#y'shtola x runar | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladyramora · 2 months

Text

Satisfying the Sorceress of Slitherbough

Y'shtola x Taiyo (Male Miqo'te WoL)

Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV

Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Y'shtola Rhul/Taiyo Sarutobi

Summary:

Taiyo and Y'shtola are finally reunited.

Y'shtola has waited for him far longer, and it is up to Taiyo to make up for lost time.

....

↓↓↓ Spoilers for Shadowbringers below the cut ↓↓↓

Tags: Patch 5.0 Shadowbringers Spoilers, Established Relationship, Jealousy, Reunion Sex, Oral Sex, Cunnilingus, Intercrural Sex, Hand Jobs, Breast Fucking, Vaginal Sex, Penis in Vagina Sex, Lube, Assertive Y'shtola, That WoL Stamina, Taiyo is a Wife Guy, Praise, Praise Kink, Canon Typical Y'shtola Femdom Mommy Jokes, Biting, Cowgirl Position, Creampie, Cum Eating, Loads of Cum, Wall Sex, Named WoL, Miqo'te WoL, Male WoL.

....

Formerly a private fic from 2022 for my friend Soup!

.....

....

...

Taiyo could admit to some feelings of unease in witness to the way Runar looked at Y'shtola—nay, it was Master Matoya to him, was it not? She was 'Shtola to him. More than family, closer than anyone else to her aside from the original Master Matoya, 'Shtola's mentor.

He recognized the look in the ronso's eyes. That mix of awe, respect, and fond affection. It was the very same look Taiyo had seen in the mirror often before he and Y'shtola had started their relationship.

Feelings.

Runar obviously had feelings beyond the simple respect and admiration for the sorceress that was the leader of his people. Taiyo could not blame him for that, but it did not mean he was not bothered by it.

The thought niggled at him. That perhaps Runar had developed a closeness to Y'shtola. That they had formed a bond. Instead of allowing such thoughts to take root and grow unpleasant feelings, Taiyo focuses on offering his assistance to the people of Slitherbough.

Taiyo has only just finished assisting with watering some crops with an unfortunate cracked and leaking water pot when Y'shtola strides up to him and grabs him by the wrist.

Taiyo blinks, offering a quick wave to the duskwight woman he had been speaking with as his fellow Scion and lady love drags him off with a short explanation of borrowing him.

He is quiet as she leads him, taking in the parts of the camp he had yet to explore as they pass through to what seems to be her quarters. More importantly than that he was savoring the feel of her hand in his, the sight of her back—where his eyes wandered just a bit at the surprise of crisscrossing fabric across exposed skin, the elegant dip of her spine where he quite suddenly yearned to press his lips.

Not yet, no. It was the familiar sight of her swishing tail and the feathered crop of her hair, the confident grace in which she walked. With her staff held in her hand, along with the jewelry and feathers she adorned herself with, she looked very much the part of a wise sorceress who was the capable leader of these people. Master Matoya.

Taiyo's lips quirk at the thought of what Y'shtola's mentor would think of her pupil taking her name for her own.

Taiyo finds himself ushered into Y'shtola's quarters, the door closed and locked behind them. He sweeps his eyes over the room they enter, finding books on every surface in a similar state as Urianger's abode had been in Il Mehg. A sense of familiarity washes over him, as this place held so many touches that loudly spoke of Y'shtola. It was a comfort. This was Y'shtola's home here on the First. It was safety and warmth. A place that he could breathe without feeling the whole world was watching.

Y'shtola stands away from him, seeming lost in thought or contemplation.

As much as he'd usually be one to let her compose her thoughts, he cannot wait any longer. He needed to touch her, hold her in his arms.

Taiyo comes up on her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist and squeezing gently but firmly as he dips his head and kisses at her nape. "I missed you, 'Shtola."

The sorceress shivers with the press of his lips. Or was she trembling from his embrace?

"Not as much, nor as long as I have missed you, Taiyo." Y'shtola replies in a voice thick with emotion barely held back as the soft, smooth leather of her glove slid across the back of his hand in the barest of a caress.

Almost… hesitant.

Did she not know how to respond to his touch now that it had been so long for her?

Ah. She was trembling.

Taiyo frowned, lifting his head and loosening his hold as he spun her around to look at him.

Oh. Taiyo's expression is plain surprise at the sight of Y'shtola's face. The jewel of the clawed ring on her finger caught the gleam of the candlelight as she raised it towards her cheek. The embarrassment writ across her expression as she tried to hide the tears that brimmed on her eyelashes.

"Forgive me," she says quietly, brushing her clawed, bejeweled pointer finger delicately under her eyelashes to swipe away her tears. "I had thought… I had promised myself I would be more composed when we met again. Yet it has been too long since I have felt your presence. Too long since I have heard your voice or felt your touch. I find myself overwhelmed. That first year without you was terribly hard, Taiyo. I had thought… Had hoped it would become easier with time, but my yearning for you has only grown with every passing day, and… And now here you are. And the first moment we were reunited I did not—could not recognize you."

"I am sorry I did not recognize you," Y'shtola says, her lips twisting and her chin tilting down. "I cannot imagine how it must have hurt you."

Aye, it had hurt. Crushingly so. But Taiyo did not want to make her feel guilty. He did not want to cause her pain. He only wanted to be close to her, to make up for all the time they had lost. It was an overwhelming urge. And it had taken all his self control not to follow at her heels since first stepping into the camp. To snatch her close and let out all of these feelings that had built up inside of him. To make their relationship plain, so that there could be no doubt.

Taiyo shook his head, his pause a beat too long. "How could you have known? It is not your fault, 'Shtola." She had already explained why she had reacted so. The primordial light he had absorbed from the light wardens had obscured the familiarity of his aether from her sight. Aye, it had hurt to be greeted with hostility instead of with warmth and gladness from the woman he loved, but he had forgiven her rather easily the instant she had explained what his aether looked like to her now.

Did it hurt to look at him? Taiyo wondered. Was it unpleasant?

Such questions were hard to voice aloud. To know the truth of it. If being in his company now, when he was so suffused with light, would cause her discomfort.

Taiyo purses his lips and reaches for her hands, tugging her closer to him so that he could be the one to cup her face in his hands and wipe away her tears. His fingers brush gently over her markings before he cradles her cheeks in his palms, his thumbs rubbing at the salty trail of her tears that had slipped from her eyelashes.

"I am sorry I could not return to you sooner," Taiyo says softly as Y'shtola leaned into the warmth of his touch and closed her eyes. Her hands touching his waist in an almost embrace, still with that hesitance as if she thought holding him anything less than gently would make him disappear.

"Do not be. You had your duties, I understand that," Y'shtola replies, ever pragmatic. "Besides that, the Crystal Exarch has already explained to us the differing flows of time between this world and the Source. I am only glad that you are here now, and that perhaps soon we might return together."

Taiyo bit at the inside of his lips, his gaze soft as he looked at her. It had not even been a quarter of the time for him as it had been for her since Y'shtola and Urianger had collapsed together in the Rising Stones, but he had missed her more than words could properly express.

"I know it has not been half as long for me as it has for you, but… I have missed you terribly, 'Shtola." Taiyo tells her, ever so earnestly. Then, as his thumb smooths over her bottom lip, he asks her, "Please. May I kiss you?"

Y'shtola rests her gloved hand over his, her eyes opening to gaze in the direction of his face as her lips quirked with a hint of her usual sass. "You had better."

Taiyo sighs out in relief, a smile breaking over his face as his ears flickered with the joy he felt. His tail curves over his side in search of hers, to twine together in feline affection as he lowered his head to brush his lips over hers.

Y'shtola sighs as their lips move together, the soft slide skin. His lips are a little chapped from his time in Amh Araeng, a little rough against hers, but Y'shtola does not seem to mind in the least as her hands fist in his collar and drag him closer. Her soft, answering hum contains amusement at the sound of surprise Taiyo makes as she deepens their kiss from something soft into a harder, more passionate kiss.

With one hand still pressed to her cheek, his other splays at her waist, skimming over the skin bared at the back of her outfit. His heart beats faster as she presses herself against him, the feathers adorning her new garments tickling at his skin. A soft moan spills from his throat as her tongue traces along the seam of his lips, inspiring a satisfied chuckle from his sweetheart as her tongue slid over his.

Taiyo makes a questioning sound as she drags them backwards, her arm reaching behind her to scatter items—books, stacks of paper, a quill, all discarded—off the desk before she promptly perches herself upon it.

Taiyo gulps with the rush of heat that washes over him as Y'shtola smirks and crooks her bejeweled pointer finger at him. Was she purposely seducing him? If she was, it was absolutely one-hundred percent working.

"Come here," she says in that particular tone of voice that brooked no argument. And then she does not wait for Taiyo's answer as she pulls him in impatiently by his hips, the fabric of her robes' skirt riding up as he settles between her thighs.

His hands slap on the table to regain his balance, palms resting on either side of her thighs.

A futile effort to be considerate as Y'shtola pulls him off kilter by wrapping her arms around his neck and nudging at his shin with her boot so he slipped forward into her. He finds himself face planting right into her chest, her fingers wasting no time in digging into his hair. Her lips pressing kisses between his twitching ears as whole body flushed hot with fluster.

"Your presence, your voice, your touch," Y'shtola murmurs to him as she stroked over his hair and squeezed his body between her thighs as if she did not want to let him go, "I have craved it for too long. If you do not mind, I would have us make up for the time we have lost starting right now."

Taiyo blinks, lifting his head just a little from his love's soft bosom.

"Right now?" He asks.

At this very moment?

Y'shtola gazes at him with arched brows, a particular smile curving at her lips. Her nails scratched lightly over his scalp and at the base of his ears before she cupped his face in her hands and tilted her head down to kiss him again.

Taiyo melts against her, sighing softly. His hands sliding over the black fabric of her sorceress robe, fingertips finding the gaps in the fabric to touch the warmth and softness of her skin.

"Ah, it has been much too long," Y'shtola breathed out a passionate sigh with her lips held so close to his that their mouths brushed as she spoke, the very air between them shared with one another as they breathed with rising amorous feelings.

"Taiyo," She murmured, stroking her hand over his face, repeating his name again as she kissed him deep again and again, "Oh, Taiyo."

"'Shtola," Taiyo groaned deep, his hands roving over her in the rising passion between them. Her every fervent gasp of his name answered in kind, as nothing had ever tasted so sweet on his lips as to call her name.

With one hand bracing the dip of her back, his other hand slips down over her waist to curl in the fabric of her skirts.

His fingers gather the fall of it up over her knees to grant him access to her soft, warm skin.

Y'shtola sighs out as his hand skimmed from her outer thigh to her knee in a patient, ticklish caress. An indulgence of just feeling her skin for a moment, to caress her and feel the warmth she gave off, before that strong hand cups the back of her thigh to spread her legs open as he dipped her carefully backwards to lay across the table.

Her impassioned face and heaving bosom was as much a feast for his eyes as what lay underneath the fan of her layered skirt. A tiny pair of form fitting shorts with criss-crossing ties that matched her bodice. Aught that did not hide the tantalizing tease of the curves and dips of her hips, or the scrap of cloth underneath that matched perfectly to the color combination of her newest adventuring outfit.

Taiyo admitted if only to himself that he missed the former outfit for the reason that it was much easier to remove than all the layers of this one appeared to be. Well, and the combo of thigh high boots and shorts had suited her in style, if not the cold coerthan climes in which she had worn such attire.

There was nothing but to try, he supposed, as he scrutinized her outfit with the impatience of a lover who desired his sweetheart right there and then.

Y'shtola catches on quick, and laughs at him.

"Are you having difficulties?" She asks with amusement.

And then to Taiyo's amazement, tugs at the bow in the back of her dress and shrugs the garment from her shoulders, over and off her hips with minimal fussing of additional laces or buckles. Huh. It appeared intimidating, but not all things were as they seemed. Just like Y'shtola herself. Perhaps these fancy new sorceress garments suited her more than he had thought.

"Oh," Taiyo mumbles, feeling a little bashful, a little foolish. "I… admit I was not sure where to begin."

Y'shtola smiles at him, left only in her undershirt and matching small clothes now. It seemed the jeweled high collar and the criss-crossing straps in the front of her outfit were an additional part that overlapped her brassiere. The sorceress robe itself appeared to start at the furred ruff decorating her shoulders.

"Well?" Y'shtola prompts him with a quirk of her brow. "As you were."

Taiyo perks to attention, shaking his head and refocusing.

Right.

Taiyo reaches out and pulls at the ties to those clingy shorts of hers, loosening it enough to slip them off of her with a rise of Y'shtola's hips. They both breathe out a shaky breath as his fingertips traced over the waist of her panties, his palm coming to rest against the soft curve of her mons.

She was so soft, and the heat she gave off more than merely the warmth of normal body temperature. It was the heat of excitement, arousal. So soon, even though he had barely begun to touch her?

"You look surprised, Taiyo," Y'shtola says with a voice like warmed silk, hot and sensual, it makes his skin prickle like a heated caress. It makes him shudder with the impulse to sink to his knees and please her. "Is it so shocking that I would desire you so? I have had many responsibilities, duties I have taken on that required my time and focus. And yet each and every day my thoughts were with you, filled with you to the point it drove me to distraction."

Taiyo swallows hard, watching Y'shtola's ring adorned hand as she presses it to her breast. "It has only been you in my heart and in my mind," she tells him in a soft, intimate voice. Full of warmth and desire as her hand slipped over her chest, her sharply tipped fingertip trailing over her ribcage and abdomen. Slipping down passed her hips to lay her hand over his where he touched her through the scrap of her panties. "Only you in my thoughts as I sought to satisfy the ache that thinking of you, yearning for you wrought."

Taiyo let out a shuddering breath, desire flooding through him with the picture she painted for him with her words. It spurs him into action, though he was not one to tease to begin with. He cups her through her panties, feeling her warmth. Fingers playing against her softness, rubbing her through fabric. His eyes rapt on her face, an intense magenta that seared into her as he touched her slowly and carefully. In desire to witness her reaction as much as it was to drink her in, to bask in their reunion, every moment of it.

He massages at the soft, plump flesh of her mons with a gentle pressure, a careful grind against her with the palm of his hand. His fingers cup at the delicate petals of her folds, kneading softly between them. The pads of his fingers press into her, granting more friction, more heat. The texture of the fabric must feel good where it rubs against her when he seeks out that little pearl of flesh and presses against it.

He is rewarded with the sound of Y'shtola's moan. With the sight of her parted lips and fluttering eyelashes, the rising rosy blush on her skin. The fabric dampened with the curl and press of his fingertips. Warmth and wetness coating his fingers as he slips the scrap of cloth to the side and touches her bare, skin to skin.

Y'shtola makes a soft sound in her throat, her hips twitching. Rocking forward into the glide of his fingers as he continued this good work, gazing into Y'shtola's face as he made her wet for him without yet sinking a single finger inside of her.

Then quite abruptly he went to his knees for her. Pulling her in by the backs of her knees, he spread her legs open and buried his face in the apex of her thighs. Drowning in the familiar ecstasy of her scent, he moaned throatily and breathed her in deep.

"Taiyo," she gasps for him so sweetly.

Yes, yes. He knew what she wanted.

A smug smile curls at his lips as he rubs his cheek against her. Teasing just a little as he kissed so very softly along her pelvis, ilm by ilm. Over her mons, and circling around the soft outer lips of her folds. He trails his lips delicately over the velvety flesh of her inner folds, dewy like a flower where he kissed her.

He lingers there.

Delighting in her want of him.

Teasing.

Not for too long, of course, as Y'shtola had already begun to squirm. Making soft sounds in her throat that sounded sweet, but edged on impatience.

If he teased her too much she would undoubtedly return the favor later on.

"Do not tease me," Y'shtola says with a certain lilt to her voice that makes Taiyo smile. Because to him it sounded very much like she was pouting. Heh, that side of her was cute, too.

He did not get to see it often.

"I have waited too long for you already."

Hahh. She certainly knew what to say to get what she wanted. With that said, Taiyo could not possibly deny her.

He presses his mouth to that hardened pearl of flesh, kissing her sweet. Then he opens his mouth to give her that first slow lick.

Y'shtola's fingers grasp his hair on the edge of pain with the first swipe of his tongue over her heated flesh. But the heady taste of her more than makes up for the slight sting of his scalp.

She fills his senses. Her scent sticks in his nose and clouds his head, the taste of her so heady in his mouth that it makes him salivate for more, every sultry sound she made vibrating through his perked feline ears as if her lips were pressed right up against them.

How quickly, how easily does he become lost in her.

The warmth she gave off. The softness of her skin under the slow caress of his hands. Her quickening breath, the shuddering sighs and hushed moans she let out as she ran her hands over his hair, her hips rising to meet his face as he hungrily lapped at her. Devouring her like he had not in some time.

He does not know how much time passes in this way. Y'shtola's thighs close around his head at some point, her knees drawn over his shoulders as he kissed and licked and nipped over every ilm he could reach with the turn of his head.

The heels of her boots dig into him, her voice pitching higher. Her hands tangled in his hair as she arched her body over him and pushed his head into the jerky, needful roll of her hips. He finds himself smothered in her as she reaches her peak, the salty sweet tang of her juices gushing over his tongue and wetting his cheeks, nose and chin.

She trembled for him so sweetly, stumbling over his name as she whimpered and repeated it like a prayer.

He stays there, resting his head in the cradle of her thighs as she slowly relaxed. Her taut, trembling muscles easing and falling limp. Noodle-like, judging by the way she almost seemed to flop back bonelessly against the table. Her chest heaving with her panting breath, lips slack in a dazed expression.

Taiyo feels smug to see it. His chest puffing up with pride and a cheeky grin stretching across his lips.

"Hmf," Y'shtola huffs an amused breath. "I can feel you smiling without needing to see it. Feeling good about yourself?"

Taiyo gazes down at her adoringly, leaning over her and brushing back a strand of hair that was stuck to her sweaty cheek. "A little," he admits.

"Well," Y'shtola chuckles and breathes out heavily. Looking so satisfied, sexed up and sexy with the glimmer of sweat on her flushed skin. "It was good."

Gods, she was gorgeous. Taiyo wanted to kiss her all over. He wanted to lay down beside her and hold her in his arms for the next several suns. He wanted to give her more reason to look like that, and whisper his love to her all the while.

"Please tell me you have a bed here," Taiyo says, breathless and at the end of his tether. He could wait no longer, he felt fit to burst, practically vibrating out of his skin for all he wished to do.

"Of course, my bedroom is right up there," Y'shtola says, pointing to a set of stairs out of the way.

"Good," Taiyo says, and sweeps her up into his arms.

"Taiyo!" Y'shtola clings to him with her arms around his neck and gasps his name as if she meant to admonish him for being so abrupt and forward, but the lighthearted expression on her face told a different story. The stretch of her smile could almost be called a grin, in fact.

"You like it," Taiyo says with a bright grin, his ears flickering with joy as he bounced her in his arms.

Y'shtola squints at him and pinches his cheek. "Keep being cheeky, dear, and I'll take you over my knee."

Taiyo stumbles a little at that suggestion. With his blood already so heated, his thoughts take a turn towards the perverse. No doubt an entirely different direction than Y'shtola's intention.

Or, judging by the sly curve of her eyes and lips, perhaps not.

"Perhaps you would like that," the sorceress remarks, tapping her knuckles at her cheek and clearly laughing at him.

Taiyo isn't bothered by it so much as flustered. Y'shtola would know by now that he liked her thighs. The outfit she had worn in Ishgard had been a terrible tease to him. Those shorts and thigh high boots showing off a sliver of skin at her upper thighs. Though he had been conflicted, wishing she had worn trousers to protect her from the cold, Ishgardian heat tech or no.

Taiyo takes the stairs two at a time, Y'shtola held steady in his arms as he climbed his way up and carried her to her room as she directed him.

He sets her carefully on the bed, like a princess. Staying crouched in preparation to take off her boots. His ears twitch as he feels Y'shtola's hand in his hair, petting his head.

He glances up towards her, fingers fiddling with the laces of her boots, to find Y'shtola gazing down at him with a particular smile.

Heat rises in his cheeks with her gazing at him so obviously adoringly, but with a certain edge to it. His skin only burns all the hotter as the sorceress purrs to him, "Good boy."

His shivers at the tone of her voice, his magenta eyes closing as she chuckled and caressed him. Her fingers trailing over his flushed cheeks. She tickles under his chin, tilting his head up to look at her as she allows her boot to rest in his lap. The weight of her footwear nudging and then pressing down on the bulge of his still apparent arousal.

"Good boys get rewarded, you know."

Taiyo bit at his lip, his gaze half-lidded, flicking between her watchful face and the ties of her boots as he loosened the laces two by two. One boot done, he pulls gently at the bottom of her boot, her stockinged foot sliding free under the passing glide of the palm of his hand.

Y'shtola hums, watching him work on the other boot as her toes curl against his thigh, sliding up and down. Up and down. A distraction, a tease that made his fingers fumble more than once. Especially as she slipped her foot over, caressing so very close to the crotch of his trousers.

Taiyo rushes through the laces of her other boot, his movements a little more jerky as he twitched and flinched in pained pleasure with Y'shtola's teasing.

What a merciless woman, she certainly loved to tease him. More bothersome was that Taiyo enjoyed all of her attention, even being teased like this.

With both boots off, Y'shtola catches his sides with her knees before he can rise up, her ankles crossing behind his back to keep him there a moment. Long enough for her to reach out and yank him in, her fingers petting at his hair and cradling his jaw as she drew him into a deep, lazy kiss that stole his breath.

He feels dazed as she leans back, purring in her throat as she rubbed along his lower lip. Still wearing her glove.

"Good boy," she says throatily, pressing her gloved fingers to his parted lips, "now take my glove off."

Taiyo leans in, kissing over her gloved hand and then taking the tips of the glove between his teeth and slowly leaning back. The buttery leather slipping free from her hand and dangling from his mouth.

Y'shtola's smile shows her teeth as she pulls her glove from his lips. Handing him the clawed ring from her finger and doing away with the rest of her jewelry while she was at it. "Will you put these on my nightstand? And while you're there grab the bottle of lubricant from the top drawer." With that, she sits back, crossing her legs. Waiting and watching.

Taiyo hops to his feet, knowing what that meant. It was his turn.

Good boys get rewarded, and Taiyo was very good indeed.

What was surprising was finding the bottle of lubricant already two-thirds empty. It made Taiyo a little flustered, the scenarios as to why playing out in his head like a lascivious fantasy. Y'shtola in differing stages of disarray, slaking her own need in the privacy of her room. He shook his head rapidly, cheeks blushing red with the flush of heat that rushed through him.

"What?" Y'shtola quirks her brow, something of a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. A laugh on her lips. "A woman has needs as much as a man, Taiyo. I did say you were in my thoughts, did I not?"

Taiyo fumbles with the bottle at that, magenta eyes wide and ears twitching in surprise. "...You thought of me?"

Y'shtola's teeth flash with her grin as she bites at her nail, her eyes half lidded and her expression downright sultry.

To be looked at so had Taiyo awash with pleasurable shivers.

"Of course. Do you not think of me when you, yourself..?" She gestures towards him, her face alight with mischief as she makes a lewd gesture.

Taiyo blushes to the roots of his hair—no, to the very tips of his madly twitching feline ears. "Ah, yes! I mean… Who else would I have…?"

Y'shtola chuckles, beckoning him close with a curl of her finger. Humming low in her throat with amusement. "Hmm, Taiyo. I missed moments like these. I cannot help but find you endearing beyond belief."

Taiyo ducks his head bashfully, rubbing at the back of his neck and ruffling at his hair.

Y'shtola laughs behind her hand. "Come here," she beckons to him, and Taiyo is quick to obey. Rushing back over with the bottle in hand that Y'shtola takes from him to set it beside her on the bed.

"Now strip," She says, leaning on her hand. Her ears perked to listen for the rustle of fabric and her tail flicking where it curved over the bed.

It sounds bossy, perhaps even intentionally so. But Taiyo understands why almost instantly. Y'shtola could see his aether, but it did not mean she could see in the same sense that he could.

….

His reward, as he joins Y'shtola on the bed, is for the sorceress to lay him back to rest against her pillows and press her naked body up against his.

She is so soft and warm that Taiyo cannot help but wrap his arms around her and hold her close as she kisses sweetly over the markings on his face; before her lips slid so sensually and wet over his.

Taiyo groaned softly in his throat, already thoroughly seduced. The weight of her body laid on top of him, the softness of her breasts dragging against his chest. The hot glide of her tongue as it slid between his lips to tangle with his and kiss him deep. His hands rove over her, his palms caressing over her shoulders and down the dip of her spine. His hands slip up to the nape of her neck and the silky strands of her hair as Y'shtola kisses her way down from his lips to his jaw and over his throat.

He enjoys her in his arms so much that he almost protests and calls her back to hold her a little longer. He hisses out a startled breath as she scratches down his chest and over his abs. Squirming as she follows the red marks she had made with her lips and tongue.

The lubricant makes a reappearance, as Y'shtola pops it open and pours it over his lap, her own hands, and breasts.

"'Shtola?" Taiyo gasps, watching this all with wide magenta eyes.

"Shh, let me take care of you," Y'shtola shushes him. Smiling as she wraps her slippery hands around him, stroking him firmly from base to tip and back down again. Taiyo's hips jerk, his hands curling into fists to restrain himself from reaching for her as the sorceress finally touches him there. Gods, he felt like he would not last long at all.

Her fingers tease over his tip, rubbing at the sensitive glans, squeezing the mushroom head and teasing his slit with her fingertips. Taiyo is already trembling, much to the sorceress's chuckled delight. She strokes him a few more times before she comes closer, her warm breath fanning over him. Her lips kissing at his tip and trailing down over his shaft. Her tongue flicking out in slow, teasing licks. Her fingers wiggling and tapping against him as she cradled him in her palm and tilted her head to mouth along the side of him.

Taiyo whimpers in his throat and covers his mouth as she lifts her head and takes him into her mouth. Pillowing him between the slippery skin of her soft breasts and using the up and down motion of her upper body to stimulate him as she licked over him. Ah, she was so soft. Her breasts, her lips, her tongue. It was all so good, stirring him up. Driving him slowly, lustfully mad.

Taiyo grasped at the bedspread, unable to hold on for long under such sweet, torturous dedication. He gave a strangled warning as his hips jerked, reaching his peak far sooner than he would have liked.

He opens his eyes, breathily shakily, to witness Y'shtola licking up his spend. From her lips, messy on her fingers and scooped up from the soft swell of her breasts.

Taiyo feels hot again, flustered just watching her. His well meaning impulse of finding her a tissue or something, anything to wipe up with, apparently not required for the show she puts on of licking it all up and even cleaning him with swipes of her tongue.

Taiyo twitched, his desire stirred again already. Gods. A moment, he needed a moment, surely.

"Come here," he says hoarsely, pulling her back into his arms to kiss her. Tasting himself on her lips, and her tongue as she licked into his mouth and kissed him deep with an approving purr thrumming in her chest.

He sucks in a breath, gasping into the hungry, hot press of her mouth as Y'shtola's hand slides over him, stroking him again with such intent as if she wanted to wring more out of him.

"You can go again, can you not, my champion?" Y'shtola murmurs against his mouth with a smirk curling at your lips.

"What has you… so excited?" Taiyo asks, hips squirming and hands squeezing at her upper arms as she works him up all over again for the second time with the squeeze and slippery stroke of her hot, insistent hands.

"Is it not obvious?" Y'shtola asks with a deep, rumbling purr. "It is you, Taiyo. You have me all excited. It is you who has me all worked up. It was only thoughts of you that helped me through when I was feeling lonely, and now that you are back in my arms I would have you until I am satisfied."

Taiyo flushes hot all over. Knowing she could tell by touch alone, but gasping out anyway, "I… I can go again. As many times as you like. Until you are satisfied, 'Shtola."

It was a bold statement, indeed. But if Taiyo had the stamina to take down Gods and hordes of enemies as Warrior of Light, surely he could use that same energy to satisfy Y'shtola?

Y'shtola seemed pleased with his answer, judging by the curve of her smile and the pleased twitch of her ears.

"Good," she says, "because your real reward starts now."

Huh? That hadn't been it, just now?

Taiyo blinks confusedly, sitting up to watch what she would do as Y'shtola sits back on her knees between the spread of his legs. She reaches for the bottle of lubricant again and Taiyo shivers as she pours more over him. But this time around she looks him smugly, knowingly in the face and drizzles a good amount of the bottle left over her thighs.

Oh. Taiyo knew what that meant.

His real reward indeed. Y'shtola knew him well. Taiyo loved her thighs. This would not be the first time Y'shtola had done such for him, but it still made him squirm with excitement as she moved herself carefully over his lap with the lubricant pooled between her thighs, and then slowly slipped his length between them.

The both of them moan together.

Y'shtola as he rubbed right up against her folds, and Taiyo at the plush, slick squeeze as the sorceress pressed her thighs together and rocked herself into him.

Taiyo braced himself on his hands, feeling very much rewarded as he watched the undulations of Y'shtola's hips. The gleam of lubricant made the sight of his prick all the more lewd as she squished him between her thighs and rubbed him off between them.

Taiyo cannot hold back from such temptation. He grasps at her thighs, his palms and fingers digging into her soft flesh as he presses her legs tightly closed around him and thrust his hips up into that soft, silky, slippery warmth.

If he grinds against Y'shtola as he does so, well, that was her reward for treating him so kindly to something she knew he liked. Besides, her pleasured arousal only further slicked the way, her folds so soft as he rutted into the press of her thighs. She is so hot and wet, it would be so easy to change the angle and slip inside of her.

But Taiyo had no doubt that Y'shtola would have him flat on his back after this, and so he indulged himself and took his time as he could just basking in the feel of her. Her velvety warmth, the slick glide of his skin over hers. The way she shuddered and squeezed her thighs tighter around him with needful rolls of her hips as he rubbed up over her folds and ground his tip against the sensitive pearl of her clit.

Taiyo feels spoiled. Feeling so good, so fortunate as his gaze lingered on Y'shtola, drinking her in. She was so lovely, but especially like this when she was caught up in the haze of pleasure.

Watching her only brings him to his peak all the faster. A fact that Y'shtola is well aware of as she smirks at him and crosses her legs tight, squeezing him firm between her thighs as he gives his last few thrusts before he reaches his limit and spills messily over her belly.

He finds himself promptly pushed on his back before he can even catch his breath, the sorceress climbing over him and straddling his hips.

"So healthy," Y'shtola remarks, swiping her hand through the mess he hand made on her belly and rubbing her fingers together as if she were examining the quality of it. Taiyo would not be surprised if that were the case, she was a scholar like most every other Scion.

He licks his lips reflexively as she swipes that messy, sticky hand over his mouth. He did not particularly care much about his own taste, but the intensely sultry expression that comes over Y'shtola's face as she slips her fingers past his lips and rubs them over his tongue is well worth a little salty bitterness.

He sucks her fingers clean dutifully, tingling all over with pleased, feel good feelings as Y'shtola purrs with satisfaction and praises him again.

"So obedient. You're such a good boy, Taiyo."

She leans down, rubbing herself up against him as she licks over his mouth. Cleaning up spots he might have missed and nibbling along his bottom lip. "So good for me, so sweet," Y'shtola murmurs fervently. "How I have missed you."

Taiyo moaned then as Y'shtola shifted back, reaching behind her to take him in hand and rub his tip teasingly against her softness and heat. Swirling him slowly in that seductive wetness as she sank him into her so very slow.

"'Shtola," Taiyo gasps, his hands flying to her waist and digging in hard enough to bruise as she abruptly sank down on him, the backs of her thighs slapping against the tops of his as she took in every ilm of him all in one go.

Taiyo flung his head back in a curse, his hips jerking uncontrollably as the sorceress did not wait even half a beat before she was riding him. It was fast and hard, much different from the pace they had set so far.

It was all Taiyo could do to hold on and stave off his release. To let Y'shtola use him as she liked to slake her need.

"That's right," Y'shtola sighs heatedly, licking over her fingers that had just been in his mouth. Her hips moving nonstop over him even as she speaks. "Just like that. Lay back and let me take care of it all."

What could Taiyo do but as Y'shtola bid?

She was so warm and wet inside, swallowing him up and squeezing just right. The pace she sets has him writhing under her, his fingernails scratching over her thighs and digging furrows into the delicate weave of her stockings. Ruining them, much as she was doing to him, ravishing him as she was.

"Oh dear," Y'shtola tuts at him.

"What are we to do with those wandering hands of yours, hm? Here." She reaches for him, slotting their fingers together and resting palm to palm as she squeezes at his hands.

"Yes, that is better. Good, good," she sighs, her head tipping towards the ceiling as she was able to ride him even faster with him bracing her. "Hahh, so very good."

Taiyo squirms and writhes despite the hold that Y'shtola had on his hands and the firm press of her knees at his hips. He cannot help it. He was weak to her praise. Weaker still to the skillful way she drove him wild, working him up into a frenzy before he knew it.

Even though Y'shtola had only just brought him to his peak, it rapidly builds again. She scorches him, his blood boiling hot. Fitting him so perfectly, like the glove he had peeled from her pretty, delicate hand.

He can be still no longer. He rolls his hips up to meet her, wanting to give her his all. Give her everything.

Y'shtola does not complain as he moves under her, only gasping and squeezing his hands as she matches his movements. They match each other well, their motions falling in sync. Their passion builds, climbing higher and higher until Y'shtola throws her head back in a soft, breathy cry.

The hot, velvety squeeze of her around him brings Taiyo to the brink right behind, spilling deep inside of her. Their hands stay clasped tight, grounding on another even as the bask in orgasmic bliss.

He gives himself a moment, a few gasping breaths, before he takes advantage of his lover's lazy afterglow to shift their position and roll her under him. He slips from inside her in the twisting turn, but presses himself up between her thighs again before Y'shtola can do much but gasp.

"Ah!" The sorceress gasps as he lifts her up by her hips, cradling the small of her back as he sank inside of her again with a strong thrust of his hips. Slipping in easily with how very wet she is. Soft and warm, and full of his seed. It fills him with equal parts of soft, affectionate love and smug, almost feral satisfaction.

That Y'shtola chose him, that she continued to do so despite all her prospects. The other men and women alike who fell for her just the same as Taiyo himself had.

Y'shtola chose him. Y'shtola wanted him, Taiyo. Not anyone else.

Not even Runar who was kind and capable; and obviously hopelessly smitten with Slitherbough's Master Matoya.

Y'shtola wraps herself around him, arms and legs both as she groans his name in her throat. Her nails scratching red lines down his back, her body pushed steadily up the bed with the force of his snapping hips. The bedspread wrinkles and bunches beneath them, pillows crushed under their bodies or cast aside in their consuming passion.

"Ah, this..! I missed this," Y'shtola groans, her lips dragging over his skin.

Taiyo's cheeks ache with the force of his grin. His hands slipped up over her back to brace her against him in a strong embrace, holding her close to his chest, to his heart as the movement of his hips did not cease.

Their lips find each other, kissing between the sweet sounds of pleasure they made, sharing breath. Taiyo hissing out in pleasured pain as her nails dug crescents into his shoulders, swallowing the sound of her laughter in his deep, answering kiss.

Hip hips surge against her all the more for it, making her moan out. Pushing her and himself all the higher, closer. His face tucked into her shoulder, sucking marks of plum and rose into her skin as Y'shtola reached her next peak before him.

An accomplishment, a victory for Taiyo, but only for a fleeting moment before he is right behind her. Filling her again, giving her more of him. Drenching her in his scent again and again, until she would no doubt reek of him to sensitive noses even after washing.

Y'shtola is panting beneath him, obviously tiring, but Taiyo could go again. Perhaps two, even three times more. To make absolutely certain that his lover was fully satisfied.

And so, as the sorceress had done to him, Taiyo does not give her more than a moment of rest before he begins anew.

"Taiyo!" Y'shtola gasps out as he lifts her, her arms clutching at his neck and her knees squeezing at his waist to balance and brace herself.

"Oh!" She tosses her head back with a surprised, delighted moan as he sinks into her again, sitting her balanced on his lap.

His hands cupped her thighs, bodily lifting her up and down as he rolled his hips up to meet her.

Y'shtola clutches at his back, gasping out as he sank into her deep, again and again. She was full of him, molded to the shape of him and dripping his seed messily over their thighs.

Still, he gives her more. Continuing on like that until the both finish again, replenishing what was lost, what had slipped out of her. Then he rises to his feet, taking her with him as he walks, every step a bounce that sank him deeper, rubbing up against the deepest parts of her.

He leans her against the nearest wall, just her shoulders at first, and then her whole back as he presses his body to hers, the power behind his thrusts making the walls shake. Books and trinkets lining the shelves falling off the walls all around them as Y'shtola filled the air with her voice. Her nails scratched deep over his back. Her tail coiled right around his, yanking with such strength that he could almost question if she were not some mix of au ra, or drahn, as they called them in this world.

He keeps going even after she reaches her peak, pushing her further, further. Chuckling as she curses at him, then moaning as she sank her teeth into his skin, leaving her mark from along his shoulder to the side of his throat. Even digging her teeth into his jaw at one point.

Taiyo takes it all.

Gladly, with a smile on his face and a laugh in his throat.

He does not let her rest for a while yet.

….

The bed is a mess of crumpled blankets, but Taiyo and Y'shtola are far too exhausted to do anything to fix it.

They lay curled together despite the sweat on their skin, a tangle of limbs. Taiyo rests with his head on Y'shtola's chest, listening to her heartbeat, fingers swirling over her skin. His fingertips tracing around the marks he had left. Dragging over the soft flesh of her breasts, caressing.

Y'shtola tugs his hands up before he can linger too long, the mischievous hint of a smile she feels pressed to her skin warning her that his attention to her chest might be sweet now, but it most assuredly would end in another mussing of her bed clothes.

She was much too tired for that.

Taiyo had more than satisfied her, he'd thoroughly exhausted her with that. Besides, they needed to return before long. They could not while away the hours left in the day abed, no matter how tempting the prospect was.

She clasps her hand with his and feathers her lips along the back of it.

"You are quiet," she says, noticing the lack of pillowtalk. He was strangely still besides. Taiyo was energetic in all things, even snuggling in the afterglow.

"Have you something on your mind?"

….

Y'shtola's question hangs in the air a moment before Taiyo sighs.

"Does it… hurt to look at me now?" He asks quietly. He regrets letting the words out as soon as they fill the air. A question he cannot take back, an answer he does not know he wants.

Y'shtola is quiet. A thoughtful quietness as she drags her fingers through his hair, her nails scratching lightly at his scalp.

"You are bright, blindingly so," she says.

Taiyo wilts, feline ears flattening as he closes his eyes with a frown.

Long, elegant fingers curl under his chin, Y'shtola's face leaning close to his as he glanced at her under his eyelashes.

"Do not misunderstand," Y'shtola says softly. "You have always been so. I have thought so long before the banquet. It is your warmth, your kindness. It is who you are as a person, not merely your duties as the champion of eorzea; the hero of our world, this one and the next."

Taiyo looks at her, his magenta eyes wide. Full of feelings.

"More than merely hope incarnate," Y'shtola murmurs, her thumb swiping under his bottom lip. "You are my joy, Taiyo. You are my heart."

Taiyo leaned into her palm as she caressed his face. His hand squeezing hers, still clasped with his, like a lifeline.

"I love you, Y'shtola," he says.

The sorceress smiles that sweet smile at him that still made his breath catch and his heart pound. "I know. You're still not subtle," she says, like a tease. An echo of his first confession to her.

Taiyo laughs, knowing she was right.

Y'shtola draws him in by the chin to kiss her. Her fingers stroke over the markings on his jaw. Slow, soft, sweet.

"I love you, too, Taiyo."

Taiyo makes a soft, blissful sound in his throat. He does not know what the future will bring, but he did know that as long as he had Y'shtola by his side, he could bear anything.

Y'shtola hums, rubbing at his ears as he clings to her in a tight embrace, purring contentedly in his throat.

"Much as I do not wish to move, we should go wash up soon, dearest," the sorceress says mildly as her fingers curled the hair at the nape of his neck, her hand slipping down to stroke over his shoulders.

Taiyo grumbles softly, not wanting to rise just yet.

"Just a while more," he pleads, nuzzling his cheek over her skin.

Y'shtola sighs, chuckling softly. "All right, just a while more. But do not fall asleep," she wants him, tweaking his ear.

Taiyo gives a thrumming hum in his throat. If she wanted him to stay awake, perhaps she should stop stroking his hair. His eyelids felt too heavy to stay open.

"Half a bell," he mumbles. That was how long he'd nap for.

Y'shtola gives a quiet, amused huff.

Taiyo had already fallen asleep.

"Half a bell," she agrees in a hushed voice, pressing a kiss to his hair.

She had no plans to wake him even if he slept longer than that. She could give him this much, at least. Who knew when he would have the chance again to rest, to indulge like this.

She had no doubt that much and more would be asked of him. Her dear, sweet Taiyo never seemed to know when to say no. He gave so much of himself every day. With every adventure, every passing day, the stakes seemed to grow higher, the cost steeper.

Y'shtola's arms hold him tighter.

How much would he give of himself this time? How bright would this light inside of him grow, a blinding glare cast over the familiar, unique beauty of his aether?

Would that she, too, possessed the echo. That she could carry some of what weighed so heavily upon his shoulders.

The Crystal Exarch asked too much of him. They all asked too much of him. This, all of it. It was too burdensome for any one person to bear alone.

"I'll be here," Y'shtola tells him, the backs of her knuckles feathering over the markings on his face.

If nothing else, she could remain by his side.

The Exarch may have blundered in bringing them here, but perhaps it was a blessing in disguise after all. Taiyo need not do all this alone. He had the Scions at his side, Y'shtola at his side, and made more allies in every place he traveled. This world was no different. Taiyo had a way of drawing most everyone in. She had no doubt that he would have no lack of allies to aid him whenever he truly needed them.

"Rest now, my dearest," Y'shtola says softly, her cheek pressed to the soft, dark purple-burgundy-brown of his hair. Before the bloody banquet of Ul'dah, the color of his hair had reminded her of a dark plum. The magenta highlights bringing focus to the mesmerizing shade of his bright, guileless eyes.

She could picture it all, vivid like a perfectly painted portrait in her mind's eye.

It would be a lie to say she did not miss it. To be able to see him. To know if he had changed his hair, the style or color, by glance alone. If he had more scars, or what expression he wore on his face.

"There is always a price for using the magicks I did. I knew, and willingly paid it," Y'shtola sighs softly, her fingertips whispering over his sleeping face. "Still, I did not know I would miss it so much. To be able to look upon your face."

What was done, was done. There was no changing it, nor going back.

"I suppose I will simply need ask," the sorceress whispers to the sleeping hero in her lap. "Shall I ask you? Or perhaps it would prove more amusing to ask our fellow Scion if you are the same portrait of handsomeness I remember?"

Y'shtola chuckles quietly to herself and snuggles close to Taiyo. Listening to his breath, feeling his warmth, breathing in the scent of him. Even if she could no longer see him, all of that had not changed.

Taiyo was still Taiyo, and she loved him.

"Dream sweet, my love," Y'shtola murmurs with soft affection, kissing between his ears. "I have you."

3 notes · View notes

witchfall · 4 years

Text

old souls

summary: When the act of want feels like a risk, what happens when you get everything you asked for?

A Crystal Exarch x Warrior of Light fic Word count: 6431 Rating: M (implied sexual content)

Also on AO3. Technically a sequel to ‘hard is the heart that feels no fear’, though it can be enjoyed standalone.

Thank you to @vaniccio for betaing!!!

Copious Shadowbringers: 5.3 Reflections in Crystal spoilers within. You have been warned!

—

–

For a blistering moment, Izzie sees meteors flicker in his crystal body.

He’s not there anymore. She knows that. She grips the crystalline vial of blood memories so hard she fears it will crack. The sadness Alisaie spoke of when she saw the star showers -- loss that leaves yawning gaps, writhing and vile -- creeps up her throat. She remembers when she had her first vision from Hydaelyn on that trip to Ul'dah long ago; she feels more grounded in it, now. The pain is lived in. Understood.

The rains have ceased, but you are not here to see it.

The Scions join her at the seat of sacrifice. They stare at her, alarmed, as she strides past and says nothing. She will risk nothing sullying her hope; she will hold it like candle flame, close to her chest, until she is certain it will not go out.

---

Y’shtola lifts a single, elegant brow. “You still have to take the Exarch to Nabaath Arang?”

“Yes.” Izzie tries not to snap. Y’shtola, of all of them, is most likely to examine Izzie down to the quick and question what she finds there.

“Showing him the realm, are you?”

Izzie crosses her arms. Rain in the Greatwood has unsettled the ancient greenery. Her nose twitches at the heavy scent of damp moss. “What of it?”

Something changes in the air, then. Y’shtola pauses, recalculating, and Izzie’s tail stands on end from the tension. “It simply has...been awhile, since you have taken a flight of fancy like this.”

Izzie digs her toe into the mud. She huffs. For a bard, she’s extraordinarily bad when it comes to talking about herself. “It’s nice. To pretend.”

You are death.

“Pretend?”

“That I’m just a traveler, anymore.”

Y’shtola gives her a small smile, but there’s something deeper there that spooks Izzie, like she’s looking at something private. “Is that not among your brightest qualities? Your penchant for adventure, vast and mundane?” She places a gentle hand on Izzie’s shoulder. “You are not so unknown.”

Izzie says nothing, even as Y’shtola shakes her lightly.

“I am not one to make prognostications I don’t fully believe in. You know this. I do, in fact, think this has more than a passing chance of working.”

Izzie nods. She refuses to cry.

“You could do worse." Y'shtola brushes an invisible piece of dirt off Izzie’s tunic, as if oblivious to the effect she had on her younger counterpart. "Though...were the two of you anyone else, I would call you both unspeakably obsessed..."

Izzie's breath stutters as Y’shtola’s cloudy eyes sharpen upon her. She lets up for nothing. But before Izzie can struggle to defend herself, the woman gives a dazzling smile.

“Do keep heart. My life and happiness depends on this working, too, you know."

Izzie glances pointedly to Runar, who is speaking with a woman by one of the Slitherbough gardens, and Y’shtola, perhaps sensing her intent through the aether, finally graces Izzie with silence.

---

The Scions’ crystals shimmer and everything clicks into its right place; Izzie feels settled for a bare moment, as if she had stepped onto a ferry in just the nick of time. Her beloved family rises one by one, greeting the new day, groaning as they stretch out waxy muscles. But as they each turn to appraise her, Izzie fidgets and fidgets.

They each gaze upon her expectantly. We will leave the rest to you, Y’shtola says, smiling with rare maternal kindness. It sends cold water down Izzie’s back. Urianger’s softness has never been a mystery to her, even in his most shadowed; his words are complex but their meaning is simple. It will work, he reminds her. The doors will unseal because G’raha’s blood is in her satchel.

(How many years has she dreamed of saving his blood under her fingernails, of forcing those golden doors open with a furious pouring of her own essence?)

The realization scares her: they all know what she wants. And not a single person in the room dissuades her.

Her stomach roils. Her blood feels electric. The hope of fulfillment alone may devour her. She runs and does not look back, not even when Tataru shouts. Not even when she feels Alisaie look after her strangely, like a confirmation that something is changed forever.

---

The ground shakes as those massive doors, the Dossal Gates, open. The stale air tastes split by lightning. She had just been standing before these same gates a few moments ago, but the difference between the worlds hollows her out. Unlike in the First, where the doors herald the hope of a city, these doors are dusty and hidden. Sealed purposefully against the various evils of mankind.

She grips the crystal tighter; perhaps it is his present soul that makes her own memories feel suddenly, painfully vibrant. His broad shoulders square as he seeks to leave her behind forever -- but then he turns just slightly, as if considering looking back, and his mouth moves as the doors close, the words lost forever to the sound of doors roaring shut.

I love you. That’s what he said. She knows that now. The crystal is warm under her fingers, confirming it. It gives her the will to keep walking, up vaunted staircases that once stunned her with their beauty. Now they are just another obstacle. She barely registers the imperial stature of the architecture or the distant, yawning sounds of monsters that could still be lurking in its eternal spire. She follows a well-tread path to the Umbilicus and she knows it is right; the crystal near thrums with an affectionate, overbearing knowing.

So like him.

And then, after she throws one last door open with a breathless, heavy creak, her journey ends. She takes in a sharp breath. Dust stings her nose.

There he is.

He sleeps upon little more than a tiny dais with some red blankets thrown over it for bare comfort. His head lays upon what must be an old shirt of his balled up to serve as a pillow; his hands rest, open palmed, upon his chest. This cannot be what he thought an Allagan princeling would look like. She nearly laughs, lightheaded.

Still...

Despite everything, his face is the picture of a lazy Mor Dhona afternoon. Even under the cold blue-gold light, his handsomeness is gutting.

He is exactly as preserved in her memory, save his hair spreading loose like red vines across his makeshift bed. His youth, unburdened by a century of waiting, springs tears into her eyes. How many years does she bear on her back, despite the star merely going round twice? Will she look too different in his younger eyes? (This body is still older than her, she notes. But barely anymore. What a strange pair they make.)

She feels stupid, standing there staring with the crystal in her hands. She wonders if perhaps she should have brought Krile along. But, in theory, this should work the same as with the Scions, so before she can overthink it she places the crystal carefully, lovingly, beneath his palms. She jolts when she touches his skin— cold as the air in the tower — and for a moment she actually fears waking him, like she doesn’t want to upset his sleep. Even though that is exactly what she is doing.

What the fuck even is her life, a tiny part of her whispers.

The seconds drag on. Her tail twitches behind her in restless energy. Should she practice a speech or something? Should she talk to him to encourage his soul to accept itself? What words would even suffice? She spent two years wondering after him, yet it all feels short compared to this moment.

“I’m here,” she announces quietly and her hand lingers on his for just a moment. When he doesn’t respond, she sinks to the floor beside him, her back against his strangely warm dais-bed, her head between her knees. Words are no good. Whatever she says could easily be for naught.

She sings instead.

It’s a silly song the dragons taught her that does not translate well, but she liked the challenge of it in her mouth. It was once a courtship song, she was told. The meaning behind the deeply intricate symbols had been lost to time and the traversal of new stars. Now they just liked the ditty.

Care to forget the deep warm wells of another life?

The slow love of water beneath the sand?

Stupid questions I can't answer.

She hears the crackling sparkle of aether and pointedly does not look. She digs her eyes into her knees, seized with fear, and keeps singing, even though it’s muffled by her legs. Her torso is bent just enough that her voice feels weak, but she doesn’t adjust.

She will need to give him space. He will need time to come to terms with this world. She will not press him. She will not.

you're bold and bright, the sun star's last breath.

me?

at least the dark magic is mine

and I will keep it to myself this time.

Her song smothers the groaning sounds of his waking. She doesn’t notice him take a few silent moments to watch her, all curled up and heartbreakingly girlish again in her waiting. Her feet tap the floor. Her hands grip her ankles. Her ears twitch, and then…

She sees feet hit the floor in the corner of her eye and…

She shoots up to standing so fast that her vision tunnels for a moment. She doesn’t breathe. She could pass out standing there. She might well have, watching him as he watches her, his mouth popped slightly open…those red eyes...

She stumbles back a tiny step at the weight of seeing him. His breath catches.

“I remember,” he says. His throat works to swallow. Her eyes hone in on it. “I remember everything.”

"Oh.” Breathe. Her heart is in her mouth. “That’s…”

Well, not entirely good, is it? Don’t think about it.

She scans him as clinically as she can manage. The Allagan technology did well by him, at least. His skin is clear and pale. His tattoos stand out like void bites. His lithe frame had retained its old musculature, though she imagines it must be disorienting regardless. His aether situation -- she would leave the specifics to Krile -- must be very confusing.

But then his eyes fill with tears.

She panics, and against her earlier desire for restraint, she closes the distance between them in a step. Her hands fly to his face (no crystal coming to claim him, simply the edge of an archon's tattoo...). She cups his jaw, resting her thumbs on his cheeks. The tears she can't catch fall into the webbing of her fingers.

"It's okay," she says softly. She squashes her own tears down, down, down. His face still feels too cool beneath her hands and she thinks for a moment about what it would be like to wrap him up in a scarf and keep him like a trophy. "The worst is over now."

He leans his mouth into her palm. When he speaks, his lips brush her heart lines and she fears she may combust. "You're real, aren't you?" he croaks out. Voice unused for years. "You aren't some strange ghost created out of the hope of two souls?"

Her throat tightens. She forgets how to speak like someone kind. “Of course I’m real, you idiot. Of course I'm--”

He seizes her, then, in a crushing embrace, his arms as strong as the day they said goodbye. They snake around her waist. She is crushed between her leather armor and his stupid ugly tunic and the haleness of his body, and all she wants is to wink out of time and live in this moment. Still, a part of her resists. He has much to remember. Hundreds of years to consider.

He whispers into her ear. “My star. Izzie. My love.” Naming her, as if to anchor her to him. He pulls back only so their foreheads meet. She struggles to focus on the radiance of his gaze. “Are you alright?”

“Am I--” She nearly growls at him in her flummoxed state. Tears slip down her cheeks, too, and it makes her angry and proud and happy and destroyed. “I should be asking you that!”

Perhaps he didn’t hear her; but then, it is more likely he did and saw through her. He tucks her head under his chin and rocks her back and forth. He holds her tightly until her shoulders finally lose their tension and she gives a keening sob against his chest. His breath catches again. And then they collapse to the gold filigree floor, grappling with the sudden collision -- and end -- of too many painful years apart.

---

She feels a bit like a child bringing home a stray, even though that doesn’t make sense. Her Scions know him and he’d lived in Mor Dhona for a not insignificant amount of time. But nothing explains the bizarre embarrassment and desolation she feels when they arrive at the Rising Stones and everyone stares for a second. Don’t look, she wants to scream. Everything is fine and normal and not at all a miracle that shouldn’t have happened.

But then Krile marches forward and points a terrifying finger at G’raha. “Raha. Just because this all worked out well does not mean you are forgiven for being an idealistic fool. To bed. Now.”

Izzie grins so brightly her eyes water as G’raha’s ears flatten against his head. Her mother would like Krile very much; the resemblance strikes her fiercely in that moment.

“Don’t let him leave your sight, Izzie,” she grumbles as they enter Dawn’s Respite. G’raha leans into Izzie as she half carries him, and she wonders if he’s dramatizing a little to stay close to her and hide from Krile. “I can’t believe how angry I still am with you after all these years. You ridiculous fool. You’re lucky your decision quite literally prevented a calamity…”

G’raha, to his credit, bows to her scolding. “You’re right, of course.”

Krile harrumphs. But Izzie doesn’t miss the soft, sidelong glance she gives the younger scholar before she near pushes him to bed.

---

Izzie brings G’raha everything Krile says he needs and more. She fetches food and blankets and washcloths. She holds weird aether scanning tools at just right angles. She cleans medical tools and sweeps floors and folds sheets when Krile runs out of things for her to do. At one point, she notices G’raha keeps brushing his bangs out of his eyes. She silently marches up to his bedside, fishes out a few pins from her pocket, and waves them in front of his face.

He reaches forward to take them. "Thank you--"

"Let me do it," she whispers, and before he can protest, her fingers brush against his crown, pinning his soft hair out of his beautiful eyes. He takes the faintest breath before he wraps a hand around her wrist, gentle and pleading.

"You haven't sat down."

She feels like she has hornets under her skin. "Lots to do."

He quirks a smile. “No there isn’t.”

She glances to where his fingers grip her. She glances around the spotless Respite. Her ears flatten. “...well. There was.”

So she sits in the chair Krile pointedly left beside him and collapses her body forward until her forehead lays on the mattress. She is tired. Not for the first time, she wishes she wasn’t like this. Wishes she didn’t feel driven to do until she can’t think anymore.

But then G’raha gently rubs her head between her ears and she decides she can just opt out of thinking, if she wants. She allows herself the affection; from the way his hands don’t leave her, he seems desperate to give it. She snaps out her own hand, letting it wander the mattress and muss away the sheets until she finds his thigh and she feels better, touching him back. He softly hums some old tune and she relaxes there in relative quiet for who knows how long.

In her warm drifting, she eventually realizes she dreads nightfall. She should let him sleep the recuperative sleep of a mortal man. She should not hover or oppress him into what she wants. But just as before, as in the old days and the new, he speaks as if he can read her like a book.

"If it isn't any trouble, my dear one," he starts, "would you be willing to stay with me tonight?"

She nods at once, relieved, and settles harder into her chair. He smiles, lopsided.

"You can have a bed, if you'd like."

"I want to be closer," she admits, and already her face burns, even though she has not lifted her hand from his thigh for hours, maybe. "So here is fine, I've slept in a chair before, a lot actually--"

He reaches up and tugs on one of the frazzled locks of hair framing her face, just like Before. Her lip quivers. "You can have a bed," he says, cutely commandeering in a way he never let himself be as Exarch, and he pats his mattress.

She blinks at him. In the next moment, she is peeling off her boots, avoiding his resplendent gaze as she does so. She pulls back his covers and slips in beside him, her legs sliding against his warm, bare skin as he tucks her in against his chest. She entwines their limbs and throws an arm over his waist. She digs her nose into his chest, smelling his clean skin; even now his scent reminds her of their old campfires. He rubs small circles into the back of her neck with his thumb.

Why had she been so afraid to ask for this?

"Finally," he sighs into her hair. "My dark and dastardly plans may commence."

He brushes his fingers on her exposed waist. She squeaks at his touch -- he was tickling her, the fiend -- and whaps him with her palm. He laughs. She feels at home.

---

G'raha awakens first. He blinks heavily at the weight lying against him and looks down, and only then does he accept he is not dreaming.

Izzie snores against him, her mouth open. Her chin shines with drool. Her hair is a tangle of red knots under her sweaty neck, but her face is so relaxed that he thinks to keep her there, forever. His reverie only ends because Krile enters -- and she stops suddenly, seeing the pair.

He can only describe her expression as wistful. But she schools her face into more familiar, sly watchfulness when she notices his gaze upon her.

"You would ensnare the Warrior of Light," Krile says, as if exhausted of him already.

"I assure you," he says, quiet as a whisper, "that it was entirely the other way around."

Krile smirks. She oozes sarcasm as she sweeps over to them, but when her gaze shifts to Izzie’s still miraculously sleeping form, he remembers how badly he missed Krile’s softness, too.

“Oh, Raha.” She lays the back of her hand on Izzie’s forehead, testing for fever (it was apparently that unusual for her to sleep like this), but her twinkling eyes land on him. “You haven’t changed at all.”

---

And then the strangest thing of all happens: The Scions of the Seventh Dawn have nothing to do. Nothing so pressing the world won’t wait a few days for them to catch up to it.

G’raha learns the limits of his new old body. He falls asleep on their picnic blanket and during a card game and even, to Izzie's sickening panic, once on the edge of a balcony wall where he had perched with a book. He devours whole meals so quickly she watches him in careful awe. He weaves spells and gets tired enough to faint; she has so far been able to catch him before he hits the ground, but she ponders letting him do so, once, if it teaches him a lesson.

Izzie enjoys playing witness. It’s like watching her favorite dreams depicted on stage for her amusement.

"I like your hair like that," she says in passing one day. His hand flutters up to the pins he had kept and his ears flick -- more expressive than she had ever seen, even in the old days. He smiles brightly.

"I'm glad," he says. "I like it too."

Tataru gifts him new clothes, and that is when it truly feels like the beginning of an era. He steps out of a side room to model them for the Scion family, smiling sheepishly, and Izzie stares for a moment too long. She feels Feo Ul's hand in this. The Fae King reached through time and space to design this outfit specifically to slap her in the face. My dear sapling will have to thank me in person later! She can nearly hear the words -- and indeed, Izzie would.

The design is a perfect blend of old and new. His sharp red half-robe is ridiculously him, honoring the Exarch and young scholar both. The gold accents shimmer under the light. He is adorned with so many necklaces she is struck with the desire to bring him another, as if in tribute.

She steps close and adjusts his black scarf, letting her fingers drift down to the tassles and linger on the sumptuous fabric just over his collarbones, before she realizes what she is doing.

G'raha's grin is blinding in the corner of her eye.

"It wasn't even," she grumbles at him.

"And the rest of it?"

"It's a good look," Thancred says. His tone indicates more than just the clothes. Alphinaud poorly stifles a giggle.

Izzie turns back to glare at them, but they are all looking at her, like she is the twist in the tale they've been waiting for. Urianger smiles gently. Y'shtola raises a brow. I knew it to be so. Even Alisaie looks strangely triumphant, like she'd won a bet.

She blushes furiously and lets it slide.

Despite this -- despite the offer for him to join the Scions and the work he does to re-seal the tower and the fact he is never far from arm's reach, much less out of sight -- she still feels out of sorts. And then one day, as they sit together in the Rising Stones cafe picking over finger sandwiches, her mouth does the thing where it asks a stupid question before she realizes it's happening.

She stares at him as he places a fifth sandwich in his mouth and she asks: "Are we together?"

He glances to her, alarmed, but his tone remains steady and teasing. "Did you teleport somewhere on accident? You look corporeal enough."

"No. I mean. Are we...are…" Well, no, now it feels really stupid. She turns away. She stuffs a whole sandwich in her mouth in one go, and he waits patiently the whole time. She says, once she swallows the food down: "Is this happening? For real this time?"

She isn't sure what she means. Physically? A proposal of marriage? All of it makes her feel like she just stuck her head in an oven.

His brows turn downward. "Why wouldn't it be, my love?"

Yes, this is very stupid indeed. His love is near impossible to avoid. But since he received his own room at the Stones, they function otherwise like they intend to live completely separate lives. Like colleagues.

Which they are. Which is fine.

It’s not.

"Can we...go on a trip? An adventure maybe? Or something? Alone. Just us two. Without...any of the other Scions…?”

She bites her lip and lays her head on the table and covers her scalp with her hands. She wants to die for some reason.

He laughs, warm and true, and he leans in until his forehead rests on her temple. She still hides in shame, even as he whispers just for her to hear. "How many times do I have to tell you you're my guiding star? Before you believe me?"

Her face is so flushed she feels sweat break on her brow. "Maybe another time would help," she mutters into the table.

He laughs again and gently kisses her on the corner of her mouth. "I will wait for you to come to me, alright?" When she looks at him with wide eyes, stricken by a terror she struggles to name, he smiles at her. Love freely given. "You could never disappoint me. As ever, I follow in your light."

---

She takes him up on it that night.

She was never confident in these affairs. Their first time in the tower on the First she was seized by reckless abandon. He was already seeing everything. Why hide? Their time, she sensed, had been limited once again. The tower loomed over everything. A judge in cold absentia.

Now, if she knocks on this door in the Rising Stones, she will be stepping into forever. Her body shakes. She feels 19 again, afraid of how powerfully certain she is -- afraid of the pain she may invite into her life, if she loses him. But this time, she has already lost him twice. No god, if they exist, would be cruel or stupid enough to make an enemy of her this time.

She knocks. He opens the door. He stares, bewildered.

"Hi," she says flatly.

A blinding smile lights his face. She has to look away a moment. Her heart thuds so strongly she is certain he can hear it. He stands there, staring.

"Move, would you?" Her voice feels harsh and unsteady. "Before the gossipmongers see."

He steps back. She steps in. And then, in one fluid movement, he pulls her against him and pushes the door closed behind her. Suddenly her back is pressed against the harsh wood and she is kissing him, melting into his muscled chest and his moan of satisfaction as her tongue darts into his mouth. She isn't sure who moved first. It doesn't matter now. They're together, against the literal forces of time and space.

She pulls back just enough that their lips are only a hair apart. Heat thrums between them.

"I hope you know," she breathes, "that this time I mean to keep you."

He grins. The boy she had dreamed of. "This time I intend to be kept."

She laughs before he quiets her with his mouth against hers.

For all its drama, the reconnection is quiet. He carries her to the bed. They undress each other slowly, limbs entangled, smiling into each other's skin, until they lay together naked beneath the blankets. He won't stop kissing her, pressing his lips against old injuries, her ears, her collarbones, her stomach.

“So much to catch up on,” he says. “And I will know all of it, again.”

She takes a deep breath and shreds her last bit of armor. Do what you like with me. Mark me. Make it real.

He holds her fast when she says this. He trembles, looming over her, within her. She wants to be disappeared by his shadow. She wants to be consumed.

His mouth and tongue slide down her neck. "You are everything.” His teeth graze the top of her shoulder. “I will answer your every prayer.” His hand slides over the bony curve of her hip. “For what I want...is to see you beloved.”

---

And yet.

She wakes curled into his side, his arm circled around her shoulders. She moves until she can hear his heart, beating and alive.

The shadow of night sparks cruel questions: Will he be kept? Will he be fighting fate's designs upon his life? Can she survive another loss? Can she afford to try? They circle in her head until she takes a sharp breath. She utters his true name. "Raha…"

Perhaps he had already been awake. Immediately, he circles his arms around her in a protective vice. “What’s wrong?”

Her voice catches in her throat and G’raha pulls her up. He sits against the headboard and cradles her against him, bringing the blankets up to keep her warm. “I don’t know,” she says. She smothers her ear against his chest. Lets the sound of his lifeblood calm her. “I don’t know what happens next.”

He strokes her back. Her fingertips slip against his chest as she balls her hands into fists. And then he sucks in a breath. She tilts her head up at him.

"...I just want you to know where I stand," he says, and she gets the feeling he has practiced this speech. "I...I had seen the reports of your death in the future that now will never be. I saw...memorials to you in every camp. Every small group carried something of you. A picture. A carving. A song they thought you wrote…"

He sighs. She hears a century of pain in it.

"Your death in the abstract was untenable. You were everywhere. And...I knew, I knew when I woke that I would be confronted with your death, even in an ideal world. But it was...I felt so immeasurably stupid. To think that I would be able to survive it. I could barely tolerate giving up adventuring with you, much less..."

She stops him with a finger to his lips. No need to relive these hurts for her sake. "What's the short version, Raha?"

The use of his true name sends another contented shudder through his lungs. He takes her raised hand and pulls until he can press his lips against the inside of her wrist.

"I had a century to come to terms with what I want. And now I have her, despite my every expectation.” His tail curls around her hip. "You haven't had that time. I didn't want to press it. But I also know...sometimes you experience more pain doing nothing out of fear of what the something will bring."

She hears the silent mercy he is granting her. It’s okay to want. It’s okay to struggle with it.

“And,” he adds, “you lose a shocking amount of time, thinking not of the present.”

He presses a kiss to the pulsing vein in her wrist. She taps his chest with her thumb.

"What did the pictures even look like?"

His other hand slides lazily down her back. "Not even the slightest bit like you."

"Not even a little?"

"It was you if you were at least a fulm taller and had much meaner brows. Maybe."

"Hmm…"

He squeezes the base of her tail and she jumps. His chuckling breath tickles her ear. "I much prefer this version."

---

G’raha taps the charcoal against the blank drawing parchment as he watches Izzie experience the consequences of her actions.

On the path into Rowena’s Splendors below, the Warrior of Light and Darkness hummed, fully distracted by the contents of her bag while she walked -- leaving her utterly unprepared for Thancred to hold out his arm and nearly clothesline her. She stumbles with incredible drama. Her arms flap. Her feet dance to keep her aloft, and just barely do they succeed.

“Hey!” she shouts.

“Your bag,” Thancred insists.

“You-”

“Your bag.”

Izzie growls in frustration before shoving it at him with a leathery thunk.

Thancred makes a show of rifling through it. Some knives wrapped in burlap. The remnants of a cheesecloth. A few glamour prisms. G’raha knows Thancred wouldn’t find anything in there. He knows, also, that Thancred wouldn’t even be down there if it wasn’t for him. He tipped the man off because he knew Izzie would find it funny.

He rather enjoys Izzie’s little cons -- when they aren’t directed at him.

Thancred hands back the satchel. “If I find any more of that Mord grub in our coldbox, I will confine you to quarters, warrior of two worlds or no.” Despite his words, his tone is largely...endeared. Relieved, and not just because her bag was empty.

Izzie grins at him. “Gaia didn’t send any with me this time.”

Thancred ignores her. “And you!” he shouts up at G’raha. “Stop enabling her!”

G’raha raises his hands to proclaim innocence, laughing, and he wipes off the charcoal lingering on his fingers. He turns his eyes toward the door to the balcony upon which he sits. His heart floats, knowing it’ll be mere moments before Izzie will be ambushing him.

The scions -- his fellow scions -- hadn’t missed the changes within her. She smiles more. She even plays music in the tavern sometimes, which always brings a full house. I’ll deal with the frustrating practical jokes if it means she’s doing alright, Thancred admitted to him over beer not so long ago.

He hears her before he sees her, but only because he seeks out her quiet footfalls. She jumps from the threshold of the door and makes it half-way; she twirl-steps the last half to dramatically throw her arm over his shoulders. She lands hard enough to thump the air out of him. The whole of her leans playfully into his side, her chest nearly against his own. “Ready to see Ma?”

He grins before her happy radiance, never one to resist her call to adventure -- not even when he fears what it will bring. Meeting her adoptive mother, for instance. He settles his arm around her lower back. “As ready as one can be.”

---

The Thanalan heat stifles him. Dust seeps into his clothes and sand flies into his eyes no matter which way he turns when the winds blow across the desert. Izzie's ma, Sheshena Shena, takes one look at G’raha’s pale, wind-chapped skin and insists he take tea with her on the covered porch.

"Izzie can set up the carriage herself," she declares. Izzie glances to him and nods encouragement, but she acquiesces at once to her Ma's will. Lady Shena, G'raha thinks, has a power all of Garlemald wishes it could wield.

But he knows that this gesture is not solely for his benefit. She allows him a few moments of polite, worthless conversation over an aromatic chai before her glassy eyes pin him in place.

"Not too many moons ago," Sheshena says, "I was going to ask her to quit."

G'raha lets that register for a moment. "Her work with the Scions?"

Sheshena inclines her head. "She wouldn't have. She can no less quit being the warrior of light than I can quit being her mother. But I thought...perhaps it would help her notice just how bad the misery weighed on her shoulders."

She purses her lips and turns away, toward Izzie. She lingers there a moment.

"She would have just been angry with me." Her gaze slides back to him. "But I have watched my daughter carefully, G'raha Tia. And much of this started not long after you disappeared from her life."

He understands now. She is warning him. She is telling him the stories that wouldn't be in any tomes.

"...it wasn't all your fault," she allows. "Her time in Ishgard would have crushed her were it not for dear Edmont." He forgets she is on first name terms with Izzie's Ishgardian family -- that she is part of it, too. "And then her father died."

G'raha closes his eyes, punched in the gut.

Her voice hollows. "It never quite stopped after that."

He realizes this is not just a tribunal for his crimes against her daughter, but a confessional. An unmooring of pain, old and new.

"She stopped allowing herself things. Her silly songs ended. Her visits slowed. I knew she needed the space. But she was drifting into the middle of a lake with no paddle. She was letting it happen." Her silver eyes sharpen into knives. "And I sought to blame someone. And I decided it was you. You, who had broken her heart first. You, who had left her behind. You were...it was easier."

She sets down her tea cup with a shaky clink and turns away from him.

"She told me what happened on this...other world. How she found you again."

He stares down into his half-sipped tea. His fingers slip upon the stone table. He would take this punishment. It was small, in the scheme of things, and necessary.

"She told me, had it not happened...had you made a different choice, that she would be dead."

So would the whole world, he thinks to say, but on this he and Sheshena agreed: without her, none of it matters, anyway.

"That you survived years and years to set things right and make sure she didn't die."

He nods, though his neck feels stiff.

"So I wanted to apologize. And thank you."

His heart stutters. He looks up at her in shock.

"Come off it," she says, sly and perhaps embarrassed. "Look at her. Look at her." Her lip trembles. "She's humming again."

They both look out to her, softly brushing her chocobo. The 'bo chirps conversationally at her. She laughs and coos at her stalwart friend. And there, in her laughter…

Where the desert sun left him weak and wan, she is painted in one thousand colors of light. Her sea green eyes shine. Her skin reddens like a canyon at noon. The sun adores her as its own, and perhaps she is.

This is the crystal of Azem. I think that it was meant for me. Can you believe it? Emet-selch, making this for me, once upon a time...

The Sun. The Shepherd of the Stars. When he touched the crystal, he felt a strange sort of awe.

He tastes cloves and the fruit of oasis when he thinks about her aether whipping around him. He thinks of life where there should be misery -- of how desire can twist but also carefully caress.

"Ma! Where'd you put Bonbon's sun hat?"

Sheshena answers, her voice no longer weighed down, and he realizes again why Izzie was so afraid at first. He would learn the realness of her again. He would see her pain and be there at her Da’s grave with her. He would make it impossible for her to forget that she is loved.

Sheshena turns back to him and the light in her eyes shifts.

"So." Sheshena regards him regally. "You're Allagan royalty, are you?" She raises a single brow to his flummoxed expression and sighs as she lifts her tea cup to her lips. "I suppose she could do worse."

The sun scalds bright pictures behind his eyelids as he laughs.

#g'raha tia #g'raha tia x wol #5.3 spoilers #crystal exarch x wol #crystal exarch #ffxiv #ffxiv fic #otp: upon an eternal wind #kathryn writes

32 notes · View notes