eyes. “Make me yours again.”

The words are barely in the air between them before his mouth is against hers once more, hungry and teeth bumping as he surges up into her, hips snapping against hers enough to make her cry. Her breasts press up against his chest and drag against it, catching a moan from deep within them both as he drives further and further into her. She meets his rhythm with her own body, meeting him thrust for thrust and bruise for bruise as his hands press into her waist and she clutches at his neck, his shoulders; she feels one hand leave her skin only to settle in the infinitely small space between them and press into her tender clit, drawing her cries even higher. He finds that space inside of her he'd had earlier with his fingers and ruts up into it, so deep and filling her just so until she knows nothing but him and the taste of his mouth, the sound of her name on his lips as he tells her how good she is, how warm and tight and how he'd missed her too and how he doesn't want anyone but her--

She comes with her cries swallowed by his chasing mouth, walls clenching around him and she feels the groan he lets out, feels the reverberation of it into deep into her own bones. She's still caught in the thrall of it as he pumps into her, all rhythm broken as he chases after his own release; once, twice, brushing against her tender body and making her sob in pleasure and pain both. On the third time he stills with a cry and she feels him finish inside of her, hot and trembling and so heart achingly familiar.

The both of them sit pressed together for a time, catching their breath, before at last she pulls away. “Don't go,” she tells him sleepily as they untangle and fall into bed properly, arms winding around each other as if refusing to let go for even one moment. “Don't leave me alone again,” she murmurs, eyes already drifting shut--to further sleep? To awaken in bed alone?--as she whispers her selfish request. Her head finds purchase on his shoulder, his arms and legs entwining her. She feels his lips brush the top of her head.

“I can't,” he says.

She already knows.

#this is literally just pwp #my first attempt to boot so uh #jazz hands i guess #the world needs more ardbert content #my writing #ardbertxwol #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ardbert/wol

15 notes · View notes

aethernoise · 5 years

Text

take my arms that I might reach you

“I had been afraid to do anything more than watch for fear of making things even worse,” Ardbert said, and Alyx realized that she, too, had been afraid.

Join me as I attempt to process some Ardbert and Alyx feelings. (wc1187, spoilers through lvl79 MSQ)

- - - - - - - -

“I had been afraid to do anything more than watch for fear of making things even worse,” Ardbert said, and Alyx realized that she, too, had been afraid.

She had so much to tell him, but there was so much of it she couldn’t. For as fond of talk and as skilled she was with languages, the only language they lacked was touch. Alyx thought it passing strange how crippling that felt--perhaps it was something she took for granted in all of her friendships. Perhaps she never realized the true gravity of being able to place a steadying hand on one’s shoulder, or draw one close to lean onto hers; how had she never realized what essential communication existed in an embrace? How had she not realized how much she spoke without her words? She knew it well with Aymeric, and she knew it well when they were apart. Yet this was not a lover’s touch she felt silenced and stifled without, it was something else.

Ardbert was something else.

Her heart had ached for him even when they were enemies: ached for the guilt, for the loss, for the kind of helplessness only she could truly fathom. It was a sadness and a depth of understanding unlike any other, one that grew with renewed vigor ever since their reunion on the First. How could she possibly tell him how she felt? How could she tell him that for the first time, despite the loneliness that followed her everywhere, his voice and his haunting of her room made her feel that for the first time she was not alone?

Maybe he knew. Maybe it wasn’t necessary. Even still, there were times when all Alyx wanted to do was take his hand.

He was waiting for her when her hands were stained--stained so bright even Y’shtola hadn’t recognized her, a thought that still made heat grow behind her eyes. From the depths of the wood she returned to the solitude of her room and when she looked down at her palm through light-clouded eyes, she let the hero’s smile crack.

“And what if that changes? What if it overwhelms me?”

What if I’m not strong enough? What if I fail?

And she wasn’t. She did. The light poured through her open window as a constant reminder while she sat awake on the edge of her bed. She could have closed the blinds again, but couldn’t deny the treacherous sky above, nor the sickness that glowed inside her. She couldn’t deny she was a villain who hid in plain sight of those she failed to save.

They needed her. Everyone needed her. Everyone in this world, and her own. And yet..

She felt more like a chained monster than a hero. She was a threat, and a barely useful one--a fraction of her former strength under forced caution and control. For gods’ sake, she thought bitterly, I can’t even use an aetheryte without fear of the strain.

And certainly not the Ocular’s path to the Source. Alyx dared not entertain what could happen were she to attempt traversing the rift in this state.

“I had been afraid to do anything more than watch for fear of making things even worse” she heard Ardbert’s words again. “But no longer.”

He had reached for her twice now. The first time had almost hurt from the surprise of it. The second was affirmation, however brief. The distance remained and Alyx’s starvation for something, anything--anything to make her feel human, to feel unlike an abomination self-contained--

Anything to ease the suffering of another after all the pain she had caused--

The third time had yet to follow, so this time Alyx reached for him, and then suddenly there he was beside her, as he always was, but truly there: not a vision of her mind but a man, a man whose edges seemed soft but whose eyes she could no longer see through to the wall behind him. His skin was supple and soft and so warm, so alive, burning through even the slightest touch of her fingertips.

He inhaled sharply and flinched, but flinched into her touch rather than away from it. A pale flush came to his cheeks and a sparkle to his eyes; he hastily moved to wipe away tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said shakily, embarrassed or surprised or simply overwhelmed, “It’s just been… so long…”

“I know,” she said quietly, and started to draw her hand away from his face as if in apology. She could scarcely imagine being alone for so long, never mind without physical contact. But before her touch could leave him he grasped her hand with one of his own, and then it was her turn to lose her breath. His hand was calloused but gentle even in haste, and somehow, she realized it was his bare hand and not a glove.

“Wait, please,” he breathed, and squeezed his eyes shut, “Don’t stop.”

His hand eclipsed hers as she cradled his face her palm. His expression showed both tension and relief, brows knit slightly in concentration, in fierce desire to focus on the feeling--she smoothed her thumb along the curve of his cheekbone and his fingers trailed over hers, feeling each valley between her knuckles, following the tendons to her wrist.

Ardbert opened his eyes to look at her again and she swore she had never seen such an expression on anybody’s face in her life. Her lungs felt heavy and her heart ached and beat into every tiny fiber of her being, almost uncomfortably, as if for just a moment her body’s rhythms were out of their normal time and trying to sync with his.

“This is no coincidence,” he murmured, echoing his words from the tower--the second time he had reached out his hand. His tone was different now, but Alyx couldn’t describe it. This, this tender collision of flesh and the impossible, this moment of comfort between them--this feeling like she had known him all her life or somehow longer, all crystallizing into the lacing of their fingers together, the gentle squeeze, and then, oh--

They were so close now. Alyx could swear they were even breathing in time. Deep and indescribable impulse pulled them together ever more, and she swallowed thickly. He dipped his head slightly toward hers and--

“Ardbert,” she said in a breaking voice. A syncing of breath had become a noted lack of it. His head fell to the crook of her neck, and as he relinquished more of his weight--his impossible, possible nearness--she wrapped him in her arms.

“I know,” his voice was muffled in her collar. Alyx could no longer tell who was trembling.

“If you need a push, I’ll be right there behind you; if you lose control, I’ll do my best to stop you.”

Right now what she needed was to hold him and to be held. It was what they both needed, and they had finally been able to say it.

#i think this is kind of a hot mess but here you go #ffxiv writing #ffxiv fanfic #shadowbringers #ardbert #ardbertxwol #not really?? but adding the tag #idk two good kids touch starved on main #one for like 100 years #this is what i do since they won't give me an ingame 'hug ardbert' option #my writing #emmerwrites

112 notes · View notes

ladyramora · 4 years

Note

I need more of your urianger/ardbertxwol! I can’t get enough! I was wondering if you could do wol pushing herself too much and urianger or ardbert fussing over them and wanting to take care of them?

(How about both?)

"Prithee. I wouldst ask thee not push thyself beyond thy limits," Urianger says, laying a hand over your forehead, cool to the touch in comparison to your fever flushed skin. "Thou art worth more than that of thine titles..."

You offer him a wan smile in return and make no promises.

Urianger, well aware of that old trick, only sighs at you.

"He's right, you know."

You turn your head to see Ardbert standing at your bedside, arms crossed and he gazes down at you disapprovingly like he had any room to judge.

"You should take better care of yourself."

You grunt at him, closing your eyes. You didn't want to hear that from him. He was as much a reckless hero as you.

"Hey." Poke. Poke poke. You twitch, hand flopping near your face to ward off Ardbert's ghostly touch. It was an odd feeling. Tingly and cold.

"Hey! Don't ignore me!" Ardbert huffs. "We both just want you to be safe and well."

Urianger is smiling down at you with warm eyes and an even gentler smile as you turn your face to look at him instead.

"If I am not mistaken, thy spectral companion expresses similar concern?"

You sigh, nodding your head.

Ardbert grumbles.

Urianger chuckles, brushing back your hair. His touch so soothing that it makes your eyes droop with every caress.

There is a glow behind your eyelids and you flit your eyes open lazily to see Arbert had knelt down by your bedside and was staring at you with his head pillowed on his arms.

"Please. You have to be careful," Ardbert says seriously but oh so quietly. Looking at you with such a soft look on his face.

"I won't watch another person I care about disappear," Ardbert closes his eyes, head shaking. "Not again. Not you. And if not for me," Arbert tilts his head towards Urianger. "Do it for him. For your friends. For all the people who care about you."

Your tongue feels thick in your mouth and your limbs feel heavy, but you manage to raise your hand up enough to stroke your fingers over his face. It tingles, cold yet somehow warm at the same time. Like stretching your hand out to touch a sunbeam on a cold day.

Arbert tucks his face into your palm, cupping his hand over yours and closing his eyes against the light that flares up every time you touch him.

You blink with the softness of a kiss brushed across your forehead. Warm and solid.

"Pray take thine ease, my dearest," Urianger murmurs with another kiss pressed to your brow. "We will protect thee."

You smile. As capable as you were, it always filled you with warmth and a feeling of safety to hear Urianger say such.

"Well, he will," cuts in Ardbert, a quirk of a smile on his lips. "I don't know how many times you'll have to tell this elf of yours that you are the only solid, real thing I can make contact with. What am I supposed to do? Sweep you up into my arms and run away?" A considering look comes over his face then. "Actually, that might work..."

You snort, smiling in amusement, and push him off balance with a shove at his face. Arbert squawks in outrage and flails backwards to land on his butt.

"Hey, I was being serious..!" Arbert grouses from his place on the floor. "We should test this theory!"

You smile up into Urianger's face as he tucks you in. "Rest now, my beloved," Urianger murmurs sweetly with a kiss to your cheek. You hum low and give him a look.

Urianger exhales in soft amusement, knowing what you want without your asking. "Rest," he reiterates, and presses a kiss obligingly to your lips.

Arbert comes to stand at his side, arms crossed and nodding along. "Aye. Sweet dreams, hero. Unless you want me to tuck you in, too? Tell you a bedtime story mayhap? Oh, alright, if you insist. Once upon a time there was a foolish, reckless hero..."

You huff an amused breath and close your eyes, tired but happy. The sound of Arbert's silly bedtime story sending you slowly drifting to sleep.

#ladyramora writes #ardbert x wol #wol x urianger #ffxiv shadowbringers spoilers #shadowbrings spoilers #ffxiv shadowbringers #ffxiv 5.0 spoilers #5.0 #WoL can have all the husbands #gotta collect em all #ambiguous wol #established relationship

115 notes · View notes

st4rd1ver · 9 months

Text

That wasn't really what they meant.

22 notes · View notes

aethernoise · 5 years

Text

parallel lines

more confusing bittersweet Alyx and Ardbert feelings. wc 495

How easily they fell in sync, how natural their rhythm. When they were together it was as the movement of involuntary muscles, as easy as blinking, as breathing in and out. Their shared and quickened pulse, the weighted breath in time; the closeness was nearly unbearable in its depth--yet their hearts hammered the demand for more. They were pieces made whole, fragments that fit together perfectly, fractures seeking completion in frenzied harmony of their flesh.

...but not flesh. They were as a body and its shadow, mirrored, but never really touching. Parallel lines nearly indiscernible from one another yet never meeting. Any feeling of physical touch was invented by her lonely imagination, by her heart starving for contact. None of it was real, at least not physically.

Despite the facts--such as they were, the ones that she had--some part of it felt like more. This warm and familiar impossibility brought her comfort, if ephemeral. The embrace of a phantom, that’s what it was: invented, created, willed into fraudulent existence by her desire for something other than the heavy emptiness this light had created in her. Despite the facts, in her heart, it felt real.

It felt real enough that Alyx felt guilty dreaming of him.

Ardbert was his own man, after all. He had--past and present tense--his own life, his own dreams and struggles, his own adventures and moments of uncertainty and loneliness. He had a life hauntingly similar to her own, but that did not make it hers. He knew things nobody else could, had experienced things nobody else ever will.

Except for her.

He was the empathetic shade whose weight she swore she felt shift the mattress. And he was warm, somehow, either truly radiating heat through pure psychic energy or the strength of her imagination.

“Alyx, is…” his voice was gruff from fatigue. (Was it? Was he tired? How?)

“Is this alright?”

She opened her eyes, unmoving. Blinking away spots of light she saw the wide-eyed but tired--yes, tired--concern on his face. He was beside her, not beside her, only a few fulms away.

“I don’t mean to, well,” he fumbled softly, swallowing, “I know you’re--”

Engaged? Loyal? Cripplingly lonely and alienated by what’s happening to me?

“It’s fine,” she gave him a lopsided smile, shifting her weight. “Just don’t get handsy.”

Arbdert scoffed, clearly flustered and possibly insulted. “I’m not--I would never.” Not unless you wanted me to, his fleeting glance seemed to suggest.

She didn’t, but she wondered if he knew what she was dreaming. She wondered if he knew the bizarre and strangled feeling of wanting him to know but also never to know, both in equal measure--the craving for understanding and the shameful fear of being misconstrued. These dreams were just dreams, same as any others, same as any other creation of her loneliness.

And this, this was just a girl and her shadow: sleeping but not sleeping, touching but not touching, parallel lines together and apart.

#my writing #ffxiv writing #ardbertxwol #KIND OF #again this is very #yknow.#idk #COMPLICATED.#drabbles #sundered #is the tag lads #idk this kind of came out of nowhere #and demanded to be written #now i can move on w my life lol #back to what i had INTENDED to write #which was not this

50 notes · View notes