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UPDATED APRIL 17, 2021
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1. no smut! (borderline is fine tho)
2. I’m only really comfortable doing female reader/OC with the majority of characters I write for, so no romantic pairings between characters (platonic relationship are OK), but I will write a gender neutral reader if asked to. I’m also gonna try female reader/oc with female characters...
3. maybe a bit later I’ll be comfortable enough to write male reader/OC with female characters...
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synopsis: pacrim!au. please don't kill me after this chapter <3
chapters: one | two | three | four | five | six
V. COLLAPSE
For once, you don’t dream of darkness.
The sky is so blue that it takes your breath away, and the sea reflects it like a mirror made of clear glass. You sit on the sand, let the waves wash over your toes. It’s sunny. You’re smiling, feeling the warmth on your bare arms, your face. And there’s a dog, snoozing next to you with its big, white head in your lap.
Everything is warm.
You stir first.
Too early, is the first thought that crosses your mind when you rouse, remaining fragments of your dream still clinging to your eyelids. The next that follows is that it’s oddly warm. Frowning, you shift experimentally and the arm draped over your waist tightens its grip, pulling you flush against a sleep-warm body.
And then Phainon makes a sound against your collarbone, groggy and content, before he goes lax again, his breathing soft and slow.
It’s warm. Gods, everything feels so warm. Your shared room doesn’t have any windows to let natural light in, but that doesn’t seem to matter when you have the physical manifestation of a sunbeam curled up in your sheets.
Perhaps, there was a reason you dreamt of sunlight.
You take your time memorising him like this — unraveled in sleep, defenses lowered. His white hair falls messily over his forehead, and his lashes flutter faintly, as though chasing some dream. For a second, you let yourself wonder if you’re in it.
The collar of his shirt has slipped down, revealing the golden tattoos inked into his skin. Slowly, you reach out, trace the gilded sun at his neck before you let your fingertips ghost over the thin lines at his nape, following the rivulets of ichor down his spine to where they disappear beneath the fabric.
Phainon shivers against you, nose pressing into the crook of your neck. His breath is warm against your skin. “Keep doing that,” he rasps, voice thick with sleep.
The sound coils low in your stomach, sweet and syrupy. Fuck. Is it weird? To suddenly feel an aching need in your chest, like you want to lean down and just—
“Phainon?” you ask, before that thought can complete itself. He just leans into you, like a sunflower tilting towards light, a contented hum in the back of his throat.
“Don’t know him.”
A little snort escapes you, fondness seeping through without permission. “The claxon’s going to ring any minute…”
“Mm. Don’t care.”
And because the world hates you both, the claxon rings immediately after he says that. A pitiful groan escapes Phainon, before he cracks one eye open with reluctance, pale lashes sweeping over ocean blue. When he sees you, though, he smiles — slow and languid and soft — as though he’s still drugged on the meds and something else. Affection, maybe. “Morning. Sleep well?”
“As good as I possibly could, with you clinging to me like lichen to tree bark.” Phainon just laughs, shifts back a little so that he can look at you properly. His cheek is smushed against the crumpled sheets.
“I like that I understood what that meant… I feel so smart, with all your science-y stuff in my head.’ He grins a little then yawns, stretching both arms over his head. Cute. When they come back down, though, one hand settles at the curve of your waist, fingers splayed out comfortably as if that’s where they’re meant to be. “Looks like you’ll just have to get used to me.”
Your breath catches. This is… platonic, right? The last decade of your life hasn’t exactly been a masterclass in emotionally healthy relationships. You’re not sure where the line between friends and drift partners and… whatever this is gets drawn.
But it’s Phainon, you suppose. Everything is different, when it’s with him.
“I have your history nerd facts up here, too,” you point at your own head, and he laughs. His hair is sticking up in every direction again, so you reach out to smooth down the unruly strands — finally, you get to do that. You swear that Phainon almost preens when you do, snuggling up to you like a big dog getting pet. It’s kind of cute, actually. Not that you’d ever admit it.
You continue to run your fingers through his hair, and his eyes flutter shut. If you find the right spot, maybe he'll even bark for you, you think to yourself amusedly.
But Phainon doesn’t bark. When your nails scratch over his scalp — an accident, just a fraction too much pressure — it is a quiet, punched out sound escapes him instead. A shudder runs through his whole body where it’s curled up against you, his fingers tightening on your waist.
Oh. That does something dangerous to your pulse.
You barely have time to think what the hell was that when Phainon’s hand catches your wrist. The sound he’d made is still echoing in your ears.
“Wait,” he says, and when you glance down, you’re stunned to see a flush creeping from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. His eyes dart to the sides — left, right, left again — before he looks back at you. It’s only then that you realise just how close your faces are. Close enough to count every eyelash, close enough to feel the unsteady breath that he lets out. “Um…”
This strange tension, thankfully, is interrupted by a sudden knock on the door. You glance at Phainon, but he gives you an equally bemused look in return. Who would be looking for either of you so early in the morning? Frowning, you move to climb off the bed when you’re suddenly stopped by the arm around your waist.
“I need to get the door.”
He responds with his best wounded puppy expression, complete with dramatically lowered lashes. “Do you really have to?”
The knocking comes again, more insistent this time. Phainon grumbles a little, but reluctantly lets you slip out from the cage of his arms. He pouts the entire way as you cross the room to get to the door, though, and when you open it—
“Where is Phainon?” Hyacine is standing in the hallway in a crumpled lab coat, with a sweet smile on her face. She looks calm, but there’s something about her that makes you fear that she might just stab someone (probably Phainon) in the eye with a very large needle without warning. Terrified for your life, you step aside and mutely point at the bed where Phainon is now sitting up, blue eyes wide and hands raised in surrender.
“There you are.” She storms into your room like she’s on a warpath, and before he can do anything, yanks up the hem of his shirt.
“Hey!” Phainon yelps, clutching at the fabric like a scandalised Victorian maiden. “Be gentle with me! I’m an injured patient!”
The look Hyacine levels at him would have made a lesser man beg for his life. “You forfeited your patient rights last night when you broke the lock on your door, ripped out your IV and then ran away from the five doctors attempting to chase you down for your own wellbeing.” Despite her tone, she peels back the bloodied dressing with careful, practised hands. Phainon hisses through clenched teeth regardless.
You peer over her shoulder and immediately regret it. The wound is an angry red gash along his ribs, the synthetic skin graft peeling at the edges where he's clearly torn his stitches. It’s not very deep, which is fortunate, you suppose, but it’s long and blood beads along the inflamed tissue, an angry shade of pink. You swallow, hard.
“Five minutes,” Hyacine mutters, whipping out some tweezers and some alcohol swabs from god knows where. She disinfects the area with careful, practiced strokes, and you watch Phainon’s jaw clench against the sting you know he’s feeling. “I turn my head for five minutes and you break out of the medbay, pop two stitches, bleed through your bandages—”
Phainon smiles weakly. “In my defense, I was drugged…?”
“No defenses,” Hyacine cuts him off, hauling him to his feet with surprising strength for a woman so petite. “Next time, I’m microchipping you like a dog. Even Mydei didn’t misbehave like this when he wrecked his arm last time!”
You step aside for Hyacine as she manhandles Phainon towards the door (you know better than to stand in the path of a hurricane). She only pauses to give you a warm smile over her shoulder. “Sorry to bother you so early in the morning, (Name)! I’ll send this guy,” she gives him a little shake by the arm, “to the mess hall right after I patch up whatever he tore in his little escapade last night.” Her tone is light, but the sharp look she shoots Phainon suggests he won’t be slipping away again anytime soon. He cowers under her glare.
“Don’t worry about it,” you say, and Hyacine beams. Phainon gives you a look of betrayal.
Traitor, he mouths, as he passes you. I’m scared, you mouth back.
You watch Hyacine haul him out of the room by the ear, your lips pressed together to stop yourself from laughing as he shoots you a pitiful look over his shoulder. You shake your head fondly.
(You’ll save him an extra juice box from breakfast later.)
Phainon comes down to the cafeteria about half an hour after you, freshly showered, dressed in a new change of clothes and bearing one very bright red ear. Mydei follows close behind, his usual stoic demeanour slightly marred by the fresh bandages peeling out from under his sleeve. People stare at the two of them as they make their way through the mess hall, but no one dares approach either of them. Probably think they had a fight or something, which, you suppose, isn’t wrong.
The second they reach your table, Phainon collapses into the seat next to you with a dramatic huff, determinedly not looking at you. Mydei, on the other hand, soundlessly takes the spot beside Castorice. She raises an eyebrow at his bandages. He shrugs, she nods, he blinks in response — was that a whole conversation? — before he starts chomping on an apple that he produces from god knows where.
The rest of the rangers watch this procession with varying degrees of amusement. Caelus is the first to break the silence.
“So… you guys got rough last night?” he asks, waggling a very suggestive eyebrow. Mydei gives him a look so flat it would have made a hardened soldier pee their pants.
“If you insinuate anything of that nature between us one more time I’m going to smash your head into this wall,” he threatens calmly, accepting the piece of buttered toast Castorice hands him with his uninjured arm. Stelle leans forward so fast she nearly upends Dan Heng’s coffee.
“So you guys did get up to some dirty business.” Her golden eyes shine with barely restrained… excitement? Enthusiasm? Insanity? Either way, you lean back a few inches. “And you didn’t invite us along for the party? Now that’s just rude.”
Mydei just shakes his head. “You lot wouldn’t have been very useful.”
March gasps, clutching at her chest indignantly. “We could’ve helped! I’ve been practicing throwing knives, recently!” Dan Heng sighs without looking up from the book in his hands.
“You threw a butter knife at one of the training dummies. It bounced off and nearly killed me instead.”
“It was a warning shot!” She insists.
Mydei looks like he’s starting to get really tired of shaking his head. He glares at Phainon, but your co-pilot is still staring away at nothing dramatically, so he sighs. “Either way, nothing all that exciting,” he mutters, slowly chewing on his toast. “We just… exterminated a big rat, that’s all.”
Stelle eyes him for a few seconds later, then shrugs when she realises he isn’t going to give away any more. “Must have been one hell of a rat, then,” she says, leaning back in her chair. Mydei just grunts non-committally in response.
The rangers go back to focusing on their breakfasts, their individual conversations. You glance to the side, only to see Phainon still doing his best impression of a widow who’s just lost her husband to war. “Phainon?”
He turns just enough to meet your eyes, lower lip jutting out in an exaggerated pout. “Oh, don’t mind me,” he sighs loudly. Seriously, this big baby… “Just a wounded soldier, forsaken by his country, his comrades, his— is that banana milk?”
His blue eyes light up when he sees the carton you’d saved for him, but then he remembers he’s supposed to be sulking and schools his features back into a pout at the last second. He turns away from you again.
“Come on, Phainon,” you say, equal parts amused and exasperated.
“The betrayal still stings, you know. I can’t believe that after all we went through together, you left me to face Hyacine’s tender mercies alone—”
You roll your eyes to the ceiling. “I didn’t know you literally broke out of the medbay!”
“— all abandoned, helpless—”
“You outran five doctors while drugged! You were the furthest thing from helpless.”
His lower lip juts out further. “And she gave me a jab! You know I’m scared of needles!” The pout deepens, his eyes growing suspiciously shiny. “I could’ve died from neglect. Wasted away in a medical bed. All alone, without my drift partner to—”
“Gods! Alright, alright.” You’ll stab yourself with a fork if you hear him whine one more time. “I’m sorry for abandoning you. What do you want from me, hmm?”
He manages to maintain his sulk for exactly eight more seconds (you counted) before he peeks at you. His blue eyes glint victoriously with something mischievous that you’re… kind of afraid of, actually. “I’ll forgive you if you feed me,” he says, far too innocently.
The entire table goes silent. Even Mydei pauses mid-bite to look up at you.
You stare at the walking armoury doing his best to impersonate a baby bird. “Phainon. You got grazed in the side. Your arms work perfectly fine.” He pouts, batting his eyes at you again. His lower lip trembles, ever so slightly.
After a few seconds, you throw up your hands in defeat and reach for his spoon. Seriously, this man… “Fine. Fine!” Phainon’s eyes light up like a kid who’s just been offered candy. “But only because you’re being impossible. I’m not cutting up your— are you preening right now?”
He absolutely is, chest puffing up even as you jab the spoon into his mouth with as little gentleness as you can muster. “Knew you loved me,” he hums despite your attempt to choke him, finally leaning down to rest his head on your shoulder with a contented grin. “I can die happy now.”
“Hey,” Stelle holds out a hand as you roll your eyes and shove another spoonful of scrambled eggs into Phainon’s mouth. “Pay up.”
Caelus curses under his breath and slaps about twenty credits into his sister's outstretched palm. You stare between the two of them, baffled. “What’s this about?”
“About who wears the pants in this Jaeger,” Stelle grins, patting her brother on the back with no sincerity at all. “Caelus was like, almost convinced. But he voted for Phainon at the last second.”
“I always bet on losing dogs…” Caelus says mournfully, glaring at the man next to you. Phainon doesn’t even look up, chewing happily, and shrugs with the indifference of a man who’s already won the lottery in life.
“Woof.”
The ranger table erupts into chaos. Dan Heng facepalms so hard his book hits the table, March squeals, and Castorice raises an eyebrow. And Stelle— Stelle howls with laughter so loud it draws stares from the entire mess hall.
“That’s it.” You push at Phainon — or at least try to, anyway — but he doesn’t budge even a little bit. “Get off! Get off me, you sticky little…”
Fortunately, you’re saved from the embarrassment when the news channel on the television screen in the mess hall displays something about a massive chemical fire in the next city over. Something about an explosion, something about a still undergoing investigation, and then something about a secret laboratory of an international terrorist organisation…
Mydei doesn’t look up. You turn to stare wordlessly at the man next to you, eyes burning a question into the side of his face. But Phainon just stabs two straws into his juice packets, before happily shoving both into his mouth.
Apple juice and banana milk…
The other rangers stare at the television screen for a few more seconds before their gazes slide from the news report to Phainon, and then to Mydei — who continues eating with the careful neutrality of a man who knows exactly what happened but will never admit it.
“So…” March drags the word out slowly as she eyes the two of them. “That, uh, wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with that big rat you guys were dealing with last night, would it?”
Mydei just shrugs.
After breakfast, all the rangers head down to one of the meeting rooms adjacent to the Bridge — fondly known as the War Room, Stelle tells you as you walk. Aglaea is already there when all of you file in, seated at the head of the table. Her eyes sweep across each one of you as you enter, GM typing notes into her laptop in the background. Sitting at the other end of the table, for some reason, is Professor Anaxagoras, who is leaning back in his chair and just sort of… blankly staring at the ceiling.
“I’m glad to see that everyone’s made it today,” Aglaea remarks as all of you file inside. She eyes Mydei and Phainon, raises an eyebrow. “Some clearly in better condition than others.”
You glance at Phainon in alarm — does the General know what the two of them got up to last night? But Phainon just smiles, shrugs as he slides into the chair next to yours. “Even rats bite when cornered.”
“Hm.” She holds his gaze, before lowering it back to the tablet in her lap. “Using a flamethrower might have been a little excessive. But I suppose that as long as the end is achieved, the means suffice.”
The meeting begins. Aglaea flashes the reports generated by the combat analysts and the K-Science department overnight — did they even sleep? — on the many screens, begins to go through each one. The other rangers fall silent as they listen, eyes fixed intently on the numbers on charts. It’s the most serious you’ve ever seen them, you think. Even the twins have stopped cracking their usual ridiculous jokes, serious expressions mirrored on each others’ faces.
They replay the fights, footage taken from the choppers. The kaiju that Caelus had referred to as a concussed bull ends up being more difficult than he’d led you to believe. You watch with bated breath as Trailblazer baits the rampaging, snarling beast like a matador in a bull ring, dodging dangerously at the last second while Akivili rains down a barrage of shots from the distance. The dense cartilage around its head lets it shrug off the standard plasmacaster shots like they’re pesky mosquitoes.
It’s only brought down twenty minutes later, when Akivili finally manages to charge up its speciality — the Vidyadhara DF plasma railgun mounted on its right arm. The Cloud Piercing round snipes it from behind, superheated ionised gas biting through the kaiju’s leathery hide and severing its spinal column. But for one terrifying, suspended second, the monster remains upright.
Before it finally collapses into the ocean.
And when it falls, it sends up a wave, rippling outward in every direction. You let out a breath you didn’t know you’d been keeping in.
“Showboating bastards,” Mydei mutters under his breath, but there’s grudging respect in his tone. March just grins, makes a little finger gun that she fires at him.
“Pew.”
They play yours next. You feel strangely nervous, hyperaware of every pair of eyes on your fight as Khaslana and Nikador take on the kaiju. But there’s nothing to criticise — every move both Jaegers make is perfectly executed. You can see the echo of Kephale in the way Khaslana fights, each defensive action flowing into an offensive one flowing into something else. Not a single movement wasted.
“Some selected clips have been released to the public,” Aglaea nods at you, after you watch the kaiju’s deformed head hit the water, still smoking from your plasmacaster. Her lips quirk in what might pass for approval. “That killing shot went viral on the World Wound Web last night.”
Caelus looks impressed. “Above the cat videos category? Now that’s saying something.” Castorice flashes you a small smile and a thumbs up.
“Public perception has skyrocketed too, after the announcement that Phainon is returning to active duty.” Aglaea looks back at the screen, smiles a little to herself as she scrolls through the social media reports. Looks like her gamble paid off, after all. “Turns out that the world still believes in heroes.”
You turn to glance at Phainon, only to see that he’s already looking at you. His lips twitch a little when your eyes meet. “Hero,” he mouths silently, just for you. You shake your head, turn away before your cheeks can grow too warm. He’s the hero here, not you.
Stelle slumps back in her chair with a sigh. “What are we, just chopped-up pieces of kaiju gall bladder?”
Anaxa's head snaps up from his datapad so fast his glasses slide down his nose. “Kaiju don't have gall bladders,” he corrects.
“What?” Stelle scowls. “Where do they store their poop, then?”
“Poop isn’t stored in the gall bladder.” Anaxa’s expression twists in scientific annoyance. “That’s not — that’s not how any of this works!”
“But all animals need to shit—”
Caelus leans over to whisper loudly in Dan Heng’s ear. “I give it thirty seconds before he throws a fit. Or maybe a chair.”
The dark haired ranger shrugs. “Twenty.”
Aglaea’s hand comes down onto the table before the two of them can get into a fistfight. “Anaxa,” her voice could ice over the Breach. “Jaeger status report. Now.”
“Anaxagoras.” The professor shoots Stelle a final look as he rises. He steps in front of the displays, tugs at the sleeves of his lab coat before he speaks. “Well, I have some bad news. Nikador’s going to be out of commission for a while so that we can do repairs on its chest plating. Means we’ll be down a Jaeger for the next couple of weeks or so.”
Mydei exhales through his nose, a look of glum resignation on his face. Castorice raises a hand. “The corrosive?” she asks, softly.
“Acidic in nature. We’re looking at replacing the plating with a tungsten-carbide corrosion resistant alloy. Since Nikador is designed for close combat, we’ll work on all of the torso’s armour as well. It’ll be…” He snaps his fingers, as though running mental calculations on the spot, gives up after a few seconds. “Well, it’ll be expensive.”
His expression looks just a tad too pleased when he says that.
Aglaea just lets out a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “When is it never…” she mutters to herself.
Professor Anaxa runs through a whole bunch of other upgrades he has planned for Trailblazer and Akivili (which makes sense, because they are still Mark-2s despite also being technological marvels). Replacing the pneumatic joints, upgrading the reactor core… with each word he speaks, you think you can see Aglaea’s shoulders sag with the weight of the Shatterdome’s unlimited budget works.
You find yourself glancing at Phainon, calculating the PPDC's financial crisis versus the untapped market of his stupidly photogenic face. Maybe Aglaea should start selling shirtless calendars of him and Mydei, like the fire stations do of firefighters. Or, if you wanted to be a little less ethical, commemorative jars of Shatterdome bathwater. “Limited Edition: Contains Actual Kaiju-Blue Residue!” the ads would say. People would pay stupid money for that.
You don’t realise that you’re staring a little too hard until Phainon’s brows lift, and he leans in closer. “Looking at something?” he hums, voice low and slightly teasing. You jerk away.
“Nope.”
At the end of it, Aglaea rises to her feet, chair scraping on the floor as she stands. “Well, if there’s nothing else, then this meeting is adjourned,” the General announces. “Anaxa, we’ll have further discussions about the planned upgrades in my office.” The scientist makes a face. “And as for you, Phainon,” her eyes narrow as she looks at him. “Actual rest. Not whatever you consider ‘light activity’, understood? Or I'll bench you until the Breach collapses on its own.”
There’s almost a maternal sternness in her voice when she speaks to him. Phainon’s lips lift in a fond, almost defeated smile as he salutes.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The ocean wind carries with it the scent of salt and rust as you dangle your feet over the abyss. You can’t really see the waves — everything down there is just dark, black water churning. Only the occasional flashes of moonlight on the shifting crests betray the dangerous currents beneath. If you fell in, you think you’d vanish without a sound.
So, you’re glad that you don’t startle this time when Phainon drops next to you on the maintenance ledge. “Same place? It’s like you’re not even trying to hide anymore,” he comments, letting his legs swing out over the open water. Your knees bump into each other with every forward arc, but neither of you move away.
“I was never trying to hide. Besides, what’s the point? You’d find me anyway,” you shake your head, and he just smiles. I would. Your finger jabs at the once rusted railing. “Are you the one responsible for this?”
“Well, I’m a man of my word.”
You let out an exaggerated groan. “But now it’s no fun sitting here,” you lament, heels kicking at the empty air where danger used to live. “Where’s the thrill?”
“Thrill?” Phainon repeats after you, before he lets out a laugh, the sound rolling over the open water. “Apologies, I didn’t know that fighting a giant alien monster wasn’t thrilling enough. But,” he reaches to the side, sets something between you with a heavy clink, “now that the railing’s fixed, we can have this here safely.” He pauses. “Well, in comparative safety, at least.”
You frown, leaning over to inspect it and your eyes widen. The label on that glass proclaims it as some obscenely aged single malt — the kind that Lygus only cracks (sorry, cracked) open after certain successful high stakes operations, and the man had been stingier than a dragon hoarding gold. You can count the number of times you’ve tasted this stuff on one hand.
“No way,” you gasp, pick up the bottle to swish it a little. The amber liquid inside glides, catching the lights like gold. Doesn't look like a dupe… “Wow, I never realised that you were a big boy until now, Phainon!”
He snorts as he bends over to uncork the bottle with his teeth. “Look, just because I’m a year younger than you doesn’t mean I’m always—” he grunts, twists the cap off with a satisfied grin, “—going to be a kid, you know.” The scent of aged whiskey fills the small space between you, and Phainon lets out a little cough.
You laugh at that. “Could have fooled me,” you tease, accepting the bottle when he hands it back to you. “Same guy who used to scream at the sight of hermit crabs.” He shoots you an injured look.
“They pinch!”
“They’re just little guys searching for homes…” You shake your head fondly, before you glance down at the opened bottle. “So, what’s the big occasion?”
“There’s ten minutes left till the end of your countdown,” Phainon says, and your eyes widen, glancing at the watch on your wrist. 23:50. Sure enough, it’s ten minutes to midnight. Ten minutes until the new week. Ten minutes until when you’d thought the world would end for you, just a few days ago. The realisation must show on your face because Phainon’s expression does that complicated thing it does whenever he’s torn between smugness and concern. “Wow. I thought that it’d be something that would be on your mind. Guess not, huh?”
You’re a little surprised by it yourself, to be honest. But then again, you’d been more concerned about other things last night — such as Phainon disappearing from the Shatterdome, Phainon almost getting himself killed to take out the man responsible for said countdown, and Phainon returning with a knife wound in his side. Your mind had little space for anything else. “You said you’d take care of it.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “You have that much faith in me, huh?” The playful grin on his face doesn’t quite hide how much the question matters to him.
“Mm.” You turn toward the ocean instead of answering directly, letting the salty wind fill the silence. He’s been in your head. Does he really need you to say it out loud? “Well, anyways, that isn't something really worth celebrating, is it?”
Phainon blinks, finger stilling where it’s been thumbing restlessly over the bottle’s label. “The death of the man who did all those terrible things to you isn’t big enough to celebrate?” He questions, brows pulling into a frown. His voice has gone dangerously soft, and there’s a bite to his words that almost makes you flinch until you realise that it isn’t aimed at you. Oh. For the first time you think you might be seeing the depth of the hatred he has for the man who hurt you.
You think it might just outweigh your own.
“Did I not make him suffer enough?” He tries to disguise the last part as a joke, but his voice wavers slightly on the question, the carefully constructed levity crumbling at the edges. “Did you want to do it yourself?”
Does he think that he’s stolen your revenge from you, somehow? You reach out, wrap your fingers around Phainon’s. The anxious tapping stills.
“I don’t… care how he died, actually.” The admission of the truth is softer than you expect. “I never thought of taking revenge on him. Or even about killing him, to be honest.” Your whole life Lygus had just been there, there, there, like the smell of blood that you could never fully scrub from your skin, the shadow that had clung to your heels to matter where you’d run. “He was just so big in my mind, you know? It felt like I would never be free of him.”
Phainon’s grip tightens imperceptibly around yours, his thumb pressing into the pulse point of your wrist. You can feel the tension in him, coiled and sharp, almost like he’s ready to burn the world down for your sake.
But he doesn’t have to. He’s already done so much more than that.
“But you reminded me he was just a man.” You exhale lightly, give Phainon a small smile. “So… thank you, Phainon.”
Silence stretches between you, filled only by the distant crash of waves against the Shatterdome’s pylons. Then, slowly, his fingers relax, his grip shifting from something fierce to something tender.
“Wow.” He pouts, after a while, to lighten the mood. “Is this your way of saying I risked court martial for nothing?”
You swat at him, releasing his hand. “Don’t be silly.” But you laugh anyway.
Phainon’s fingers drum against the whiskey bottle, the glass humming faintly under his touch. The ocean wind tousles his hair, silvered by moonlight.
“If we don’t toast to that,” he muses, “then we’ll have to think of something else.” His thumb swipes absentmindedly over the label, smudging the condensation there. “How about your first successful kaiju kill?”
You hum noncommittally, watching his brows knit together in thought.
“Your shiny new ranger status?”
You shake your head at that, too. The titles, the kills — none of it feels like something worth celebrating. You’re about to suggest that he just drink so that you can just have a taste of the good whiskey when Phainon’s voice suddenly drops to something soft.
“Then,” he suggests, not looking up at you, “how about us?”
The way he says it makes something waver in you — like it’s something fragile, something precious. “Us?” you repeat, not quite understanding. He nods.
“Meeting you like this. Finding you again.” When you meet his eyes, they're full of something that makes your chest ache — wonder, maybe, or the quiet disbelief of a man who's been given back something he thought lost forever. “Felt like a dream at first. Sometimes it still does.” He exhales, smile rough at the edges. “Not too long ago, I really thought that you’d hate me forever.”
Something in you feels desperate to banish that thought from his mind so that it never returns. “I never hated you,” you say insistently. Gods, you really want to just… punch your past self now, to some extent. “Not even once. You know that, right? You’ve been in my head.”
Phainon pauses. For a moment, he just looks at you — really looks at you — like he’s rewriting the lies you’d told him for the last four years with this moment. “Yeah,” he murmurs, after a while. “But it still makes me happy, hearing it from your mouth.” He holds out the bottle to you with a smile. “It’s midnight, now.” His eyes are soft. “Cheers.”
You take it from him. “We don’t even have cups to toast with, silly.”
“Oh, right…”
The whiskey leaves a pleasant burn in your throat, smoky warmth settling in your chest like the embers of a fire. That’s some good stuff, you think appreciatively. Phainon’s reaction, however, couldn’t be more different — he sputters after his first sip, nose wrinkling in distaste before he coughs — all while still looking unfairly handsome silhouetted against the Shatterdome’s lights.
“Not a drinker?” you ask, laughing as his expression twists. “I thought the military specialised in turning people into smokers or drinkers. Numbing the pain and all that.”
You’d meant it as a joke, but Phainon just snorts, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “I mean, I did think about it, when I first joined.” The admission takes you by surprise. “Spent years just… furious you were gone. Cyrene was never really able to talk me out of it.” He takes another swig, this time without coughing, though you still catch the way his face scrunches up slightly. “But it didn’t seem right to drown that. Not when it was all I had left of you.”
Your breath catches. You watch the way the moonlight fractures against his eyelashes each time he blinks and imagine a much younger Phainon — all sharp edges and jagged grief, wearing his rage like armour. You want to reach across the years and hold that boy who missed you so terribly that it turned to fury. But time has already passed you by, and you will never be able to do anything for that pained and lonely child.
What you do have, though, is the Phainon in front of you right now.
“I got it. Let’s play a drinking game.” You clap your hands together, turn to Phainon. It’s a few years too late for teenage drunken antics and stealing alcohol from one of your parents’ kitchen cabinets, but you can still have this, at least. “Truth or dare.”
Phainon blinks at your suggestion, raising an eyebrow. “How does that work?”
“Simple,” you say, grinning. “You pick truth, and you answer whatever I ask honestly. Or you pick dare, and do whatever I say. And if you refuse either…” You tap the bottle. “You drink.”
Phainon considers this, tilting his head like he’s weighing the risks. Then, with a shrug, he sets the bottle down between you. “Fine. Truth, then.”
You seize the opportunity with merciless glee. “Did you cry when Hyacine stabbed you with that needle this morning?” you ask, just a tad bit too smug. Phainon gapes, horrified at your sudden display of cruelty.
“You can’t do this to me!” His protest echoes off the gantry below.
“Answer or drink,” you sing-song, tapping the bottle.
He glares at you hotly. You watch, delighted, as conflicting emotions war across his face — pride battling honesty until he finally admits, through gritted teeth. “It stung a little bit. Maybe… there were… tears.”
“Aww, you’re really still just a big baby,” you coo, reaching out to pat his cheek and Phainon grumbles, skin warm and flushed under your fingers. The alcohol must already be getting to him. “Alright, alright. Truth for me, too.”
He asks you what your favourite Jaeger is, and his eyes go wide with horrified betrayal when you name the Xianzhou Luofu’s Lightning-Wielding Thunder-Clapping Spirit-Squashing Lord. Everything that follows is just a subsequent descent into absurdity. You dare him to do his worst Aglaea impression (which makes him turn around and do a quick check for surveillance cameras), he asks if you still cry at terrible rom-coms (you choose to drink), and you make him confess a secret that he’s been hiding from Mydei (“I stole the last protein bar in his locker, please don’t tell him, he will actually kill me.”)
The whiskey burns lower in the bottle with each round, until Phainon’s laughter comes easier and more unrestrained, his shoulder pressed against yours. And then—
“Truth…” His voice softens as he presses his lips together, brows furrowing in earnest consideration this time. The ocean seems to hold its breath with you as he finally settles on his question. “What reminded you of me, during the time we were separated?”
You blink, not expecting such a question. But the answer comes to you easily, without thinking. “Everything.”
Phainon’s nose scrunches in that familiar way when he wants to pout. “That’s a cheat answer,” he insists, kicking your ankle lightly. “Be more specific.”
You watch a wave far below collapse against the Shatterdome’s pylons, white foam dissolving into darkness. “But it’s the truth.” You think of it for a while. Maybe it would have been easier to ask what hadn’t reminded you of him. When people laughed in the markets, you looked for him. When children cried after scraping their knees, you remembered him. You’d think of him when the sun was warm. And you'd think of him when you looked at the sea and looked at the sky.
But the thought of saying any of that out loud leaves a little knot in your throat. “Of course, I thought of you whenever I saw the elderly. They have the same white hair as you, you know.” You keep your voice light as you reach over to ruffle his hair. “You know, I think I lost count of the number of times that I thought I ran into you, only to realise it was an eighty year old grandpa.”
Phainon makes a noise of complaint. “I do not look like an old man,” he protests, looking like he wants to pout. “Hmm. Truth.”
Your mouth twitches with mischief. “Have you ever kissed anyone before?”
You knew that it would embarrass Phainon — that’s why you’d chosen this question, after all — but you hadn’t been expecting this dramatic of a reaction. The effect is instantaneous. A flush erupts across Phainon’s face, spreading from his cheeks down to his collarbones, and his mouth — usually so quick with retorts — opens and closes like a stranded fish, before he grabs the whiskey. His adam’s apple bobs hard as the alcohol slides down his throat.
But the avoidance is as good as an admission. “Wait, seriously?” Your words come out half-laugh, half-disbelief, completely incredulous. “There’s no way.”
Phainon’s fingers fly to the sun tattoo on the side of his neck, rubbing at the ink there. “Why’s it so surprising?” he mumbles, suddenly looking both very awkward and shy. It’s endearing. “I didn’t go putting my mouth on just anyone.”
“That’s not even close to what I meant.” You lean forward, unable to resist pressing further. “I’m serious — it doesn’t even have to be a french kiss or anything. Not even a little peck.”
“No,” he insists, somewhat stubbornly now. The colour of his cheeks have deepened to match the Shatterdome’s emergency lights. “Seriously, why is it so surprising to you?”
Has this man never looked in a mirror? You gesture at him with one hand — the sharp cut of his jaw, the way his shirt stretches across shoulders broadened by years of military training, those unfairly long lashes that practically sweep across his cheeks. You’re a little incredulous. “I mean, it’s just unexpected, that’s all. Since you’re—” your hands freeze mid-wave as realisation hits, “h—”
You catch yourself just in time, closing your mouth around the word before it can escape. But Phainon’s head snaps up like a predator catching scent, all traces of embarrassment gone as a sly grin curves on his lips.
Oh god. This is dangerous territory.
“So you think I’m hot?” The way his voice curls around the word sends an unexpected shiver down your spine.
You’re never drinking again after this. “I never said that.” You inch back, determined to maintain some semblance of dignity. You and your stupid mouth! “And I didn’t pick truth, thank you. No questions from you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “So, you’re picking dare?”
“Yes, dare.”
Phainon’s grin burns brighter than a Jaeger’s reactor, something that makes you realise that you’re about to regret your decision. He leans in, slow and unhurried in a way that makes your heart tremble wildly in its cage, until you can count the individual flecks of blue in his irises, until his breath ghosts warm across your lips.
“Then I dare you,” he murmurs, voice dropping to that low, private register you’ve never heard him use around anyone else, “to say that I’m hot.”
You can’t tell whether that’s just as bad or worse. Your mouth falls open. “Are you seriously that desperate to hear—”
“I’m waiting,” he coaxes.
The groan you let out is half-hearted at best. “And I’m starting to not like this game.” He just continues to stare at you, one eyebrow raised expectantly, and you roll your eyes. “Fine,” you mutter, dragging the word out like it’s a surrender. “You’re… marginally attractive. Sometimes. When the lighting’s bad.”
Lies. So much lying.
Phainon’s laugh is a dangerous thing, vibrating through the not enough space between you. You think you feel it in your bones. “Only marginally?” His knee bumps yours, insistent. “Say it properly.”
“Ugh. You’re—” You huff, glaring at him, “—objectively hot. Happy now?”
His breath hitches — just slightly — as he leans in closer. Moonlight catches the silver strands of his hair, the sharp angle of his jaw, the way his gaze flicks briefly to your mouth before darting back up. “Objectively, huh?”
The words are playful, but his voice has gone rough at the edges. His thumb brushes your wrist where it rests on the railing, a fleeting touch that lingers just a second too long to be casual. But he doesn’t let go.
Your pulse jumps under the pad of his thumb. You shift back instinctively, mouth dry—
Crash.
The whiskey bottle tips, rolling off the ledge in what feels like slow motion. You both lunge for it, fingers brushing, but it’s too late. The sound of shattering glass echoes up from the darkness below, followed by a distant, irritated shout. “What the hell—?!”
Silence.
Then Phainon bursts into laughter, loud and unguarded, his forehead dropping onto your shoulder. “Smooth,” he wheezes.
“Shit,” you try to lean over the railing to see where it’s fallen, but can’t make out much so far below. You turn to smack Phainon on the shoulder. That just makes him burst into another round of laughter, eyes crinkling. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t been teasing—”
“Sorry, sorry.” Phainon straightens, wiping mirthful tears from his eyes as he gets to his feet. “C’mon.” He offers you a hand. “Before someone reports us for killer litter.”
His palm is warm against yours. And long after the two of you have left the maintenance ledge, you still find yourself staring at where his thumb had been on your wrist, the ghost of his touch burning brighter than the haze of the alcohol.
Oh no.
Phainon is good at many things, but sitting still is not one of them.
When he’d been a child, he’d spent most of his time playing with you and Cyrene by the sea, chasing kites and fighting the crabs that had gotten too close to your sandcastles. And after he’d become a ranger, his days had been packed with training, bothering Mydei, reviewing Jaeger specs, occasionally lending an arm to the J-Techs and bothering Mydei some more.
But now, after being confined to recovery, Aglaea and Hyacine have strictly forbidden him from doing anything even remotely strenuous — in their opinion, at least. Unfortunately, for Phainon, their definition of “strenuous” is much different from his own, and it includes even light sparring, much to his dismay.
So when you ask him how you should continue training, with his injury, he suggests that you partner up with Mydei instead.
He’s the best fighter I know, Phainon had said simply, when you’d asked why. No one will be able to teach you better than he can. Then he’d grinned from where he’d been lying in bed next to you, his own bunk upstairs untouched. Except for me, of course.
That’s what he’d said. But now, watching from the sidelines, he seems to be regretting the suggestion.
“This is so boring,” Phainon grouses. He’s draped over a medicine ball outside the ring like a limp starfish, chin propped up in his hand as he watches you and Mydei circle each other in the sparring ring. “I could take you with one arm tied behind my back, Mydei.”
The soldier just rolls his eyes as he adjusts the wraps around his wrists. Mydei spars shirtless — a habit that you had to get used to but aren’t really complaining about. “You’d pop your stitches the second you sneezed, you idiot HKS.”
Phainon just pouts.
The two of you begin the spar. Phainon taught you with the staff, as is standard for the PPDC curriculum, but Mydei prefers hand-to-hand combat — MMA with a greater focus on boxing, specifically. The first time you’d clashed fists, you’d quickly been able to tell that he’s been professionally trained, and that he’s not just skilled. He’s good. Has that fighter’s instinct that only those who’ve been in real, bloody scuffles have developed.
It’s different from fighting Phainon. Your drift partner is precision incarnate — every movement calculated, every strike textbook efficient, not a single inch of wasted movement. But with Mydei it's like pushing back a storm — controlled fury, heavy strikes, aggressive but deliberate footwork. There’s a raw power behind each swing that makes your arms tremble with each hit, but he never pushes beyond what you can handle.
And despite his intensity, he teaches with surprising patience.
“Again,” Mydei says, stepping back and gesturing for you to reset. You exhale, roll your shoulders, and settle into the stance that he’d taught you a few minutes ago. But before you can move, his hands are on you — large and firm — gripping your shoulders as he adjusts your posture.
“You’re leaning too far forward,” he mutters, nudging your calf with his foot. His voice is all business, no-nonsense. “You’ll lose balance if you overcommit that way. Stay centered.”
“Yes sir,” you nod, adjusting, but before you can confirm with your instructor about your new stance—
“Cough, cough.”
You and Mydei both glance over at the same time. Phainon, who’d been explicitly instructed by you to sit still and rest, has dragged his ball over a little too close to the sparring ring for comfort. He’s still pouting, but those usually bright blue eyes are narrowed ever so slightly. You squint. Not in pain, but something that looks more like… irritation?
You’re mildly confused. Is it because he’d rather be in your position, sparring Mydei instead? He’s been restless the last few days. More whiny and clingy too, now that you think about it.
“Sorry,” Phainon says, dripping with faux innocence. “Healing injury. Currently very fragile. I get sudden coughing fits.” Then he coughs, for good measure, eyeing Mydei very, very deliberately.
Mydei doesn’t even glance his way as he drops the hand from your shoulder. “Again,” he mutters with a roll of his eyes, tone leaving no room for comment.
The scene repeats itself twice more — you reset your stance, Mydei corrects your form, and Phainon interjects with increasingly dramatic interruptions. Your sparring partner’s jaw clenches so tight you can practically hear his molars grinding where you stand.
Finally, you decide to step in, laughter bubbling up despite yourself. “Oh my god, Phainon, behave,” you chide, shaking your head. You think Mydei might actually throttle him if he interrupts him one more time. “I’ll give you a treat if you do.”
You’d meant that as a joke. Mostly.
But Phainon snaps to attention so fast he almost topples off the ball. “A treat?”
Mydei exhales through his nose with the resignation of a man who’s endured far too much of this nonsense. “You don’t have to put up with this, you know.”
“You’re just jealous.” Phainon sing-songs, already looking far too pleased with himself. He shoots you a grin. “So. About that treat?”
He’s taking this way too seriously. “Behave first,” you say, fighting back an incredulous smile. You’re going to get diabetes if he keeps acting like this. Seriously, it’s like looking at a giant puppy. If Phainon had a tail, it would probably be wagging furiously behind him. “Treat later.”
“This has got to count as a kink or something…” Mydei mutters under his breath. You elect to ignore him for the sake of your remaining sanity.
Phainon makes a big show of considering this, tapping one finger against his lips before sighing. “Fine,” he concedes, though the glint in his eyes suggests this temporary compliance comes with strings attached. He settles back, stretching his long legs out before him, eyes fixed on you. “But I’ll hold you to that.”
“I—”
“Stop flirting in front of me,” Mydei says loudly. He glances at the ceiling as he does, as though praying for some sort of divine intervention.
“We are not flirting,” you retort desperately, and before he can say anything else, throw a punch at him.
With Phainon’s theatrics momentarily contained, you and Mydei finally resume your sparring in relative peace. The rhythm of combat returns — the sharp moves, the solid blocks, the smooth slide of feet across the mat.
Your co-pilot watches the two of you with the intensity of a hawk. He’s suspiciously well behaved now, but you catch the way his fingers drum restlessly against his thigh, the occasional quiet huff when Mydei adjusts your posture. But he says nothing, at least for now.
As the session winds down, Mydei steps back and nods in approval. “Better,” he acknowledges, wiping sweat from his brow. The approval makes you smile — he’s a hard one to please, you’ve learned. “Just need to pay more attention to your footwork.” He holds your gaze for a moment before it flicks behind you, mouth twisting in the barest hint of amusement as he shakes his head. “Though it looks like you were more focused than the rest of us were.”
“Just memorising all your moves,” Phainon grins as he drapes himself casually over the ropes. There’s a spark in his eyes as he pops his knuckles. “I’m going to beat your ass the next time we spar.”
Mydei just snorts, shrugging on his shirt as he eyes the man with what looks like a mixture between amusement and exasperation. “I’m looking forward to that,” he calls over his shoulder, challenge clear in his voice as he leaves the combat room. The door clicks shut behind him.
Silence settles over the room. You busy yourself gathering your gear, undoing the wraps around your own hands. They come off in quick, practiced motions—
— right before you flick Phainon squarely between the eyebrows.
He staggers back a step, clearly not expecting that from you. “Ow!” He whines, blue eyes going comically wounded as he rubs at it with exaggerated hurt. “What was that for?”
“For misbehaving,” you scold, although you have to bite your lip to stop the amused smile from breaking through. “You were the one who suggested I spar with Mydei. Why were you being so disruptive?”
You’d chalked it up to him being restless, so you’re surprised when he does give you an answer. Phainon makes a face, eyes shifting to the side as he does. “He was shirtless,” he mutters, as if that explains everything.
It explains nothing. “Yeah?” You raise an eyebrow, utterly baffled by your co-pilot’s hypocrisy. It’s staggering. “You prance around the room shirtless all the time when you get out of the shower.” The recent development has been nothing short of biological warfare — the double standards on this man! “And you come out in nothing but a towel, sometimes!”
“Exactly,” Phainon grumbles. He’s looking… annoyed now, for some reason. “So why do you look at him when he’s shirtless, but not me?”
Your pulse stutters. The answer is simple: Mydei could be chiseled by the gods themselves and it wouldn’t matter, because looking at him doesn't make your palms sweat or your mouth go dry. But just a glance at Phainon — shirt or no shirt or unbuttoned shirt or towel — makes your brain want to fall out of your skull.
You can’t tell him that, though, so you contemplate saying that it’s because Mydei has a nice physique (not a lie, after all). Your mouth is halfway open when you see the look on his face and it dies instantly on your lips. Something tells you it would not be a good idea.
“Oh gosh…” You force a laugh, reaching forward to poke at his cheek. Deflection, always the default option. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost say you were acting like a jealous partner, hm?”
Phainon’s expression twists into something between a pout and a grimace at your words. You snort a little at his dramatics and start to pull away — only for his hand to snap up with lightning quick reflexes, capturing yours before it can escape.
Then, without warning, he presses your palm flush against his cheek.
“But you are, aren’t you?” His skin burns beneath your touch, lips almost grazing your pulse point. His eyes, usually so easygoing, have gone startlingly intense. Your breath hitches. What? “You're my drift partner.”
Oh. So that’s what he meant.
“Silly.” You shake your head, fighting down the strange feeling of disappointment welling up in you. Instead, you let out a little laugh and bop him on the nose with your other hand. It does nothing to calm the storm surging in your chest. “I’m not about to go skipping off into Nikador together with Mydei just because he’s shirtless.”
“Had to make sure.” Phainon shrugs, nonchalant. His eyes dart towards the door that Mydei just left through. “I’ll take off my shirt more often, just in case.”
He’s joking… right? “Come on,” you say with a roll of your eyes, barely holding back your laugh. “Let’s go.”
Phainon doesn’t release your hand as the two of you walk towards the exit together. Instead, his grip only tightens — and just for one moment, you let yourself imagine it means something more.
The mini-projector was meant to be a surprise, but it doubles well enough as a treat for good behaviour, you suppose. You’d bought it on impulse a few weeks ago, with some of that pro-rated ranger salary that Aglaea had finally paid you. It’d been a little expensive — the convenience of not having to travel to town to pick things up — but when Phainon’s face lights up upon seeing it, you decide that it was money well spent.
“Movie night?” you suggest. He’s been restless the last few days — the forced recovery is clearly chafing at his desire to just do something and be useful. He’s never been able to sit still for long, ever since he was a boy. So, you’d thought it’d be nice to take his mind off things with this — a movie sleepover.
You used to do them with Phainon and Cyrene all the time when you were younger, except now it’s not really a sleepover anymore, considering you and Phainon share the room. And the bed, too, if you’re being honest with yourself. “I have a thumbdrive of kaiju movies that I pirated off the internet.”
Phainon’s lip curls in that particular way that means he’s trying not to smile. “I’m a civil servant, though?” he says with mock reluctance, though his blue eyes are dancing with mischief. You snort a little and decide to play along.
“Oh, my deepest apologies. I had no idea you were such a law-abiding citizen.” You pull back your projector with feigned remorse. “Let me just—” Phainon grabs it before you can so much as take a step back. He’s grinning like a boy again, eyes alight.
The two of you split up the work: you set up the projector and he builds a blanket fort in the lower bunk, out of the military issue blankets and spare bedsheets. Somehow, despite the lack of resources, he manages to make this work — when you turn around again, your bunk bed has transformed into a cozy little nook complete with curtains made out of a spare bedsheet and a blanket.
You fish out a bag of chips from your snack stash under the bed and the two of you climb onto the bed, settling shoulder to shoulder as the movie begins to play. It’s by all standards an awful film — it was made even before the Breach had ever opened, and the so-called kaiju is clearly three men in a rubber suit. The special effects are looped over and over again to save budget on animations, pixelated fireballs appearing at increasingly improbable angles. At some point, you swear you see a staff member’s shoe in the corner of the shot.
Yet when the kaiju trips over its own tail for the third time, Phainon’s laughter erupts like sunlight breaking through storm clouds — unrestrained and impossibly warm. His shoulder shakes against yours, and he throws a chip at the screen when the protagonist somehow defeats the monster with a— is that a glitter katana?
“Technical inaccuracy,” Phainon tries to complain seriously, but his voice is still rough from laughing. “Even a Cat I would require at least a plasmacaster to take down…”
You snort, letting your head drop against his shoulder. “Gotta allow for some artistic liberties, Phai…” They’d zoomed in and out on some of the shots so many times that you’re feeling slightly nauseous.
The two of you lose track of time between terrible monster movies. Four hours slip by in a haze of pixelated explosions and Phainon’s running commentary — his impressions of the overdramatic narrator growing increasingly ridiculous until you’re both clutching your sides.
“Oh god,” you wipe the tears from your eyes as the credits on the last movie roll. “Did you see that?”
The projector casts blue light across Phainon’s face, still flushed with laughter. “The railgun looked like someone animated it in MS Paint,” he snickers, leaning back and using the motion as an excuse to tug the shared blanket tighter around both of you.
Ten minutes into the second movie, he’d insisted that he was getting cold — which was a ridiculous statement, considering how warm his body ran — and put the blanket around both of you like this. It’d been a little too small to fit both of you, forcing you to press against him so that the corner wouldn’t slip from your shoulder, but Phainon had stopped you before you could fetch another.
The other blanket’s making up the curtain, he’d said quickly, pulling you back down when you’d started looking around. Don’t tear down the fort I worked so hard to build!
Now, a comfortable silence settles between you, filled only by the projector's quiet hum and the sound of the Shatterdome’s night crew working somewhere in the distance. Then, he smiles, tilting his head so that it rests on your shoulder. “Thanks for this,” he says softly.
“No problem,” you murmur in response, fighting back a yawn. This specific combination of comfort and warmth is dangerously soporific. “I’m kinda sleepy.”
“It’s late, we should rest,” Phainon agrees. But neither of you move, both pretending not to notice how the other remains stubbornly in place. The silence stretches, comfortable and strange all at once.
Finally, Phainon breaks it first. “Y’know,” he says, voice deliberately bright. “I’ve got some stuff to watch, too.” You raise an eyebrow, and he grins. “Someone put meme music over some of the kaiju fights. You know the Cocolia fight?” You nod. “They edited Hope Is The Thing With Feathers into the video when Trailblazer slipped.”
You snort at that. “Alright, alright. But after that, we’re going straight to sleep.”
“Right,” he agrees solemnly, crossing his heart with one hand — the other remains firmly trapped beneath the blanket, his thigh warm against yours. “Thumbdrive’s in the cupboard, bottom shelf.” He gives you an expectant look.
You eye him skeptically. "You know, you could just get it yourself."
The pout Phainon gives you is Oscar-worthy, complete with a dramatic clutch at his bandaged side. “I’m injured, remember?” he sighs, flopping back against the pillows. “I would if I could, but Hyacine said no strenuous activity. Alas, it is the doctor’s orders.”
This drama queen… You shake your head as you cross the short distance to the cupboard. The metal door creaks as you pull it open, revealing the organised chaos inside — rolled up socks, a seashell from the day the two of you had gone to the beach together, and a half eaten bag of chimera cookies. You rifle through the bottom shelf, searching for the thumbdrive, when your fingers suddenly brush against something plastic and cylindrical.
Frowning, you pull it out. The orange prescription bottle stands out starkly against the drab greens of his uniforms — the date printed on the label indicates that this was dispensed about a month ago. You turn it over slowly in your hands, throat suddenly tight. The thought of him lying awake at night, unable to find solace even in sleep, settles like lead in your stomach.
When you hold them up to Phainon wordlessly, his eyes soften. “Ah, yeah. Those.”
But he’s been sleeping well. Too well, actually — you would know since he’s been curled around you every night since the two of you had returned from that kaiju fight. Teddy bear duty, Phainon had called it with a laugh. You’d chalked it up to some lingering anxiety that you might disappear, hadn’t really questioned it. Now you wish you had.
“You’ve been having trouble sleeping?”
He just shrugs, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. “Not for a while now.” You don’t like how casual he’s being about this.
“How long?”
His lips press together for an almost imperceptible second, before he exhales. “After Cyrene died… just some nightmares.”
You crawl back into the bed, arm pressed against his as you sit next to him. “What about?” you press, softly.
Phainon’s smile is a quiet thing — the edges softened like well-worn leather, not quite reaching his eyes. “Just the usual. The day the kaiju destroyed our hometown. I think I dreamed of a thousand different ways you might have died.” His thumb traces absent circles on your palm. “And sometimes, if my brain really wants to make me suffer…” he lets out a little chuckle, as though he’s letting you be privy to some sort of inside joke. “I dream of all the ways I could have saved Cyrene. Maybe if I were just a little faster. Or just a little bit smarter…” he breaks off, just shrugs.
Maybe things would have been different, goes unsaid.
His expression stays calm, but his hand reaches for yours, lacing his fingers with yours. “Don’t worry. Won’t let the same thing happen this time,” he jokes, but the projector’s flickering light catches what he can’t hide — the dilation of his pupils, the way his throat works as he swallows hard. “We have the power of friendship on our side, don’t we?”
I won’t let you die. I won’t let you die. I can’t let you die.
“Of course. We’re a whole eighty-six percent.” You nudge his shoulder. “I’ll even get the professor to install a giant pink glitter katana for Khaslana.”
Phainon tries and fails to stop the snort that escapes him. “We’d slay any kaiju in our path.”
Even as you laugh along with him, the realisation settles over you: all those reassuring pulses through the drift, the steady stream of you've got this and I'm right here during battle — maybe they'd never been just for you.
Maybe this whole time, the one he’d been reassuring inside the drift had been himself.
The emergency summons crackle through the Shatterdome’s PA system with an unusual urgency. You’re all in the mess hall when it happens, but the alert isn’t what you’re used to — there’s no kaiju attack, no Breach signatures detected. Just a request, for all rangers active and inactive, to report to the War Room immediately.
Hushed murmurs pass between the rangers as they take their seats in the meeting room. It’s not the standard debrief, and there’s a strange grimness hanging in the air, probably from the terse expressions on the General’s and Anaxa’s faces.
“We have good news and bad news,” Anaxa announces, the second everyone’s taken a seat. You barely have time to exchange glances with Phainon before he continues. “The good news is that the Breach is probably collapsing. The bad news is that we will probably all die before then.”
The General holds up a hand before March and Stelle can open their mouths. “Please elaborate, Professor,” she mutters, looking more… tired than annoyed, actually. That’s not a good sign. “In the order that we discussed the matter, please.”
The professor rolls his eyes, but fiddles with the device in his hands. The displays on the wall switch on, showing several photos taken of the Breach. You press your lips together when you see it — a open wound torn into the seabed of the Pacific Ocean, ugly and jagged. A traversable wormhole, they call it, a path to another world. All the time they’d been searching for alien life beyond the stars, only to find them right beneath our feet… “Exotic matter readings are fluctuating strangely. We think the Breach might be on the verge of a collapse.”
Every ranger in the room sits up when they hear those words. For so long, the only path ahead has been fighting the kaiju, a war with no end in sight. No one has really thought about dealing with the problem at its source — the Breach itself. Little is understood about it, after all, and you can’t really punch an interdimensional rift in space-time.
“That’s a good thing, right?” Dan Heng is the one who breaks the silence, his words deliberate and careful.
“It depends,” Professor Anaxa responds, already starting to gesticulate. The General leans back, frowning whenever one of his hands gets too near. “A wormhole is like a rubber band — without exotic matter to stabilise it, it collapses. Perhaps we can usher the process along, accelerate it. But whatever’s on the other side must know it’s collapsing, too.”
No one knows for sure what is on the other side. Scientists have tried to send things through, but they never come back. But there are many theories, and Professor Anaxa has his own: the kaiju are biological weapons, genomes artificially engineered to produce creatures best suited to wipe out humanity. Regardless, the conclusion is the same.
Mydei’s eyes narrow. “You think that they might send more kaiju through.”
“Not might. Will. But how much bigger, stronger, more dangerous…” Aglaea takes over, sighs as she glances up at the displays. “The professor will work on a predictive model, see if it can give us better approximations. But for now, all we can do is to prepare ourselves for higher categories to come through.”
She looks at all of the assembled rangers. “We don’t have a plan in mind yet, but we will alert all of you, once we do.” she says. “For now, everyone should remain on the alert and be ready for deployment at any moment. If there’s nothing more, you’re dismissed.”
The briefing room empties with unusual quiet, the rangers filing out without their usual post-meeting banter. The two of you are halfway to the door when Aglaea stops you.
“How’s the injury?” she asks, sea green eyes flickering down to Phainon’s side.
Phainon taps a finger along his ribs, where the bandages used to sit. Now, it’s just pinkish, healed scar tissue under his shirt. “More or less done. Hyacine cleared me for sparring about a couple of days ago.” He grins a little, gives a mock salute. “Ready to return to duty.”
“Good,” Aglaea nods. Her expression is grim. “Because with the numbers that Anaxa is getting, we’ll be needing you more than ever.”
>>>
You wake up uneasy.
There’s no explanation for it. No nightmares, no indication that anything is out of place. Just a strange feeling in your stomach, like the kind of dread you get right before a huge rollercoaster drop. You close your eyes again, hoping to sleep the feeling away, but then Phainon shifts closer to you, inhaling deeply right next to your ear as he does and then you’re wide awake.
The narrow bunk groans in protest. It was never meant for two full-grown rangers, especially not for one built like Phainon. You’d entertained the idea of putting in a request for a bigger bed earlier this week, but the notion had survived for approximately eight hours before dying a swift death. The thought of having to explain your current sleeping arrangements to the General was just too humiliating.
Besides, you have a suspicion that Phainon prefers it like this, anyway.
His lashes are fluttering just as you turn your head back to him, blue eyes lifting to meet yours. The arm around your waist tightens.
“Morning, sunshine,” you joke, in an attempt to ease the disquiet in your chest. “Did our wireless connection ping you to let you know I was awake?”
Phainon snorts at that. He must notice, regardless, because he leans in, nuzzles against the side of your head where he can reach. You can feel his lips graze the shell of your ear. “Bad dream?” he murmurs into your hair. When you glance back, his gaze is sharper than it should be for this hour, carefully scanning your face.
You shake your head, suddenly feeling stupid. “No. It’s nothing, really...”
“Still want to hear it.” His thumb traces idle circles over your hip, but his eyes linger, studying you in the dim light. “Please?”
This is unfair. He’s weaponising that look — the one with his lashes slightly lowered, head tilted towards you just so — it makes your resolve crumble like a sandcastle before the tide. You’re sure that this must count as emotional manipulation of some kind, with how easily you give in.
“It’s really nothing,” you admit with a sigh.”Just a bad gut feeling.”
“Eat something bad yesterday?”
You swat at his shoulder, roll your eyes when your palm connects with solid muscle. “Not that kind of gut feeling.” It would be preferable, actually — at least then you could point fingers at the questionable mystery meat from the mess hall as the culprit. But now it just sits like a hive of phantom hornets, buzzing about somewhere in your insides. “Just a feeling that today is gonna suck.” You shrug, shaking your head. “I don’t know… is that weird?”
“I mean, you woke before the claxon rang, so I assume an extinction level event is on our doorstep—”
You gasp and smack his shoulder again. “You’re awful, you know that?”
“Oh, yeah?” Phainon’s eyebrows shoot up, that dangerous spark of mischief lighting up his blue eyes. Uh oh. You know that look. Before you can scramble off the bed, his fingers descend like a tactical drone strike — fingers finding your sides with the precision of someone who’s memorised every one of your weak points.
You try to twist away with a shriek of laughter, but his other arm holds you against him like an iron band. “So I’m awful, huh?”
“This isn’t fair! You—” You try your best and fail to form a coherent protest. “Stop!”
“Just living up to your expectations,” he counters. One large hand pins your wrist to the mattress while the other finds that spot just below your ribs.
Your laughter bounces off the walls. “I surrender! Ah, please, I— ahahaha!”
For one moment, with Phainon’s laughter still in your ears and his skin warm against your own, the weight in your stomach lifts. And then—
The claxon rings.
You both still mid-breath. Then Phainon’s arm tightens briefly around your waist — one last quick squeeze, solid and reassuring — before he rolls off the bed, the mattress creaking as he does.
The two of you move through the motions of getting ready for the day — brushing your teeth, lacing up your boots, throwing whatever’s close at hand when Phainon inevitably comes out of the shower topless. Everything soon falls into that steady rhythm, familiar and routine, and the two of you leave the room, discussing what might be on today’s menu in the mess hall.
Hopefully, that uneasy feeling will go away soon.
At exactly 14:53, the sirens wail.
The Bridge is thrumming with controlled chaos by the time you and Phainon arrive on the scene. The other rangers are already gathered, awaiting the Breach analyst reports. The feeling only gets worse when Tribbie swallows and turns around to announce that a Category V has left the Breach and is on its way to the coast of Dolos. The designation alone sends a ripple through the assembled rangers — no one knows what a Cat V will look like. The scale was never meant to go this high.
Fear grips at you, but when you glance at Phainon, his face is still set in that same determined expression, eyes focused on the display. It makes you feel a little less afraid.
Aglaea turns to Anaxa. “Jaeger status?”
It speaks mountains about how tense the situation is when the professor doesn’t respond with a snarky remark. “Nikador’s still undergoing repairs. The rest are operational, ready to go.”
Opposite you, Mydei lets out a frustrated sound through a clenched jaw. Castorice puts her hand on his shoulder, squeezing slightly.
The General just nods, turns back to the assembled rangers. “Then, Khaslana and Trailblazer will go.”
“Sweet.” Stelle flashes you a grin, but even then you can see a hint of worry behind the humour. The new category designation hangs heavy over all of you, an unknown variable in an already deadly equation. “Finally, we get to fight alongside you guys.”
You manage a smile, but there’s an uneasiness in your chest. The last time you and Phainon had been out there, it’d been two Jaegers against a Cat IV. Now, you have the same numbers, but the enemy will be bigger and stronger. It would be so much better if they could send out all three available Jaegers — from the looks on Dan Heng and March’s face, they’d agree with you — but if it turns out to be another double event, or if one of the current Jaegers gets damaged…
“It’ll make landfall before we do,” the last of the redhead triplets — Trinnon, you’d learnt her name was — speaks up. “Aggy, should I give the evacuation order?”
Aglaea gives her affirmation, eyes sweeping across the siblings, then you and Phainon. “Best of luck, rangers.”
Phainon grips your hand, as the two of you follow the technicians to get suited up. This time, the neural handshake feels just like an extension of that, your mind reaching out and finding his almost instantly. A blink, and the two of you are in Khaslana, core whirring up to power the Jaeger, and then the choppers are already lifting you out of the Shatterdome to take you across the sea.
You hear the kaiju before you see it.
It sounds like nothing you’ve heard before. It’s not the usual roar or even the odd reptilian hiss, but something eerily avian, trilling with an unnatural vibrato. It’s like listening to someone scratch their nails across a chalkboard, makes the hairs on your arms stand on the end. And in the drift, you can feel Phainon’s unease, though his face doesn’t show it.
The Dolos coastline is barely a smudge in the distance. And visibility is absolute shit, slate grey rain pelting at the Conn-Pod, the visor, everything.
Another shriek. It sounds more like a scream this time, followed by a series of strange, clicking noises. You bring up the long range cameras, let it zoom in and wait for the AI to compensate for the downpour. Five to ten seconds later, the feed resolves into horrifying clarity on the main display.
The kaiju stands in grotesque parody — a bone white monster with an elongated neck — like someone tried to reconstruct a bird from memory and failed terribly. Even as the two of you watch, it claws its way through the city, sharp beak parting in another sky-splitting screech, revealing rows of serrated teeth as it carves through the downtown buildings.
And it’s so, so big (that’s what she said— shut up, Phainon).
“Hope the two of you are thinking of a plan,” Stelle jokes. She sounds calmer now, more like her usual self. That’s good. “The only thing us siblings are good for is hitting things.”
“Didn’t the two of you defeat that bull kaiju last time?” you ask, as Dolos draws closer. “Baiting it was a pretty good plan.”
Caelus just snorts through the comms. “That was all Dan Heng. He’s the only one with a brain cell between all four of us.” He pauses. “We don’t even get to borrow it, most of the time.”
“Hey. I was the one who let him have it. Out of generosity!”
Phainon manages a little smile, glancing sideways at you as he speaks. “Just like the Graeae, huh?”
“What the hell’s that?”
“Three sisters from mythology. Daughters of sea gods who shared an eye and a tooth—” you find yourself explaining before you can stop yourself, then shake your head. “Stop speaking with my mouth!”
Phainon just grins. “Aw. But it sounds so much nicer in your voice.”
“Alright, lovebirds, stop the flirting.” Stelle sounds amused, and you can’t tell whose pulse it is that jumps — yours or Phainon’s. “We’re approaching the drop zone.”
The choppers reduce in altitude, and the kaiju lets out another shriek. It raises its head over the buildings to stare directly at you.
“Well, there goes the element of surprise we never had,” you mutter, turning to Phainon. “Let’s do this?” Not exactly an inspiring pep talk, but Phainon nods regardless, lips twitching (Don’t laugh! —I didn’t).
“Yeah.”
The cables holding the Jaegers to the choppers release. Khaslana falls first, and you feel the hydraulic absorbers dampening the impact as the legs hit the seabed, grey water churning beneath the Jaeger’s knees. Trailblazer lands a short distance behind, metal panels on its left arm unfolding and then interlocking to form a solid shield large enough to block the Jaeger’s torso.
Man, you kind of wish Khaslana had a shield, too…
“Trailblazer, you’ll take point since you’ve got the shield. We’ll provide cover fire for you,” Phainon says, fingers flying over the displays. The plasmacaster comes up, a holographic display coding itself around your wrist as the weapon readies on the Jaeger’s right arm.
“Got it,” Stelle and Caelus answer together. The thrusters in Trailblazer’s legs let it jump onto the beach, before it starts moving towards the wreckage along the coastline. Khaslana follows from a tactical distance, plasmacaster raised.
For a moment, it’s eerily quiet, like a graveyard of shattered glass and steel — the kaiju has slunk between the skyscrapers, and the rain makes everything difficult to see. Trailblazer steps into the city cautiously, shield raised as it looks around for the beast.
You keep one eye on the sensor displays and another on the visor. Playing hide and seek here…
Then— movement. You catch it at the corner of Phainon’s eye, scales rippling as it slips out of sight and your stomach drops when you come to the same realisation he does.
“Trailblazer, your three o’clo—”
With a shriek, it whips its elongated neck sideways, slamming it into a half-collapsed skyscraper. The building groans, sways like a reed in the wind, before it plummets directly toward Trailblazer in an avalanche of concrete and steel debris.
The Jaeger barely has time to raise its shield before the skyscraper crashes over its frame in a deafening hail. Through the dust, the kaiju lunges, razor-edged beak stabbing straight for Trailblazer’s Conn-Pod. Your body moves before your mind can react. The plasmacaster fires three shots, and though your aim is true, the kaiju twists at the last second, unnaturally quick.
It dodges the first two, but the third grazes it, and satisfaction rushes through you when you hear its scream, see the bright blue running down its neck. It screeches, recoiling—
—just as something whips through the smoke behind it.
“Move!” Phainon’s shout echoes both inside and out of your head and Khaslana pivots behind the nearest building as fast as the mechanical joints will allow. The next second, the building’s facade erupts in a staccato of impact as a hail of jagged, bone-like projectiles hit the side. You stare at the spikes, incredulous, each one as long as a car.
“Since when do kaiju have artillery, huh?”
Caelus grunts over the comms, which is great, because it means he’s still alive. “Not just that. It’s got a—”
“Tails! Plural!” Phainon warns as two more lash out from the dust. You exchange glances. “We need to get rid—”
Of the tails first, you finish in your head. You’ll never get within striking range of its head with those things, and the kaiju moves too quickly to be hit with a plasmacaster. “Trailblazer, think you can bait it while we go for the tails?”
“Piss it off? Don’t worry, that’s our talent,” Stelle jokes. Trailblazer gets up again, shield raised before it charges and just slams into the kaiju like a human — well, Jaeger — battering ram. The monster flies back a short distance, its claws gouging into the tarmac with an awful screeching sound, leaving deep gashes in the road. It flicks its tail again, and the same volley of spikes slam into the Trailblazer’s shield.
It tries to snap at the Jaeger’s head again, but you fire a few shots at it that make it slink back.
“Deploy sword,” Phainon demands.
“Deploying sword,” the AI hums pleasantly, and Khaslana’s left arm splits open with a hiss, ejecting twenty-four tungsten carbide plates in rapid succession. They lock together to form a massive greatsword, and the edges thrum to life, glowing faintly. The rain vaporises the instant it comes into contact with the blade. “Thirty five seconds till plasma temperatures reached.”
The kaiju’s eye snaps to the weapon and its entire body turns, ready to deal with the new threat.
“Uh-uh. Eyes on us!” Caelus barks through the comms. Trailblazer lunges before it can move, right hand closing around the monster’s throat. The siblings then proceed to drag the kaiju’s skull through the whole floor of an office building, glass shattering into glittering rain, steel girders twisting. The beast shrieks.
“Sword now at operational temperature,” the AI announces.
This is your opening.
Left tail! You and Phainon move in sync, and Khaslana steps forward, sword arm raised. Phainon’s eyes track their movements with near superhuman focus and the Jaeger’s left hand comes up, manages to grab one of the tails somehow. The two of you bring the sword down in a high, overhead arc. The superheated edge bites into the kaiju’s flesh. Blue blood drips all over the blade, corrosive hissing and steaming as it comes into contact with the metal.
Still, it cuts through.
“One down—” The words barely leave your lips when the remaining tails snap forward, faster than they’d been earlier. Two bone-white projectiles cut through the air — straight at Khaslana’s Conn-Pod.
The first spike almost grazes the Jaeger’s head as Khaslana sidesteps. And then—
The world explodes. There’s the awful sound of shattering glass and metal tearing and the entire Conn-Pod shakes. The impact registers first, and chasing at its heels, the fear. When your vision clears, there’s a spike the size of a small bus embedded in the visor, and its tip is just a few feet away from your face. Drops of water — rainwater — hit the side of your face. The Conn-Pod was breached.
Your hands won’t stop shaking. Oh god. Oh god. You’d almost died.
Trailblazer pulls the kaiju off you, slams its shield right across its head. The kaiju shrieks. But you barely register it, as though you’re drowning underwater.
Your eyes search for Phainon automatically, and—
You’re greeted with an even more horrifying sight. The light of the interface paints his face in frozen horror. His eyes have gone glassy and distant, staring at some invisible point that you can’t see. Every muscle has gone rigid — not the controlled stillness of combat focus, but the terrifying paralysis of a mind snatched away by memory. His breathing comes out in ragged, shallow gasps.
“(Name)!” Tribbie calls, sounding panicked. “Phainon is offline!” Her voice cracks. “He’s chasing the RABIT!”
Your heart drops into your stomach.
“Pilot Disconnected,” the AI says.
Everything in your head feels like an endlessly collapsing tower of jenga blocks. But what scares you more than the chaos is the silence — the Neural Bridge is collapsed, and you don’t hear the reassuring sound of Phainon’s little thoughts, or his steadfast presence. Just a yawning void where his consciousness had been moments before.
It’s as though a dam has broken, and there is nothing stopping the fear from washing over you like a giant tsunami wave. It takes everything in you not to drown beneath it.
Somewhere in front of you, Trailblazer is still struggling to hold off the monster. “Plasmacaster!” you manage to gasp out, feeling like your brain is trying to rend itself in two straight down the middle.
“Deploying plasmacaster.”
Everything around you is muffled by an incessant ringing in your head, every limb in your body weighing down like you’re Atlas, carrying the world on your back. Trailblazer stumbles, you blink, and—
“Wow. Look at this!” You’re grinning, holding up something in your hands. Phainon takes a step forward, sees a little crab cradled in your palms, makes an ‘eep!’ and retreats three steps back. Cyrene just laughs from where she’s crouched. There’s a small assortment of shells in the sand next to her. “Oh, come on, Phai. It’s cute!”
“It’s looking at me!” Phainon squeaks.
“It’s like… two centimeters wide. It couldn’t even reach your toes from down there.” You move as if to offer him the crab and he yelps again, backpedalling quick. The setting sun paints everything in gold — the wet sand, the freckles on Cyrene’s nose, your laugh.
You’re not there. You know you're not. You are not sixteen anymore, not playing at the beach of your hometown with your two childhood friends. Aedes Elysiae is gone, and so is Cyrene. But the air still tastes like salt, and you can hear the seagulls crying in the distance, feel the warmth of the setting sun on your face. And Phainon is young. So young, so carefree, his eyes still bright and innocent and unshadowed by loss.
And—
“Alright, alright.” You relent with an amused snort, turning your head to squint at the horizon where the sun is melting into the sea. “We should probably be heading back soon, anyway.” You eye Phainon, raise a brow. “Or someone might get grounded again.”
Phainon’s cheeks heat. “That was one time, and I was, what, like ten?” he mumbles, rubbing at his left earlobe — he still remembers his mother’s vice grip. She’d nearly mobilised the entire neighbourhood in a search party when he’d lost track of time at the local bookstore, and had only wandered home long after it’d gone dark. “I don't have a curfew, anymore.”
“Still a history nerd, though.” Younger you sticks out your tongue when he protests, before you step down to the water’s edge to let the crab go. It scuttles across the sand, disappears into the sea foam cresting the waves, and then…
A roar, so loud that it shakes the sky. All three of your heads snap up. In the distance, a nightmare unfolds on the horizon.
You remember this day. The screaming. The fear. “Phainon!” you shout, your voice cracking, but it comes out muffled, like you’re buried under layers of ice.
Phainon doesn’t hear. He’s looking at yours and Cyrene’s faces, seeing his own terror mirrored there. The cries of the seagulls are replaced by the screams of fighter jets as they tear through the sky, faster than sound. The kaiju is so far away, but it is so, so big it blots out the sun. And they are like ants, crawling on the ground and utterly helpless.
The only thing they can do is run, so they do, but nowhere is safe. There are underground shelters, though, designated points for evacuation, so they head up the beach alongside the other terrified evacuees. Somewhere behind him, he sees a Jaeger — Phagousa — drop from the sky to face off against the beast.
There are other people running too, crying and terrified and similarly afraid. An old lady behind them falls, and Phainon slows, nearly tripping over his feet as he looks back. “I’ll help her,” you say, already turning around. “Go! I’ll catch up.”
“But—” Phainon hesitates, torn between telling you to just leave her behind and choking on the shame of it. You meet his eyes, see the fear there — for his life, for yours — and force a smile.
“I’m taller and a faster runner than you, remember?” You reach out to squeeze his shoulder, but your hand finds the side of his neck instead in its rush, where the sun tattoo is branded into his skin today. “I’ll be back in a minute. Promise!”
He wants to argue, but Cyrene grabs his hand and then they’re running in the opposite direction. They’ve barely gotten over the bridge that separates the beachfront from the town, scrambling up the steps onto higher ground, when a massive wave crashes and everything behind them goes under.
You don’t come back after a minute. You don’t come back at all.
Phainon stares. You feel it — the exact moment his ribcage becomes a hollow thing, the sudden emptiness that will stay in the chest for the next six years. The loss. The helplessness. The grief clawing at his throat like a cry that he can’t quite let out.
The kaiju storms inland, but Phainon can only follow numbly as Cyrene drags him along with her, her own cheeks wet with tears. Phagousa follows, blade dancing with a wicked sharpness. The kaiju falls, collapsing and crushing a row of buildings as it does.
But it’s too late.
Something flashes, briefly. The Trailblazer staggers, and you hear Stelle and Caelus yelling over the comms as they struggle to push the kaiju off them. You force your hand up — it feels like redirecting a runaway truck by kicking the wheels, but somehow you manage. A sharp pain lances through your head.
You fire. The plasmacaster shoots out, hits the kaiju’s side and it screams.
Then, Phainon is a little older. His blue eyes are no longer cheerful, and there’s a fresh tattoo on his neck as he inspects himself in the mirror, dressed in an army uniform. Cyrene stands behind him, and when he turns around she steps forward to adjust his collar.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Phainon?” she asks, her voice quiet with concern.
He can’t bear to hear it. “Yeah.” His voice sounds foreign to his own ears.
Cyrene spends a little too long on the top button, fixing his sleeves, smoothing down the fabric. After a moment of silence, she puts her hands on his shoulders, takes a deep breath. “You couldn’t have done anything, you know?” she says, finally.
Both of them know what she’s referring to.
But Phainon shrugs anyway, turns away to fit the too big cap onto his head.
“Maybe that was the problem.”
The kaiju thrashes in Trailblazer’s grip, teeth biting mercilessly into the top of the shield. Caelus shouts. What do you do? you think helplessly. You don’t know how to help Phainon, don’t know how to get him out of the memory—
“You need to pull him back.”
For a moment, your breath catches in your throat. It’s a painfully familiar voice. You can’t tell whether it came from the Conn-Pod or from the memories Phainon is still drowning in. Then it speaks again, and you realise that it’s the AI, but it’s also—
Heard she developed the Jaeger AIs, too…
“Hey~ now’s not the time for reminiscing,” Cyrene, no— the AI says and you stumble as Trailblazer wrestles the kaiju into a building. The voice sounds like that familiar, playful smile, and it makes you want to laugh and cry all at the same time. “Him, too. You have to remind him that he still has something to fight for. Someone that he needs to fight for.”
The memories surge again, black eclipsing white and colour and—
The sickening crunch of armoured plating giving way. The glass of Kephale’s visor shattering inward. Cyrene’s final scream cut short as the kaiju’s teeth close around her side of the Conn-Pod. And when he blinks again, Cyrene is gone.
He thinks he dies, in that moment, together with her. Feels it happen, like a candle being blown out. And then, he’s left in that awful, deafening silence that will keep him awake at night for the next three years, staring at the wall with his hands over his ears until dawn creeps in.
And then everything flashes.
Digging through the sand with bloodied fingers. Stepping into a Conn-Pod for the first time. Killing all those kaiju, knowing these empty victories will never bring you back. Cyrene’s funeral, the empty casket. He wishes it was his instead.
You feel the edges of his mind unravelling, twisting, fraying, collapsing under the weight of his own guilt.
Failed her. Failed you. They call him the Deliverer. What a joke. He’s never been able to save a single person that matters to him.
“Phainon!” He’s getting further and further from you, lost in the memories. You don’t even know if you can still reach him. “Phainon, please hear me!”
“Hurry!” AI-Cyrene urges. “If you don’t manage to reach him in time, he might not be able to come back.”
Fear surges through you. You force yourself through the memories desperately with your mind, tumbling through flashes of shadows and light and sound until you find him.
He’s standing in the Conn-Pod, staring out of the half-destroyed Jaeger’s head. There’s a crushed rig next to him, metal bent and live wires sparking, where you would be in real life.
You grip at the bond the two of you share, wrest it into your hands like an anchor in the midst of a storm. Pull at it, with all of your might, digging your heels into the sand.
Phainon blinks. The sea outside is so calm, so peaceful. There’s nothing to be afraid of here. Nothing left to lose, anymore.
“Please,” you beg, voice cracking with fear. Fear that the two of you might die here, fear that he might never come back. “Phainon, I need you, please…”
The memory flickers.
The Conn-Pod blurs at the edges, and then for a second, Phainon sees a person in the rig next to him. His breath hitches.
“We can’t do this much longer!” Stelle shouts, her voice cracking.
You blink furiously, force your eyes to find the kaiju through the downpour, its tails whipping around as it lunges for the other Jaeger, fire again. You can’t tell if the shots hit, but you vaguely hear something scream. Maybe it’s the beast, maybe it’s you. Something drips down your nose, into your mouth. You think you taste blood on your tongue.
“Phainon,” you cry. You’re sobbing now, every nerve ending burning hot and cold and confused all at once. Your brain feels like it’s about to pop at the seams. “Phainon, I need you to come back to me. You said you wouldn’t let me go this time. You said you wouldn’t let me fight alone again. You promised!”
The world goes hazy. The Conn-Pod, the sea, even himself, scenes flashing by like a zoetrope, present overlapping with the past. But you’re clear, where everything else is a blur, and then you’re gripping him in that memory, hands pulling him down until his forehead is pressed against yours.
He’s afraid. Here is safe.
“Please, Phainon,” you whisper, desperate. His eyes, so blue and so wide and so scared, look up at you. “Don’t leave me.”
But here means leaving you.
And he can’t.
Everything collapses onto the two of you, and then it’s like you’re being sucked through a black hole. When you open your eyes again, gasping, rain is pelting one side of your face. A short distance away, the kaiju still roars, Trailblazer still putting up a stubborn fight. But you hear—
“Pilot reconnected. Welcome back, Phainon.”
The immense pressure on your skull lifts — whether from the Neural Handshake reinitiating or from relief, you don’t know — but then Phainon is gasping, blue eyes bright and alert again and that’s all that matters. They dart upwards to the spike still lodged in the Conn-Pod, then to where you’re rigged up next to him. You must look like absolute shit, because something twists so painfully in his chest that you feel it in your own.
“Hey,” is the only word you can muster, and the image of bloodstained teeth flashes in your head. Ah, fuck.
“Hey,” he whispers back, looking like he’s about to cry. But then the kaiju screams again, and you don’t have time for tears.
“We need—”
“Yeah.” Phainon breathes deeply, before he narrows his eyes. “Trailblazer, can you shoot at its face? We’ll go for its remaining tails now.”
“Fucking finally!” Caelus shouts.
“Real entitled of you to be making demands now, Deliverer!” Stelle yells, but their Jaeger charges forward anyway, shield mangled beyond repair as it raises its plasmacaster and shoots. The kaiju raises its tails, ready to unleash another barrage of spikes, but Phainon lunges, and both you and Khaslana move with him as he raises the sword and slashes. One tail falls to the ground like a dismembered snake, blue hissing as it comes into contact with the asphalt.
The other tail whips around, but Trailblazer grabs the kaiju by the neck and yanks the whole beast forward. The spiked end grazes Khaslana’s shoulder plating sending up a shower of sparks, but Phainon doesn’t let the opportunity go to waste. You fire your plasmacaster at one of its clawed legs, causing it to stumble, and Phainon cuts at the other tail as it goes down.
The kaiju flings Trailblazer into a nearby building, glass raining down as its head comes around for a final, desperate attack. Khaslana swings one last time.
The greatsword severs the beast’s neck in two.
The head joins the tails on the ground, blue pooling everywhere, before the body collapses and more blue pours from it in spurts. It crashes to the pavement with an impact that makes the whole street shake like there’s an earthquake, crushing a couple of cars beneath it. And then for a moment, everything is silent.
Khaslana’s sword arm drops, the plasma edge cooling off with a dying hiss.
You turn to Phainon once again, only to find him already looking at you. Really looking, not that blank, glassy eyed stare that had turned your blood to ice when he was chasing that RABIT. His eyes are present again, pupils dilated not with panic but something else.
A dozen words crowd your throat: Welcome back. We did it. You scared the hell out of me. You came back.
The world tilts before you can choose.
Everything goes weightless, and your knees buckle beneath you all of a sudden. When you collapse, the only thing that keeps you upright is the rig that you’re attached to. Distantly, you can feel something warm — blood — dripping from your chin, the panicked click-hiss of something disengaging.
And the last thing you remember before the world goes dark is the sound of someone shouting your name.
✧ synopsis: what's more stressful than managing the internal affairs of luofu you ask? making sure that your husband actually stays in one place when he's ordered to.
✧ contents: established relationship, fluff, humor, mentions of other characters, spoilers for 1.3 trailblaze mission, spoilers for the end of IL Dan Heng's companion quest
✧ a/n: under one patch update (1.3) this man has managed to run away from bedrest a total of 3 times, as such i'm obligated to write this - behold, the brainrot of the week. once again, jing yuan only appears at the very end, but this whole fic is just how everyone is stressing over how this overgrown cat can escape from right under their noses. not beta-ed as usual fellas.
There's a heavy silence lingering in the air around the Realm keeping commission. For once, the commission has been closed to the public for an hour to discuss internal affairs - is what the citizens of Luofu believes at least.
You don't seem affected by the tense silence, Yanqing notices. He's standing before you, glancing around the other tense officials that's seated by their own desk. The two alchemy commission members present with him seem equally as confused as to why you've summoned them here.
It's only when they hear you place your brush down that they all stand up straight, attention back on you now that you've started to move again.
"I have a favor to ask," you start off, looking at the three people in front of you.
"The general is currently still on bedrest, and the master diviner has temporarily taken his role as the acting general master while he rests, correct?" you ask, to no one in particular.
But it's the newly appointed chief alchemist, Yuluo that answers you, "That is indeed correct."
"However, knowing the general he might start to move the moment he feels some sort of movement come back to his muscles," you point out, having risen from your chair during the (mostly one-sided) conversation to stand before your desk, leaning slightly back towards it with your arms crossed.
"Which is why, I need you all to keep an eye on him," you declare in the end, "The general won't be straying far away from the Exalting Sanctum for reasons you all might know, so I would have to trouble both you and Jinwen to make the trips back and forth from the alchemy commission to assess his conditin from time to time. But Yanqing, you'll mostly have the responsibility to ensure that he doesn't try to do anything else than rest, okay?"
You were already fully aware that you gave the three people before you an impossible task.
And the three people before you was also aware of the fact, but what more could they do but bow their head slightly in confirmation with a resounding, "As you order."
Yanqing is pouting before you, picking at his food before you whilst you merely gaze at him from the other end of the table, "Not hungry? I thought this was your favorite restaurant," you say, in response Yanqing merely levels a glare at you. It doesn't reach his eyes because he has no animosity, you're pretty sure he's just irritated.
"... I tried," he membles after another few minutes of silence. The quiet confession making you chuckle, "I'm aware, I'm surprised you even managed to keep him laying down for so long."
"... I even nailed down a few swords by the covers so it would be harder for him to pull them off," he adds, stabbing a stray tomato with one chopstick to emphazise his point before shoving it in his mouth, "But then he's already dressed and waiting by the door when I went to the toilet to attend the ceremony that was held for the deceased! [Name], he was even waiting for me with a smile!"
Your smile softens upon hearing his complaints, a finger pushing a glass of water towards the boy before you as a silent suggestion for him to drink it, "I already anticipated that he would do that, so why the long face still?"
"Because he refused to go back to rest right after the ceremony ended! And what else can I do, but heed his order with so many people around?" Yanqing huffs, crossing his arms as his food is now forgotten with his irritation overturning his appetite.
"Well he's resting now isn't he? Jinwen is currently staying at the manor to make sure he doesn't step foot outside. The day of the ceremony would've also been one of the last times he could get in contact with our guests from the Astral Express too, I'm sure he wanted to give them that jade abacus himself."
Not to mention the fact he personally went to the shackling prison right after handing it- alone nonetheless.
You omit the part of information from Yanqing. The topic itself still brings a tense atmosphere between you and Jing Yuan after all.
But before you can placate the small lieutenant any further, you can feel hurried footsteps making their way towards your table. And when you turn your head around to look at the commotion, you find Jinwen panting before you, right behind her one of the Cloud Knights assigned to the manor. And even with a mask on you just know that they're not looking at you.
"[Name]..." Jinwen starts, and you hum whilst fishing up your wallet, "Yes?"
"The general..." she starts, reluctantly looking around, fiddling her thumbs in nervousness. You just hand Yanqing the money before standing up, "He's escaped again, hasn't he?" you confirm, eyebrow raising up in question.
The healer before you merely nods, "I-I'm sorry, I have no idea where he went, I went back to the kitchen to prepare the next dosage of medicine and when I checked again he had suddenly just vanished - the guards didn't even know anything either."
"Even if they knew, they can't really go against their general, can they?" you point out with a laugh, patting the distressed healer on the shoulder before looking over at the Cloud Knight behind Jinwen, "Gather some more Cloud Knights and tell them to meet up at the alchemy commission as soon as possible."
You let out a sigh, rubbing your templates as if that would soothe the headache that's about to form from listening to the Disciples before you yap away whilst getting their hands bound behind their back.
"I want to preface that with the main disaster onboard the Luofu is over, you are aware that we have more personnel at the ready to apprehend you?" you point out, directing your gaze away from the harbor of the alchemy commission where the trailblazer, Dan Heng and Jing Yuan were currently standing to face the Disciples of Sanctus Medicus before you.
Knowing your husband, he's already aware that you're here.
"... And the fact that even after you failed to eliminate Jing Yuan back in september 5 times, and yet still tried again today - and even trying to take two Vidyadhara's along with him? I understand the confidence you had back when the disaster first struck, but now?" you laugh is disbelief. You're aware that it's futile to try to discuss the matter with the Disciples, but everything was worth a shot.
They'll always give the same response after all. Once the general is gone, everything will go more smoothly, once you see the true vision you would agree with them and so on.
It was getting quite tiring.
"Either way, I've contacted the Ten-Lords commission, we will probably have to make a trip to Scalegorge Waterscape to check for any stragglers, but I'm sure the Ten-Lords will have this matter under control..." you mutter, noticing the trailblazer and Dan Heng approach you, "Trailblazer, and mister Dan Heng, have you finished the matters at hand?"
Dan Heng nods, glancing at the tied up Disciples before you, to which you only wave it off, "Yes... And thank you for taking care of the ones over here," he mumbles, giving you a curt nod.
"All in a day's work, do have a safe trip back home though," you voice, "And if you were to ever return to the Luofu for whatever reason, do send me a message. I can at least assure that you'll be somewhat safer than today. I apologize for the inconvenience that these people have caused you," you add on, gesutring towards the Disciples while ignoring the surprise in his eyes.
Dan Heng doesn't say anything, only giving you another nod as a confirmation before walking off.
"Well then, with all that done..." looking back over to the docks, you find Jing Yuan already staring up from his spot at you, giving you a small smile and a small wave of his hand.
"... Of course he's overexhausted himself."
"Do you enjoy making everyone around you worry? I think Jinwen aged a couple of decades with the stunt you pulled today," you start to nag the moment you're within earshot of Jing Yuan - your husband merely chuckling at your exasperated face as you stomp over.
"I apologize, dear. I just had an inkling that something would go awry with their journey. Finding you would've taken longer and Lady Fu Xuan is already busy as the acting general in my absence. So I figured this was the best course of action," he tries to reason, but he can never reason with you when it comes to his wellbeing - no matter how many times he's tried in the past.
So you don't answer him. You only stare at him, close enough for him to see your dissatisfication, but far enough for him to not be able reach you or hold you in his arms.
"... I do admit I'm pretty weary though, I think this is the last time I'll violate the healers' order," he admits in the end with a defeated sigh, raising his arms a bit as a silent request, "Can I request the assistance of my dear spouse in these trying times?" he jests.
However, Jing Yuan is well aware of the fact that you're still very much weak to the few times he does request help.
As with any matter with Jing Yuan that you're inevitably forced to pick up, you can only sigh as you step closer. Weaving your fingers between his own to pull him a bit closer before leaning in to give him a brief peck on the lips.
You then weave your fingers away from his own in favor to wrapping your arms around his waist in a snug embrace, Jing Yuan taking the chance to wrap his own arms around yours before he leans his entire weight on you.
The extra weight makes you let out a grunt of surprise, but Jing Yuan has already buried his face into your neck, letting out a deep exhale into your skin which makes it tingle while his shoulders slump, "... You big lion, you're rivaling Mimi's clinginess at this point," you whisper with a chuckle.
"I haven't seen my dear spouse since they had ordered me to be bedridden, I'm sure you can handle a little clinginess," Jing Yuan mumbles back, kissing the juncture of your neck.
"Yeah, yeah. As an apology for caring about your health, what about we try to get home so that you can properly rest on a bed instead of leaning your entire weight on your dear spouse?"
Jing Yuan hums in appreciation, leaning back to cup your cheek with a smile, "I think that sounds wonderful," he confirms before pressing his lips back on your own.
Listen Dan Heng is so unpredictable when it comes to this stuff. Sometimes you think he enjoys affection but doesn't crave it and then he texts you out of the blue to come to the archives and leaves you on read after that. You rush over there, wondering whether he found something shocking in the data bank and as soon as you enter the room he's in your arms, snuggling up to you.
"What's gotten into you?", you chuckle and hold the back of his head. Dan Heng nuzzles your neck. "I wanted to try and sleep soon... I thought it might be easier with you around..."
It wasn't the first time you had stayed over in your boyfriend's room, so you understood that your comfort eased Dan Heng's nightmares a little. But it was the first time he suggested you join him for a bath. He told you he was planning to do that anyway and that you're welcome to join him if you'd like.
Gets a little flustered at first, but smiles happily once you're in his arms in the warm water, closing your eyes and resting against his shoulder.
He shakes his head in disappointment when you try to put some of the bubbles from the bath on his head. "What's this supposed to be when you're done?", he gives you an amused smile and raises an eyebrow.
He'd tell you about his newest discoveries in the archives. With time, you had learnt that the reason he loves books so much was that they were the only thing that brought him a bit of joy during his years in the Shackling Prison; and they had become a constant in his life, so you were more than happy to share this passion with him and hear all about his work on the Express.
He has such a soothing voice and the warmth of the bath is so comforting that you fall asleep against his shoulder and Dan Heng doesn't notice until he's done with his rambles about that one creature he wanted to observe. "By the way, what was up with 'just wanna observe Dan Heng in the water'?", he raises an eyebrow, "though, I suppose you got your wish today, huh?" He chuckles and turns his head towards you only to find you sound asleep against him. "Oh-", he whispers but smiles and presses a kiss to your forehead.
He lets you rest there for a while, running his fingertips up and down your arm, before he gets up, careful not to wake you, and lifts you out of the bathtub. He dries you off gently and if you wake up he tells you not to worry about it. "Rest", he whispers and presses a soft kiss to your lips, "I'll handle everything."
He gives you one of his shirts that you manage to put on in your drowsy state, mumbling something about wanting Dan Heng to cuddle you as he drains the water in the tub and puts away the towels.
He actually hurries up for you. He slides under the covers of his bed in the archives and pulls you close, feeling you nuzzle into his chest and relax into the warmth of his embrace.
"I love you", he whispers when you've already entered the land of dreams again. Dan Heng loves how cozy it feels to hold you in his arms like this after a warm, relaxing bath. He makes a note in his mind that he should do this more often.
✧ ɴᴏᴛᴇꜱ: yayyy my first commission! 7.2k words of pure jing yuan fluff. want the entire fluff alphabet for your fave too or just a very long fic for any character of your choice? check my commission info! this took me 6 hours so reblogs would be appreciated! 👍
✧ ɴᴏᴡ ᴘʟᴀʏɪɴɢ: this jing yuan song
✧ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: none
A = Affection
(How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)
Jing Yuan first and foremost is someone who easily adapts to you. If you’re a rather reserved person who doesn’t initiate affection a lot, Jing Yuan is more likely to give you space and show his affection more subtly through quality time spent together, doing things you enjoy, or just idle moments spent in each other’s presence whilst doing your own stuff and him reaching for your hand every once in a while to show you how much he enjoys his bonding time with you and that he’s thinking of you even when he looks busy.
If you’re a very affectionate person, Jing Yuan definitely indulges you and makes sure to initiate affection equally as much as you do. He’ll often reach for you, wrapping his arms around your waist while pressing little affectionate kisses to your neck or your cheek. Jing Yuan also likes to make your day a little easier, surprising you after a long day of work with a nice meal he made for you. He lets you sit on his lap if you want to while he works, because he loves having you this close to him even when he can’t focus all of his attention on you.
Sometimes you’ll enter his office hesitantly, not wanting to bother or distract the busy general from his duty; but the doubts fade away as soon as he notices you and turns his head to look at you, greeting you with the warmest smile only reserved for you. Jing Yuan doesn’t hesitate to open his arms to you, letting out a relaxed sigh when you’re finally in his embrace. “These little visits are always the best part of my day”, he hums quietly and presses a soft kiss to your lips. You know then, he’s been missing your affections as much as you missed his.
B = Best friend
(What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)
Jing Yuan’s friendship with you is a wild card. It could start with the two of you working together, just as a lot of his relationships with other people started. Or it could be something totally unexpected; like both of you reaching for the last copy of a book you were looking forward to read in a shop and deciding that you could just share it. Jing Yuan is a gentle soul and somehow, even after all he’s been through or perhaps because of it, he never closes the gate to his heart.
Where Dan Heng and Blade became reserved and distant after everything that transpired with the High Cloud Quintet, Jing Yuan found the resolve to value the people in his life even more and treasure his time with them, even if it might not last. Similarly, Jing Yuan as your best friend is attentive and selfless; he’s hyper-aware of what you add to his life and what he learns from you, something he believes is the essence of what we gain from social relationships, and he’s grateful for it. You could show up on his doorstep at 2am in the pouring rain, unsure of where else to go, and he would smile at you gently and invite you in; ready to give you the sense of safety and care you deserve. Jing Yuan is always trying his best to be kind and understanding but he will also definitely be the voice of reason whenever you need a reality check. He’s really good at finding the balance between validating your feelings and simultaneously disagreeing with you. Jing Yuan is easy to befriend and easy to get along with. He’s a good friend and you can be glad to have him by your side.
C = Cuddles
(Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)
Jing Yuan loves cuddles! His favorites definitely are when both of you have cleared your schedules and can just lay down in bed and cuddle for a while. He loves being the big spoon and hugging you from behind. His fingertips would run up and down your arm and he’d end up playing with your fingers or massaging your hands. He’ll often press a kiss to your neck or the shell of your ear. Sometimes he asks you to turn your head to him a little more so he can reach your cheek with his lips.
Jing Yuan also enjoys when you rest your head against his chest. He sleeps with his shirt off and he enjoys the feeling of your cheek resting against his skin. Jing Yuan always has a comfortable warmth to him. He also gets very clingy in his sleep. You’d already be cuddling when he falls asleep but once he’s off in deep sleep, he’ll drape his leg over yours and try to pull you even closer into his chest. You had to wake him up from time to time to time to tell him to stop squishing you so much. He’ll have a bashful expression on his face and will apologize. “I’m sorry… seems I got a little carried away in my dreams”, he chuckles and presses a kiss to your forehead. “As cute as you are when you get clingy, unfortunately I can’t fall asleep if you squeeze me in your arms like that”, you sigh with a smile on your face, running a hand through his messy hair.
D = Domestic
(Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)
If Jing Yuan starts a relationship with you, it’s with the intention to make it last. He has been the General for a very long time now and he knows he’ll retire from this job eventually. And when he does, he wants you to still be there by his side to spend the rest of his days with him.
Fu Xuan has definitely jokingly referred to Jing Yuan as a househusband before because that’s how he acts around you, despite having a job and responsibilities. Jing Yuan is very good at cooking and you always love it when he makes something for you. You’re definitely looking forward to being able to eat his food for the rest of your life.
He does clean but that’s something he’d rather do together with you. He’ll often feel unmotivated to do it, although he gets up to clean anyway if it needs to be done, but he’ll prefer to take some time with you to throw on a nice song both of you like and clean together whilst conversing about whatever comes to mind. It can make an activity he usually dislikes actually fun for him.
There are a lot of domestic moments with Jing Yuan throughout your daily life that you definitely would not want to miss out on, be it keeping him company while he cooks; wrapping your arms around his waist and leaning your head against his back; or cleaning sessions being randomly interrupted by Jing Yuan asking you for a dance in the living room.
E = Ending
(If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)
If he breaks up with you, it would always be for your own good; either because your safety is compromised by associating with him or because he notices he’s no longer good for you. If he does plan to break up with you, Jing Yuan definitely spends a couple of sleepless nights trying to find the method that would hurt you the least; because even if he no longer sees a future for the two, you’ve still been an important part of his life for so long and it breaks his heart to see you cry.
He’d definitely do it during a time where neither of you have any plans for the rest of the day or even the next day. He’d sit you down and tells you there’s something he needs to talk about with you. He tries to keep it together but he can’t help tearing up when he tries to actually get the words out. He only hopes you will still be on good terms even after the breakup and that you will be happy again.
That aside, Jing Yuan handles breakups terribly. Not as horrible as some other characters (i.e. Blade), but everytime he meets you now, he’ll accidentally end up saying something sentimental that’s reminiscent of your time together and just makes both of you sad again or makes the whole situation awkward. Jing Yuan definitely wants to continue being your friend after you break up but he’s very bad at moving on so that might not be possible, leaving you with no choice but to keep him at a distance if you really want to move on.
F = Fiance(e)
(How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)
Jing Yuan is all for commitment. If there’s anything Jing Yuan is good at, it’s commitment, so you have nothing to worry about in that department. He adores you with all his heart and he wants to keep you by his side for as long as possible.
So for a member of a long-life species, Jing Yuan doesn’t take very long to propose to you if he’s really sure about his future with you. His proposal is super sweet too. The ring he gets for you has so much symbolism and detail in it that you have to raise an eyebrow and ask him if he designed it personally at that point. Jing Yuan just chuckles and pats your head; telling you he just has a tendency to get carried away when it comes to you, especially when it’s about something as wonderful as marrying you.
He’d probably propose like 2-3 years into the relationship if there aren’t any outside matters that could prove to be an obstacle to your happily ever after. And he plans the proposal for weeks. He rents a location that means something to both of you and puts a lot of effort into the decorations to make sure the whole thing feels romantic. Think: swimming candles, fairy lights and lots of beautiful flowers. You know what’s coming the moment you see him standing there with a bouquet of white roses in his hands, smiling at you like you’re his whole world (you are) and just immediately pulling you into such a slow and loving kiss. But you decide to indulge and act surprised.
G = Gentle
(How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)
Very. In fact, he’s so gentle that you could yell at him and point a pitchfork at him and his first attempt at handling the situation would probably be to ask you what he has done to anger you this much and whether you’d like to sit down and talk about it. From the moment he met you he’s always been so polite and understanding towards you, that you couldn’t help but be draw to his gentle nature. Jing Yuan in general is very hard to hate and very easy to love.
Emotionally, his gentleness comes out the most when you’re feeling down. Everything about how he treats you then, from the feeling of his arm wrapped around you and his hand softly rubbing your shoulder to his quiet whispers about how everything is going to be okay are so soothing to you that it’s really hard to be with Jing Yuan and still feel devastated at the end of the day. Even if he can’t get rid of your pain or fear, he always manages to ease it enough to calm you down and have you get your well-deserved rest in his arms.
Physically, there’s very few moments where Jing Yuan isn’t gentle. Of course he has his times where his kisses become more passionate and eager, especially when he missed you or when he was worried about you and is relieved to see you alright; but most of the time Jing Yuan’s gestures are just really soft. He’s the type for littering your skin in butterfly kisses and holding you like you’re made of porcelain.
H = Hugs
(Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)
He loves hugs. He definitely always hugs you as a greeting. Sometimes he playfully lifts you up and spins you around, pressing a kiss to your lips when he puts you down again. “Someone’s excited”, you smirk as he wraps his arms around you once more from behind and sways lightly with you to the movement of the wind, pressing his cheek against yours.
He also adores when you sit on his lap and wrap your legs and arms around him or hold his face in your hands and keep pressing kisses to his lips the way he does so often. Jing Yuan will then bury his face in your neck, gently nuzzling your skin or just close his eyes and bask in your love.
When you need his support, he also won’t hesitate to pull you into his embrace. He’ll rest his head on top of yours and rubs your back, letting you cry into his shoulder if you need to. He’ll hold you the whole night if you need him to.
Jing Yuan adores your hugs especially when you initiate them. The more excited you are about it, the better. He’s absolutely whipped if you just run towards him and jump into his arms because you’re just that happy to be reunited with him. It makes his heart flutter and he makes sure to let you know that. Another thing he’s weak for is when he sits at his desk and works and you hug him from behind while you’re standing behind him, your cheek leaned against his soft hair. Work can wait for a while then…
I = I love you
(How fast do they say the L-word?)
Fast. In fact, right when he confesses, because he only lets you know about his intent to date you if he’s sure he’s in love with you and wants you to stay by his side. Once he is, there’s nothing holding him back from telling you. He wants you to know how he feels about you and he feels like there’s a more stable foundation for your relationship if you’re certain that he’s serious about you and loves you with all his heart. Jing Yuan is not someone who lets worries or fear of rejection hold him back from being honest with you about his feelings.
He also tells you that he loves you whenever he feels like it. There’s many moments throughout the day where he just looks at you and is reminded exactly what it was about you that made him want to stay around for the rest of his life, and the words slip from his lips without even thinking; even if it’s about something super mundane or even silly. He also always says it back when you tell him you love him.
If he has what you have started to refer to as “Jing Yuan’s clingy 5 minutes”, he’ll just pull you into his lap and kiss you over and over again, whispering those 3 words you love to hear so much against your lips before he pulls you in for another kiss. He smiles against your lips and tells you he loves you more with every day that passes. If you ever doubt his love for you, he makes sure to really drive the point home and reassure you that you have his whole heart.
J = Jealousy
(How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)
Jing Yuan isn’t really a jealous person. He trusts you and he expects you to do the same. If he does get jealous it’s usually because there’s actually something wrong; either because his suspicions are correct or because you’ve been keeping him at a distance because of issues you haven’t addressed with him all whilst growing closer with someone else; even if there’s 0 romantic intent behind it.
Jing Yuan is mature enough not to let jealousy get the better of him. The only thing that’s different is that he looks after you with a worried and sad expression when you head off to meet the person he’s jealous of or sees you talking to him. He usually just needs some reassurance that everything is alright between you, which is why in the rare moments he does notice jealousy rising up within him, he seeks you out when you’re alone to talk to you about your feelings.
Usually it ends with an open discussion about the underlying problem, for example that something has happened in your life that made you worried about the future or that he has accidentally said something that hurt your feelings and you haven’t found out how to bring it up with him yet. Jing Yuan can talk everything out with you if you let him and once the problem is resolved, his feelings of jealousy are gone too. Overall, Jing Yuan getting actually jealous is super rare and when he does, he handles it really well and it doesn’t present a cause for relationship drama if you don’t let it.
K = Kisses
(What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)
As said before, Jing Yuan’s kisses are usually gentle and very loving. A lot of times they’re the typical lazy morning kisses but all throughout the day. And he often prefers a lot of small butterfly kisses over straight up making out. He feels like that conveys the way you make his heart flutter a lot better. Jing Yuan always pulls you close when he kisses you.
His favorite places to kiss you include your lips and your neck. When he’s feeling playful, he often presses kisses to the corner of your mouth or picks at your lower lip with his, while he has a soft smile on his face. Jing Yuan’s lips are super soft and they always make you swoon. He loves to bury his face in your neck which often comes with repeatedly kissing the skin there and spoiling you with his affection. Another spot he often kisses are your fingers when he holds them in his hands like they’re the most delicate thing ever.
Jing Yuan himself loves kisses to his cheek. Just all of the idle moments of you passing him by and pressing a sweet kiss to his cheek or telling him that you think he’s cute before doing this. Additionally, he’s a bit weak for when you sleep in his arms and wake up and you press a kiss to his chest before even opening your eyes because it’s right next to your face. He thinks you’re adorable. He instantly wraps his arms around you tighter and lets you wake up to his affections.
L = Little ones
(How are they around children?)
Jing Yuan would totally be up for having children with you if that’s something you want; whether it’s adopting them or having them yourself. I mean, at this point you’re practically already Yanqing’s parents. I always imagine Jing Yuan as a father to be kind of like Mufasa (without the tragic death). Like “Your son is awake”; “Before sunrise he’s your son”. And he’d definitely teach his kid a lot of life lessons that will make people say “Your father is a very wise man” if they ever tell it to someone else. Jing Yuan has a lot more wisdom than he realizes and when he passes it on, it tends to stay with his child until way into adulthood.
He also is totally the type to indulge and support his kid’s imagination. Like, they’d pull out their dolls or figurines and make up little stories with them and Jing Yuan would listen attentively and join them in playing; offering his own ideas. You’d observe them sitting on the floor of your kid’s bedroom, playing with the figurines. “Aw, this one fell into the mud and I can’t get it clean anymore… and it was brand new too, I haven’t even named it yet”, your child would say about the newest addition to their collection. “How about ‘Mr. Clean’ then?”, Jing Yuan suggests ironically. “That’s a horrible name”, you butt in before moving on with whatever you were doing before. “It’s not”, Jing Yuan insists, “they just don’t have taste.” “I heard that”, you call out from the other room, “don’t forget I picked you.”
M = Morning
(How are mornings spent with them?)
Mornings with Jing Yuan are a long endeavor and yet he always makes them feel way too short. Usually one of you wakes up slowly and is already kissing the other before even opening their eyes. Either it’s you turning your head to plant kisses on his chest or Jing Yuan searching for your lips in the dark. He loves when you wake up before him and kiss him awake. You’ll be pressing soft kisses to his lips and he comes to his senses and opens his mouth to get a taste of you first thing in the morning.
Jing Yuan’s mornings are lazy. He’s the type you have to pull out of bed by his arm because he keeps saying “just 10 more minutes” whilst trying to convince you to stay in his arms even if you need to get up for work. “How have you had this position for this long if you’re this irresponsible?”, you sigh and Jing Yuan stretches like a lion cub before dozing back off to sleep. You shake your head. He’s a hopeless case, you think. What eventually motivates him to get up is the fact that he misses your warmth so while you’re brushing your teeth or preparing breakfast, your sleepy boyfriend is slouching over you, clinging to you with his head resting against yours. “Jing Yuan, could you not put your entire weight on me? Jing Yuan?”, you sigh as you notice the dozing general had already fallen asleep again. You play with the thought of just shaking him awake but how could you when he mumbles how much he loves you and that he wants more kisses in his sleep?
N = Night
(How are nights spent with them?)
As I said, Jing Yuan has a habit of getting clingy while he’s asleep. Sometimes you’ll wake up to him squishing you in his embrace. He’ll try and fail to press kisses to your skin wherever he can reach; oftentimes just pressing his lips against your skin without the actual kissing. You think it’s the most adorable thing ever. It always makes you smile even though you have to push him away sometimes to be able to sleep yourself.
Sometimes, especially on the weekend, you and Jing Yuan stay up late and take a walk through the city or have a nice dinner at a restaurant together. He enjoys walking across the plazas with you when it’s so late that there’s hardly anyone on the street anymore and it’s just you, him, the stars above you and the idle sound of the water in the fountains or the trees swaying in the wind. Sometimes you’ll sit down on a bench reminiscing about some old memories you shared together or watching the constellations above. Or rather, you’re watching the constellations and halfway through Jing Yuan just starts looking at you instead. He has lived a long life and he has seen the stars over and over again but he could never get tired of seeing the love of his life and reaching out to hold your hand.
O = Open
(When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)
It’s not so much the fact that he doesn’t trust you with his past or feels doubtful you’ll see him the same way afterwards; it’s just that there’s a lot of things Jing Yuan hasn’t talked about with anyone in a long, long time. He needs to warm up to the idea of confiding in you and putting all cards on the table. In the beginning of the relationship, questions about his past will often be answered with very vague statements before Jing Yuan switches the topic to make it less awkward, which can be frustrating for you and may feel like he isn’t being truthful with you or purposefully withholding things.
But as time goes on he eventually notices he’s ready to share the whole truth with you and he finds that talking about it with you actually helps him make peace with the past. You’re relieved to know that his reserved demeanor when it came to topics he didn’t want to talk about had nothing to do with you personally and more with Jing Yuan needing time to speak about it at all. The deep conversations where you learn more about Jing Yuan’s past and his feelings in response to that usually happen when you’re cuddling at night. There comes a point in time where Jing Yuan feels comfortable enough that if you want to know something about him that’s still unclear to you, you only have to ask. Things get a lot easier from there on out.
P = Patience
(How easily angered are they?)
Jing Yuan is the most patient person you've ever met, which can actually be counterproductive in situations where you’re genuinely upset or angry. It’s very difficult to get an emotionally charged response out of him. Jing Yuan thinks distressing situations are best approached with a calm demeanor and civil conversations so he actually chooses to remain calm and practice restraint even if he ends up being angry or sad. Depending on your perspective on the whole thing, this has the potential to feel like he’s simply not as affected by the situation or doesn’t really care about an emotional outburst if you ever have one; but Jing Yuan is really just trying to calm you down and reassure you, which would be hard to do if he started impulsively responding to his emotions.
So even when Jing Yuan gets angry, it’s usually not visible unless he straight up, calmly, tells you he’s mad at you and he’ll need some time to sort this out. In general, Jing Yuan is someone who responds with sadness rather than anger to an upsetting situation. He doesn’t like himself when he gets angry and he understands that you’re upset too and he first and foremost wants both of you to be happy again. He does not want to make you feel worse.
As for things that do make him angry, even if he doesn’t show it on his face; it’s either you being reckless and putting yourself in a dangerous situation despite his pleas not to or when he can tell something is wrong and you have a problem with him but refuse to communicate with him about it. This can be frustrating for him and cause him to feel a little burnt out from the whole thing, which might make him withdraw for a while. Even though Jing Yuan’s seemingly never-ending patience can feel a little invalidating when you’re expecting an emotional reaction from him, most of the time it works in your favor and Jing Yuan is very good at keeping the peace in your relationship.
Q = Quizzes
(How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)
Jing Yuan is a good listener and he’s attentive. He remembers a lot of details about you. Given how long he lives, he’s bound to have some of them slip out of his memory but they’re never truly gone. A century could pass and then he sees something that reminds him about a random detail you told him about yourself; something he would have expected himself to have forgotten long ago, and he can imagine the conversation that led to him learning this fact as vividly as if it was yesterday.
You’re often surprised when you witness this happening because sometimes Jing Yuan will bring up things even you forgot you ever told him. “You remembered this?”, you raise an eyebrow with a smile on your face. “Honestly, I’m as surprised as you are”, Jing Yuan shrugs and takes your hand into his, “then again, I’m also not. It’s a memory I share with you after all. So no wonder it stayed somewhere in my subconscious, waiting for the right time to emerge again.” “You’re so cheesy sometimes”, you laugh and ruffle his hair. “Isn’t that what made you fall for me?”, he teases and pulls you onto his lap; placing soft kisses on your neck again.
Oftentimes when Jing Yuan remembers things you told him you liked or enjoyed doing a while ago, this sparks gift ideas and date ideas in his head and he can’t wait to surprise you with the fact that he not only remembered this casual bit of information you told him, but he also went out of this way to get you a comfort food you didn’t have in a while or set up a nice afternoon for you based on something trivial you forgot you even mentioned.
R = Remember
(What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)
There’s so many moments in your relationship that Jing Yuan wouldn’t trade for the world and they’re memories he deeply values and treasures. But if he had to pick; it’d probably be a moment that recurs every now and then. He can’t possibly pick a single memory as a favorite for one of the most important bonds he’s ever had, so what truly are his favorite moments in your relationship are seeing each other again; whether it was after being apart for days or just a couple of hours. Having you jump into his arms or cupping his cheeks to press your lips to his, telling him that you missed him and that you just had to come see him.
They’re the moments you reunite after battle, the moments you slip into bed with him for cuddles and kisses after both of you have been stressed for the past few days and the moments when he’s supposed to be working and you visit him because you just craved his affection that much. They’re the moments after arguments, when everything has been forgiven and forgotten and he’s back in your arms, kissing you deeply as if he’s been starving from your lack of affection and they’re the moments when he thought he might have lost you and there you are; kissing him breathless like you’ve been apart for a thousand years.
S = Security
(How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)
Jing Yuan is very protective of you. He understands if you want to fight alongside him but he’s a General and most of the time his mindset is that he can handle these things himself. Losing you would be the worst thing he could imagine, so the urge to keep you safe is what pushes him beyond his limits on the battlefield. It doesn’t make him careless but it does make you worry that he’ll compromise his own safety for yours. Jing Yuan would never leave you behind even if it seemed like he couldn’t win a battle at all odds. He’d protect you even if he’d have to pay with his life.
Additionally, Jing Yuan gets protective when someone else tries to hurt you with words or rain on your parade or when you’re uncomfortable in a situation. He doesn’t hesitate to stand up for you and give someone a piece of his mind if they dare to bother you. If a situation is distressing for you, he makes sure to lead you away to a place where you feel safer and can gather yourself in the comfort of his arms.
Jing Yuan absolutely loves when you’re protective of him. The whole situation could have the vibe of an angry chihuahua trying to defend godzilla from a drunk man with a gun and Jing Yuan would still think you’re a dream come true. He might not be in danger at all and perfectly capable of handling the situation himself but seeing you so serious about keeping him safe and comfortable gets his heart to beat faster. He makes a mental note to pay you back for that with his affection later.
T = Try
(How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)
The answer is; a lot of effort. After you’ve been together for a long time it’s a little lost on you how in the world Jing Yuan still manages to come up with so many meaningful dates and gifts for you but you’re certainly not complaining. He loves you with all his heart and love has the tendency to make Jing Yuan surprisingly creative.
He makes sure to take you out on a date at least once a month even if you’ve been married for a hundred years, he always celebrates your anniversary every year and gives you gifts. And all of this is so well thought out that sometimes you feel a little bad for not having as many ideas like that to surprise him with. But Jing Yuan is more of a giver in a committed relationship. He’s at his happiest not when he receives affection from you but when he sees your reactions to the things he does for you. When he buys a gift or plans an anniversary, he’s already imagining your smile or your grateful kisses or the compliments that slip from your lips between them when he surprises you with the final result and it makes his heart beat faster and makes him giddy and excited internally even if you’ve been together for years.
For Jing Yuan, all of that is worth every bit of effort. He loves making you feel loved and happy. He doesn’t feel like any gift or gesture could ever convey the full extent of his feelings for you and your importance in his life but he will try nonetheless.
U = Ugly
(What would be some bad habits of theirs?)
For one, Jing Yuan worries too much. He doesn’t restrict you in any of your choices but he doesn’t work well with a reckless person. He has lost so many people as the centuries went by and he feels so deeply for you that he can’t sleep without knowing you’re home or at least in a safe place. If you go out late in the evening and you don’t text him when you’re back home or back at the hotel etc.; Jing Yuan does not sleep. If this is a regular occurrence, the man might ironically end up with insomnia. Instead of settling on the fact that you probably just forgot to tell him and or passed out in bed from exhaustion and are sleeping soundly, his mind sometimes tends to catastrophize which is detrimental to his psychological well-being if it carries on for long enough. Jing Yuan needs a person who will tell him everything is alright before they go to sleep at night and takes the time to inform him when they’re late.
Additionally, Jing Yuan often fails to realize when you need your space. Arguments are something that stress him a lot and continuously for as long as they last, so he’s the type of person who’d rather resolve them immediately. Jing Yuan doesn’t need space when you’re fighting, he needs to solve the problem and make sure he’s back on good terms with you. Sometimes the fact that you might be someone who doesn’t approach conflict like that flies over his head. He thinks he can talk everything out with you immediately and sometimes he unintentionally makes it worse with that.
V = Vanity
(How concerned are they with their looks?)
The man has birds in his hair. I think this is all you need to know to answer that question. He cares enough to look presentable at his job but other than that, looks don’t matter to him.
However, he does remember when he wears an outfit that makes you want to kiss him over and over again or tries out a hairstyle that gets you to swoon over him and he will try to do this more often because he loves your reaction to it. Having you call him pretty or stunning is an added bonus to the affection he already gets from you but it certainly boosts his mood and makes him soft.
W = Whole
(Would they feel incomplete without you?)
Oh, definitely. Once you’re a part of Jing Yuan’s life and have been this close to him, he’s very emotionally over-attached. Not to an unhealthy degree and he doesn’t really act on it, but emotionally he definitely pines for you long after your relationship has ended. You know those people who keep having an inkling of feelings for someone even after not talking to them in a decade which can re-ignite into a flame just by seeing you again? That’s Jing Yuan. That’s what he’s like.
That’s why despite the fact that he doesn’t feel like he has to hide his feelings from you before getting together with you, he waits to actively approach you or initiate anything until he’s certain that what you have can last because he is aware that he has these tendencies and he knows it’s not good for himself if it turns out that your relationship won’t work out. So that’s why it can still take quite some time to finally make things official with Jing Yuan.
He’d absolutely feel incomplete without you and that’s an experience he dreads if your relationship ever threatens to fail, because he knows he’ll be stuck with it for a long, long time.
X = Xtra
(A random headcanon for them.)
This is another flaw to him when it comes to romance, but if he’s not dating you yet, he has a tendency to delude himself a little bit. For example, imagine you’re traveling for two months and you promise to go on a date with him once you’re back to the Xianzhou. In those two months Jing Yuan will probably have played every single scenario about how this date could potentially go in his head without even realizing and sometimes that makes him lose touch with reality a little bit. Not to an extent where the way he now behaves towards you drives you away from him but rather there’s a sudden change in the way he interacts with you from your perspective.
He’s not overbearing but he may surprise you with suddenly being a lot more comfortable and open with you than you expected him to be at this point in time. Like, you’ll be on polite speaking terms and occasionally flirt a bit when you leave and you come back to Jing Yuan having gained the comfort and feeling of closeness with you that he now talks to you like you’re his good friend he’s been through hell with and it’s a shift that catches you off-guard. This might actually work in your favor if you have a huge crush on him but if it feels too weird, you might need to ask him to take things slow. He’ll listen and apologize for getting a little too ahead of himself.
Y = Yuck
(What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)
Aside from the obvious things like cheating or the recklessness I previously talked about, I feel like one thing Jing Yuan would really struggle with is someone who does not communicate properly with him or sends him mixed signals. He’d rather have you yelling at him or venting your frustrations to him in an emotional outburst, because that is something he can actually approach, than for you to just not tell him what’s bothering you even though something clearly is or you not being truthful with him about things in your relationship. Jing Yuan wants a relationship where you two can be comfortable and fully open with one another and that does not work if he has to play guessing games all the time about what’s going on in your head even after he asks you about it. Jing Yuan is a “let’s talk it out” kind of guy and that’s his first approach to resolving conflict so when that’s not an option he doesn’t really know how to deal with it and he feels a little unsteady about what’s supposed to happen next. Jing Yuan is always open to correcting his mistakes or meeting you halfway when anything he did hurt your feelings but he absolutely cannot deal with someone who does not bring these things up to him until they essentially blow up in his face.
He’d also hate feeling like a trophy boyfriend. Yes he’s probably pretty popular and has quite a few admirers since he’s also such an important public figure and he’s undeniably handsome; and he’s happy and feels honored when you are genuinely proud to be with him and hype him up, but if he finds himself in a social situation where he feels like he’s just there to for you to impress people with your relationship or he hears you talk about how handsome he is to someone else and brag about it like you won him in the lottery, that’s something that would make him really uncomfortable.
Z = Zzz
(What is a sleep habits of theirs?)
A lot of these I’ve already touched upon. Mostly getting very clingy while he’s asleep and squeezing you in his arms, prompting you to push him off you a little bit so you can sleep comfortably as well. When he’s just in a light state of sleep he tends to mumble about how much he loves you and that he wants cuddles and kisses.
Sometimes sleeping next to Jing Yuan can be challenging because he has his clingy times but he also has times where he suddenly takes up all the space in the bed and hogs all the blankets and pillows and you have to pull them out of his grabby hands, cursing him internally for still having so much strength even whilst being sound asleep. He does not wake up from that. Surprisingly, however, he wakes up immediately when you leave the room. It’s like he senses you’re not there with him any more and his eyes open to see light in the bathroom or the kitchen. He knows you’ll be right back so he waits for you to return before going back to sleep. You’re surprised to find him awake every time this happens. As soon as you’re back in bed, Jing Yuan wraps his arms around you again and nuzzles your neck affectionately. “I missed you”, he mumbles with a sleepy voice. “I’ve been gone for 5 minutes”, you whisper back and chuckle. He doesn’t reply as he has already dozed off again but he does smile when you press a good night kiss to his forehead.
✧ ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: it is said that some people see the other side when they die even for just a brief moment. those near-death experiences often change them for good... blade wonders when the moment will come that he'll finally get to see you again.
✧ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴀɪɴꜱ: blade x aeon!reader, gn!reader, fluff to angst, blade has a near-death experience; falls in love with you and then dan feng makes him immortal, ambiguous ending
✧ ɴᴏᴡ ᴘʟᴀʏɪɴɢ: 1000 years — kt tunstall
✧ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: major character death, separated lovers, themes of death, angst
And thus, his chest was pierced by the same weapon he had forged with such care and effort. He felt an almost unbearable pain along with the notion of betrayal, hatred, anger and grief that seemed to cloud his entire senses. The sharp pain stretched from his heart all the way to his limbs and he could feel himself slipping in and out of consciousness. This is the end, he thought and part of him feared what would come next. This was the day that Yingxing died. The clouds over the Xianzhou were dark today and he knew that it was going to rain soon but he doubted he'd make it to feel the raindrops on his skin one last time.
The storm in his heart, seeming to seep out of the large wound and permeating his entire aura, raged on violently and seemed to devour him; toss him around like a lily caught in a tornado. He had never felt such pain before, both physically and emotionally.
And then the pain was gone.
Surprisingly, in that final moment, the one he had known as Dan Feng seized to exist for him. They say that everybody dies alone and he supposed in that moment he found that statement to be true. For a moment, the events that had led to the destruction of Yingxing stopped to matter. After all, he couldn't carry them along to wherever he was headed.
Perhaps that was a good thing.
He closed his eyes and yet he found himself to be able to see. He saw the stars above him, the sky suddenly clearer than he had ever seen it. It seemed to go on forever; like he could see galaxies far away from the Xianzhou just like that.
At first that void was frightening. It was too much, more than he ever had to feel in his life. There was a pressure and impending doom coming from the stars, as if he was laying on the ground and the sky was getting closer and closer until it would crush him under its weight. But the impact never came. Rather, the pain of his physical shell seemed to fade in the blink of an eye as he merged with the place from which he once came before inhabiting this mortal vessel and he noticed he couldn't even remember what it felt like to have a body.
He didn't know if "Yingxing" had stopped existing when his consciousness joined the great beyond once more or whether who he believed he was had never mattered in the first place. Like he had been caught up in a grand play and it was time for the curtain call. He had loved and hated the role that had been given to him to play but perhaps, most important of all, he had grown. As he let the universe wash over him, he felt, for a brief moment, as though everything he had went through had meaning after all.
He found himself on a distant shore, the stars sweeping over his feet like waves in an ocean. He sat himself up, finding his "body" without traces of the battle that had just occured. He let a strand of his long hair run through his fingers; now finding it to be a dark blue as it had been once in the old days.
Everything seemed so much more vivid than anything he had ever experienced. He could hear the sound of the waves with a clarity a mortal soul could only dream to experience. He could see for miles and everything seemed to burst into the most vibrant colors his eyes ever fell on. Every pebble under his right hand was one he registered individually. He didn't know where exactly he was but the place felt soothing. Like home.
The Aeon of Death had been something that was only ever speculated to exist. There were no records that confirmed their existence and no forces of their making that seemed to interfere with the material world other than the fact that every life sooner or later had to meet its end. This Aeon's existence was always regarded as more of a myth or metaphor than something people actually believed in, yet all depictions of them seemed to paint them as a harbinger of tragedy and suffering. Blade had seen drawings of them in books, dressed in flowing black fabrics and their face often obscured or distorted.
Yet when he saw you before him now, he found that the stories had it all wrong. Rather, your appearance was gentle and peaceful. He looked out to the sea and there you were, waiting patiently in a small boat for him to join you. The waves crashed into the bow and your boat swayed lightly to their motions. His hand reached for the waters and brushed through it, finding that rather than water; the sea seemed like the universe itself, his fingers casting ripples through the stars but never reaching the world he had just left.
You smiled at him from afar. In that moment he appeared to you like a child discovering something fascinating they had never seen before, playing with his surroundings to familiarize himself with it. You didn't mind waiting. You had time.
When he finally got up and carefully made his way to the boat, you got a better look at the man. He looked handsome but you could see on his face that whatever he had seen in this unreachable realm had taken a toll on him. He climbed into the wooden boat, sitting down in front of you, taking in your face for a little longer before he finally spoke.
"Why?", he simply asked, hurt evident in his voice as his words settled in the vast space around him, the silence that followed right after seeming to soothe his aches a little, "what was it all for?"
"You're the only one who will be able to answer that question eventually", you spoke quietly, making sure not to startle him, "I have never seen the world you come from. I can't reach it. I simply wait here for all who cross over. You chose to live this life, only you can find the reason."
He thought about your words for a moment, then letting out a bitter laugh. "Why would I choose something like that?"
You shook your head. "I can't tell you. And believe me I get that question a lot", you reached for a box behind you, placing it onto the small table that stood behind the two of you, "it seems our past choices can seem as unreasonable here as anywhere else." He mused that he probably shouldn't bother you with this type of stuff. However, he found himself to have a habit of ruining everything, so he supposed it was not that surprising for him to have chosen this painful life long ago.
His eyes fell onto the small ebony casket that had been placed before him.
"What's in the box?"
You gave him a mischievous smile. "In here lies the answer to any question you ever had", you spoke slowly, igniting an anticipation in him but also hesitation and fear, "however I must warn you. Opening it comes at a cost that is worth paying only for a select few." His eyes widened as he ran his fingers over the smooth material. He wondered, what could he have to give to you when he had just left everything behind upon entering this realm? Was he to sacrifice his chance at an afterlife and embrace eternal non-existence for the brief shot to make sense of it all?
"What's the price?"
You let out a laugh. "I jest", you responded and surprisingly, he felt a sense of relief wash over him, "there's no magic box that can explain the meaning of the universe to you." You lifted the lid to show him what was inside, placing a few cards and tokens on the table. Poker, he recognized the game and picked up a few of the pieces to inspect them; still trying to find something off about them. But they seemed to be just regular tokens. You smiled at the curiosity and suspicion in his eyes. Cute, you thought, surprised at your own reaction to your newest client. The craftsman raised an eyebrow.
"Why?"
"You'd be surprised how many people come here looking to bet and bargain."
He nodded. He could see why many humans would do this. "And you indulge them?", he questioned. You shook your head and winked at him. "Between us, I can win if I want to", you set up the game, "but you don't want to go back, so there's no need for me to intervene. We can play a friendly round if you'd like to."
He nodded once more, finding himself smiling at the absurdity of the situation. But it was a welcome change. Your presence seemed to soothe his aching soul with every minute he spent here, although he had no idea how much time had already passed. As you played, you gave him the chance to ask you more questions. Most of them were ones you had already had to answer over and over again. But there was something about this man that made them feel like a new experience; something that stimulated and amused you.
"So, is this the afterlife?", he asked dryly. "You can think of it as more of a.... hotel lobby. Your time here decides what room you'll end up in, so to speak", you tried to explain, "there's a world beyond what you've known so far that I can't possibly explain to you. You'll just have to see for yourself. But first we have to find out where your place lies." He pondered your words.
"And you're the receptionist?", he asked, feeling a little lost.
"Something like that", you chuckled as your eyes inspected his calloused hands, "I'll be your guide for as long as you stay here." Perhaps it was your own wishful thinking but you could almost see a hint of disappointment on his face. "And after that?", he asked, "will I ever see you again?"
He found himself surprised at his question but simultaneously he had gotten so used to that feeling of painlessness and peace he felt around you already, that he was afraid of losing it again in that place he was destined to go next. "It's only been a moment and you'd already miss me?", you teased, your fingers lightly brushing against his, "well I'm flattered." He didn't pull his hand away. He should pull away, he reasoned. He had been hurt so much, love and friendship had scarred him and made him wonder whether anything about it was worth the pain. But something about your touch felt so right, that he couldn't help but wish you'd just take his whole hand into yours and held it. Or just flip the table, forget all about the game and kiss him breathless.
He was shocked at his thoughts. His cheeks were heating up. What is wrong with me?, he internally cursed himself for being this weak for you. Just moments ago he had been in a brutal fight with his once closest companion; he had felt like his anger was going to be all that remained of him. And yet now the skies had shifted and the world he left behind felt so small along with the person he once was. What was so wrong about being happy?, he asked himself, clutching his fist, maybe it was time to be selfish for once and just forget all about what used to be and focus on the here and now.
Focus on you.
You who eased his sorrows even though they were still seeping into his mind every now and then. "There seems to be a lot on your mind", you sighed as you defeated him in the game, "may I ask for your name?" He didn't comment on his loss.
"I'm not sure", he shrugged, thinking back the the middle-aged man who died at the hands of the High Elder of the Vidyadhara. "Yingxing" didn't really feel right anymore. He felt as though he had taken a step into a larger world now. Reached a point of no return. You nodded, as though you could understand or had seen many like him pass through this place.
"You pick one", he shrugged, his eyes looking into the distance and you could tell he was still lost in thought. This was a lot to take in for him after all. Your eyes fell onto the sword he had brought along, undoubtedly one of his own making.
"How about 'Blade'?", you suggested, putting a finger to your chin. He thought about it for a moment, then felt himself nodding and smiling genuinely for the first time in a long time.
"Blade."
As time went on, he learnt that you had never been to the mortal realm. That you experienced it through the memories of those you guided to the other side. You promised that you would visit him at any time he wished to see you once he had crossed over. That time wasn't linear in this realm and that a second could feel like months here. He took his time to learn about you; to find out what interested you about the material world and what things you had seen in your line of work. What the universe was like, experienced by a being such as yourself. He had apologized for asking so many questions that you probably heard over and over again. You had simply shaken your head.
"All in a day's work."
You reassured him that you were enjoying your time with him. Basic questions about the realm Blade now found himself in turned into long conversations he thought he'd never have again. His soul was already laid bare before you, he didn't feel urged to hide his feelings and past from you. You were so attentive and understanding. He wished you had been there for his time on the Xianzhou. Maybe that would have made him feel a little less lost.
Fleeting touches turned into finally holding his hand in yours and him resting against your chest with a content smile on his face. He had never told you he loved you but he felt like deep inside you knew. The first time you kissed him, he felt a spark ignite inside him that he thought had long since been snuffed out. Your lips tasted sweet, like the salvation he had so desperately longed for, yet never could have imagined to be like this. He kissed back hungrily, your fingertips wiping away the tears of relief he couldn't stop from running down his cheeks. Every peck you left on his skin, whether you scattered them on his hands, his shoulders or placed them at the corner of his mouth; he felt he could never get enough of them.
He'd hold you tightly in his arms, leaving kisses on your neck before pulling you into a loving kiss again, his tongue clashing with yours as he poured all the words he couldn't say and the passion he couldn't put into words into his kiss. He eventually leaned his forehead against yours with a happy smile. You guided souls to the other side day in and day out. You never expected yourself to fall in love with one. But Blade had captured your heart by storm. He was the one you had been waiting for all this time. He was your forever. Both of you were finally happy.
You both knew he was ready to move on and spend the rest of eternity by your side. That was his place in the great beyond. And it seems it was meant to be yours too. He nodded as the two of you were ready to embark on your next great journey together, leaving the sea of doubts behind you, ready to step into the sun. Blade gave you one last kiss to your lips. He looked at you with a peaceful smile on his face, his eyes promising you forever.
And then that moment ended.
He could only hear you desperately call out to him as he was pulled away from you, his hand trying to clutch yours as he was fading from view and his fingers slipped out of yours. He was panicking. It couldn't end like this. He remembered how happy you were just a moment ago. How worried you must be now.
The peace and tranquility was quickly replaced by emptiness and grief and anger again as his soul violently slammed back into his once mortal body. If he thought the pain from exiting it was bad, the one from entering it again was even worse. He groaned in pain, clutching the large wound on his chest and feeling it close below his fingers, much to his surprise.
Suddenly the Xianzhou seemed to matter again and your soothing touch felt out of his reach. He thought he was simply healed. That this was temporary and if he wanted to, he could just go back to you. But he realized quickly that this was not the case.
His eyes widened in shock and he stared in disbelief at his shaking, scarred hands as he realized what had become of him. What someone made of him. His breath hitched in his throat as he bit back the sobs that escaped him. Tears were streaming down his cheeks as he looked up to the man who did this with horror in his eyes. Dan Feng seemed unresponsive, as if caught in a trance.
Blade bit his lips. He didn't want to cry in front of this man. Not like this. Not here. But he couldn't help the despaired sobs coming from his mouth. His voice broke when he spoke.
"What have you done?"
Years had passed since that day. He often wondered what you would think if you could see him now. How bitter and hateful he had become; all the destruction he had caused on his path to reunite with you and kill the man who bestowed this cursed immortality onto him.
On some days it felt like the mara was driving him to the brink of insanity. Would he still be the same person you never got the chance to say goodbye to when death would finally come for him? Or would he have become something that you could never possibly love? The thought kept him awake at night. It scared him more than the pain he knew might plague him for many years to come.
He had never told anyone about you. You still felt like his happy ending that was ripped from his grasp and as much as the Stellaron Hunters helped him in his goal, he didn't want them or Dan Feng or anyone meddling in it.
He may have been the only one to have captured your heart, but there were many others who had almost crossed over and met you. Those who came back would sometimes seek him out and deliver messages from you to him. This was how, despite all, he at least had the reassurance that you were still out there waiting for him to return. The messages you had delivered to him were different each time but you never failed to tell him that you loved him so much.
Blade could hear the quiet beeping of the life support machine from outside the hospital room door. The nurse who had accompanied him here lightly knocked on the door and Blade could hear coughing from the other side. "Mr. Petrov? You have a visitor", she opened the door and Blade stepped into the room behind her.
Mr. Petrov had spent his whole life on a planet that Blade had never visited before. The old man opened his tired eyes to look at the stranger standing in the doorframe to his hospital room. He couldn't recall ever having met this person, but it was possible that he had simply forgotten about him. Meanwhile Blade knew for sure that the sickly man on the life support machine was a complete stranger.
Blade sat down beside his bedside, placing a small wooden box on the man's nightstand. He had left his phone on the starskiff; there was no need for Silver Wolf and Kafka to learn of this meeting.
"I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I recognize you, son", the old man coughed once more and gave him an apologetic look. Blade shook his head. "We've never met." The old man had no idea of the atrocities that Blade had committed. He didn't need to know this, Blade thought.
"Then what brings you here today?", the patient seemed surprised. "I need to ask you a favor", Blade simply responded. The old man let out an amused laugh, sending him into another coughing fit. "I'm not sure if they told you, my friend, but I only have a few days left to live", Mr. Petrov reached for the glass of water on the nightstand, "my respiratory system is shutting down. I'm not sure what favor I could possibly do for you. I'm 94."
"I'm aware", Blade sighed and for the first time since he woke up in this cursed body again he took up the courage to talk about you. He described to the man what you looked like. "If you meet this person- ...on the other side I mean", Blade stared off into space, "could you deliver a message to them? Tell them to wait for me. Tell them I'll find them again one day."
The dying man raised an eyebrow at the seemingly young Stellaron Hunter. "Well, I don't know what's waiting for me on 'the other side', kid, but I'd imagine the afterlife is pretty vast. There's no guarantee I'd meet this person you're talking about."
"You will", Blade insisted and opened the wooden box, revealing a game of poker inside, "up for a game or two?" Mr. Petrov scratched his beard. "Why?"
"Practice."
The old man laughed. "They play poker in the afterlife?", he seemed amused but helped Blade set up the game, "well, I suppose there are going to be a lot of people ready to bet and bargain." Blade felt himself smile slightly as he remembered the first time you met. He was hardly used to smiling anymore so it caught him off-guard.
Mr. Petrov inspected Blade's face. The man seemed lost in thought again, as if he was yearning for something. As if he had been waiting for a long time. Anyone else would have found this encounter with the young stranger in his hospital room absurd but the sick man just accepted the situation as it was. Impending death was weird like that.
"So...", he started, an expression of understanding on his face, "anything else you want me to tell his person?"
Blade hesitated for a moment. Images flashed through his mind of your smile and the way you had kissed him. The ideas you exchanged and the future you had promised each other. How, despite all, despite the frustration and hatred, Blade now had no doubt where he was meant to be. With new-found courage and sincerity Blade finally allowed himself to say what he hadn't dared verbalize for all this time.
"Tell them... tell them I love them. I love them so much, I have no idea what to do with myself. And I miss them... I miss them every goddamn day."
✧ ɴᴏᴛᴇꜱ: spontaneous idea. gonna get to my request once i'm done with the 7k words jing yuan commission i received so look forward to that, the jing yuan stans are getting fed. dan heng has his dragon form in this one.
✧ ɴᴏᴡ ᴘʟᴀʏɪɴɢ: still into you — paramore
✧ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀꜱ: blade, dan heng, sampo, yaoshi
✧ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: none
The former Xianzhou craftsman was mysterious in many different ways but one thing you knew for sure was that he was way too scarred and emotionally stunted to just go ahead and ask you for your attention and love. He does sometimes but it's only on days when he's been doing particularly bad and his mara-struck self has been coming through more and he feels like your touch is the only thing keeping him grounded. He'd sneak up to you and quietly ask whether you'd mind to just hold him for a while. You never mind. But on regular days?
When Blade is just touch-starved and wants attention, he doesn't even initiate it. The only reason you notice is because he doesn't leave your side even though you're busy and working. He just keeps sitting close to you and staring at you from the side as if he wants something but when you ask him if he needs anything, he shakes his head and says it's important that you focus on your work.
It takes you a while to realize what's up with him. But when you eventually put your work aside for a moment to open your arms to him, he melts into your embrace and you can hear him let out a relieved sigh once he feels your warmth and gentle touch.
Sometimes you dare tease him about it. "Seems you just wanted my love. You know you can have that whenever you want, right?", you chuckle and kiss his temple. Blade chooses not to comment on it and to just keep enjoying your affection.
Kafka can also always tell when he's needy for attention and feels free to inform you when that's the case. She'll stand in the door to your room and gently knocks on the door frame. You look up to her with a questioning look. "Your boyfriend is cranky again. Do something about it", she says with a slight smile on her face. Blade readily accepts your affection when you seek him out after that, melting into your kiss and smiling against your lips. Just don't tell him Kafka sent you.
Honestly Dan Heng's sudden transformation was a lot to get used to for everyone on the Astral Express but you in particular now had to deal with his dragon instincts when he wanted your affection. Usually he suppresses them but when he's tired he doesn't always stop himself from getting a little clingy.
You had to admit that this new side to him was quite amusing. Sometimes you'd be working until late at night and Dan Heng would just gently bonk you with his head from the side to get your affection.
Oftentimes he'd wrap his arms around you from behind and nuzzles your neck for a while. Usually when he's very, very sleep-deprived. You'll feel his breath on your neck and his lips leaving quick pecks on your skin repeatedly. Sometimes you'll lightly feel his tongue against your neck too when he kisses you there. He has his face buried in your neck now and it doesn't look like he's leaving anytime soon.
He purrs now. The first time you hear this your eyes widen and you slow-blink for a bit, having to do a double take that you're not imagining this. You don't even dare point it out to him. Not when he's being this cute. So you just accept it and kiss his lips first before pressing them to each of his horns, resulting in Dan Heng trying to snuggle even closer. You suppress a chuckle and start gently caressing the tail he apparently slapped into your lap for you to play with.
He apologizes later for getting a little too clingy there but he smiles when you shake your head and reassure him you quite enjoyed him being this affectionate. He might do this more often now, seeing how much it makes you swoon and how happy it seems to make you.
Unlike Dan Heng and Blade, Sampo shamelessly asks for your attention everytime he craves it. He's very overdramatic about it too. He wraps his arms around your shoulders from behind while you're working and kisses your cheek repeatedly to ease you into the idea of leaving your work just standing around and tending to your touch-starved boyfriend. "Honey...", he coos and kisses the spot below your ear repeatedly, "you see, Sampo Koski has had a very rough day. First I had to run from the Silvermane Guards again, then my bag broke and all my relics fell into the dirt and then it started to rain and a client threw a fish at me and told me to die." You roll your eyes, your eyes falling on his bag, standing perfectly fine in the corner of the room.
"What I really mean to say is I could really use some love right now", he looks down with an obviously fake sad expression and wipes a non-existent tear from the corner of his eye, "my heart is broken and I'm not sure it will ever recover."
If you indulge him, he'll happily take up all the space in your arms and just lets you pamper him for a while. If you push him away and insist that you need to focus here, he starts kicking the sob story up a notch. "Pretty please", he whines and takes your hands into his, "you see, as a child my parents never told me they loved me-" "Ugh, Sampo", you let out a frustrated sigh. If you look into his eyes and tell him in all seriousness that you'd really like to finish your work first, he concedes but usually you're too amused with him to not at least give in a little.
"Okay fine, you get 10 minutes but then I really need to continue my work", you open your arms for him and 10 minutes quickly turn into 20 or 30. You muse that you can still do your work tomorrow.
If you're not a clingy person, I advise you to not indulge Yaoshi and reciprocate their feelings because while they respect the things you care about and are passionate about and would never want to make you angry at them, they're very high-maintenance when it comes to receiving affection. Yaoshi always backs off when you tell them to but internally they also want affection constantly.
If you thought Sampo was overly clingy, Yaoshi is a whole new brand of desperate. I mean, they could have shaken our hand or patted us on the head upon meeting us, but no, they chose to go straight for the lips and this is a pattern that carries through even after getting together with you.
Yaoshi won't just ask if you have some time to spare for them, Yaoshi will straight up plant themselves onto your lap and attempt to make out with you. Sometimes they're successful, sometimes they aren't.
In general the fact that there is a time and place for passionate kissing is something that Yaoshi needs to learn. You'll be in public and they'll try this and you tell them that you can do this later. Yaoshi waits until you're in a different public location and then asks again whether this is now a suitable place to kiss you. Don't even give them one kiss in public. Don't give them an inch, they'll attempt to take a mile. They listen when you tell them this isn't the time or place for kisses but if you give them a quick peck to the lips, in their mind, which is very much not adjusted to societal norms, this means "okay so now is the time for kisses" so they'll try to give you more kisses.
When you tell them you have work to do, Yaoshi asks you when they can expect you to be done with your work. "About 2-3 hours", you tell them and pat their head gently. Yaoshi nods and disappears. A couple of minutes later you can smell something burnt from the other room. "Yaoshi?", you call out worried, checking up on them.
You find them holding your burning alarm clock in both of their hands. "My dearest, I was trying to 'set an alarm' as you always do", they have a sad expression on their face and a tear runs down their cheek, "it seems I have accidentally vanquished your strange little nightingale. I hope you can forgive me one day."
"What were you even trying to set an alarm for?" Yaoshi looks up at you. "You said you'd be done in 2-3 hours."
You let out a sigh and caress their cheek gently. "We can buy a new one and I'll show you how to use it", you shake your head, wondering what you expected from dating a literal god who usually spends their time on a different plane of existence, "but we should probably get rid of this one."
Yaoshi obliges and the alarm clock is gone in an instant. "It is in a better place now", they explain. You decide you don't have the mental energy right now for the discussion that would result from asking what exactly 'a better place' is. For now you let Yaoshi sit or lay down on your lap while you do the rest of your work, your fingertips gently drawing circles onto their shoulders.
anyway here's that snippet i was talking about. haven't really figured out who is going to be the character this surrounds but i'm leaning towards blade
probably gonna be angst if i'm honest because we love heart wrenching writing in this house
anyway here's that snippet i was talking about. haven't really figured out who is going to be the character this surrounds but i'm leaning towards blade
probably gonna be angst if i'm honest because we love heart wrenching writing in this house
i am very tempted to post a few of the fics i've written (mainly ship pairing) but i also have a snippet i want to post even if i don't ever end up writing it in full 🤔
Ayaka was quiet as she snuck up on Kaveh. He had been slumped over his desk for hours, only snacking lightly at the little food he had on his desk from his last session.
"My love," she hums, hugging him. She was careful not to inhibit his movements, letting him continue his sketching. Even then, Kaveh had stopped drawing, sighing as he leaned back against her.
"What is it, frostflake?" he mutters, sounding more tired than he let on. A hand came up to hold her arm, thumb stroking her wrist before his lips pressed a soft kiss to her pulse. A shy smile tugs at her lips at his actions, and she kisses his hair.
"You've been working for ages, my love. It's nearly midnight." Her voice is soft, words comforting. "Isn't it time you came to bed with me?"
"But there's so much to be done--" he whines, pouting up at her. Ayaka brushed his bangs aside to leave another kiss to his forehead, chuckling.
"Baby, there's always tomorrow. You need to sleep." She's doing her best at being convincing, spoiling him with soft touches and even softer words. Fingers nimbly undoing his hair clips and setting them on his desk. She litters his face in kisses as she takes the feather from his hair next, watching him melt in her touch. "Please? Come sleep with me tonight? No funny business, no seduction. Just rest."
Kaveh sighs gently, his eyes fluttering shut. Finally, after all his hair ornaments had been taken care of, he stands. Taking Ayaka into his arms, he picks her up bridal style and makes his way to their room.
"Frostflake, you're always so tempting~" he coos, nuzzling against her cheek. He decides to return the favor, leaving kisses all over her face as they walk down the hall towards their bedroom.
Kaveh sets Ayaka on her feet as they enter, going to take off his gloves when she stops him.
"Let me?" she asks, holding his hands gently. She waits for him to give her a nod before gently ridding him of his gloves and cape. Leaving kisses to his collarbone as she unclasps his necklace. She was about to pull him to bed when he stops her, pulling her back against him to whisper in her ear.
"Now let me return to favor~" Kaveh mimics her gentleness as he does much the same as she had, pulling off her gloves all while leaving kisses to her cheeks. Followed shortly is her jacket and her own hair ornaments, leaving her hair down. What a sight it was, his hand cupping her cheek as he looks down at her. Such a shame their goal was just to rest -- if it hadn't been, perhaps he would have had even more fun stripping the nightgown from her frame.
"A goddess, you are. The woman I devote my heart to..." he brings her hand up to his lips, a kiss pressed to her knuckles.
"And you, the man I have devoted my life to..." Ayaka pulls him close, hugging him softly. She could feel the exhaustion in his body melting away as she held him, starting to move towards the bed. She only lets him go for a few moments, enough time to situate herself on the bed before tugging at his hand. He gave way with no resistance, his head landing softly on her chest. It drew out a small laugh from her, her fingers back to playing with his hair. She traces slow circles on his back, lulling him to sleep. Just one more kiss to his forehead as he sinks against her, sighing as all those days and nights of work caught up with him.
"Promise you'll stay with me?" he whispers, his arms wrapping around her back and keeping her close.
"Of course I'm staying, Kaveh. There's no where I'd rather be than with you..."
---
AN: does it make sense? absolutely not. but these two are my babies
