[ I've been off because of patch augh, but I'm back now! Working on more icons and trying to get another drabble done; no spoilers from patch, but I do have some revising to do with him... ]
With their cheek rested upon their palm, elbow propped up by the table, Hayato kept their intense gaze upon Tori. A leg crossed over their knee jostled in thought. Content as they were to remain in silence, they could not quite shake a certain thought that buzzed in the back of their head when they crossed paths with the warrior of light. A certain... pattern—at least from what they heard—remained a constant in secondhand accounts of Tori's affairs. Their tail furled and unfurled around the chair's perimeter. Raising their head off their hand, they weaved a series of wordless signs. "You get into traps often," they pause, fingers curling in thought, "no other choice but to?"
He sat back in his chair, arms rested one over the other in his lap as he tapped a foot quietly in thought. It's rare to have such moments of silence, but it was nice; nice enough to have taken a small detour to Kugane and cross paths with a shadow of the streets. As they moved to sign, Tori looked up, a smile crossing his features.
"Aye. Perhaps the easiest way to put it," he shrugs. "I cannot see the forest for the trees sometimes, as it were. Everyone has their own ways of putting their guard up, do they not?" He points at the other, nodding. "You have a keep eye for traps yourself, if I heard correctly from another Scion branch?"
The pattern the Warrior of Light fell into during the weeks following the defeat of Thordan were those spent in sorrow. An outward facade kept anyone from prying into his thoughts, even those he spent his entire day around as of late. A somber smile and declaration of remembrance was the public front Tori kept up for everyone he knew, but the events of the last month churned his guts into a fierce, unstable brew.
He still stayed at the manor, still saw the same people every day, and still found time to be around everyone. But for what? Every one of his mentors was gone; love, combat, and understanding. The three of them ripped from him in one way or another, and it hurt. Gods, did it hurt. No more bickering in the early morning outside camps they make-- the cookfire dimmed a moon ago being the last warmth left behind by the Lady of Ice and the Azure Dragoon. No more warm bed to come back to every night, after a long span of learning a dark art during his early days in the city. And now, hardly anyone to confide his true feelings with.
One, perhaps, proved to be an escape. However healthy it was, was up for debate, though.
“Truthfully, you would never imagine the Archbishop’s son to lay with a dragon,” the heir to the throne laughs. It was a stickly sweet sound, one that Tori could pretend he felt the same warmth from. “I’ll admit, Warrior, you’re bold tonight-- not as if I’d complain.”
The two sat in Aymeric’s personal room, wrapped up under a blanket at the foot of his bed to watch the fireplace roar. Quaint, and an activity Tori enjoyed often, but with company that would no longer war his side. He shivered at the idea; the Lord Commander taking it as an opportunity to get closer.
“Perhaps-- I would call myself lucky that you have not found someone just yet, that you’d be willing to humor me in a jest.”
There was no alcohol in Tori’s hands. Any attempts to get drunk would drain his coinpurse faster than the barrel. Likely a side effect of being a dragon; he held a cup of hot chocolate. An image that would elicit a chuckle out of anyone, held up next to Aymeric’s finer wine glass.
The elezen chuckled again, resting the goblet on a side table. “I would be the one to tell you such, sir.” His smile did send his heart into a frenzied beat, but nothing struck the same way… Tori flashed a grin back, tightening the blanket around his shoulders.
They’d become much closer in the last few weeks. It began as Tori simply seeking companionship on his walks through the city, and escalated to physical embraces mere days ago. To think, he’d be bold enough to suggest something he only ever let Haurchefant do up until today; the idea would have Aymeric’s father reeling in his grave. But this was a man who understood who and what Tori was-- surely he wouldn’t feel repulsed?
Tori wasn’t repulsive, right?
He watched a dragon take away one of their close friends, claiming the dragoon’s body for his own due to simple negligence. A dragon that could tear up the world… what if he was a part of Nidhogg’s horde himself? Where would that put Tori in the grand scheme of the wars, how they were expected to continue like this? Would this twisted shade hiding in Estinien’s body call Tori forth to wreak havoc on Ishgard, now that he found the courage to approach something dear to him?
“Should you find me desirable, yes,” Tori laughs back, hiding the turmoil behind upturned lips once more.
Aymeric leaned in, making the first move this time in putting his lips against Tori’s. For a moment, Tori didn’t reciprocate the motion; it was only when it felt as if Aymeric would pull away that he dug back in. There was passion behind it, but it didn’t feel right. The same boiling feeling rose in his gut, and in the moment, decided it would be lust that lit the flame this time.
The elezen seemed to take his silent cue, breaking apart to remove his sweater-- a rather nice looking one on him, Tori had to admit. But it wasn’t the same feeling that dusted his cheeks a deep azure on looking at Haurchefant proudly displaying a sweater he thought Tori would enjoy from one of the local shops; his heart felt another pang of loneliness.
The Au Ra did the same, unbuttoning his top and putting it to the side, removing his gloves so his clawed hands would be free. Clawed hands that would rend the man’s throat should he not be careful.
He snapped from his moment as Aymeric approached once more, the two of them clumsily navigating over each other’s bodies to reach the top of the bed, resting their heads against the pillows. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Just as Aymeric began to reach for his elaborate belt, Tori inhaled sharply, letting his long hair fall over his face. Faces inches apart, he breathes again, halting the other with a single motion.
“This isn’t healthy, for you and I.”
The room is suddenly silent, the fireplace becoming nothing more than a breeze floating through the room. He couldn’t bring himself to meet the other’s eyes, his own violet eyes looking down at the sheets below them. At the precipice of the cliff, he couldn’t make the leap…
He started to speak again to fill the stagnant air. “What I mean is--”
“You have no need to explain yourself,” the other man replies. “I have half a mind to know what you speak of-- you’re still not over him, are you?” The look on his face is pained, an expression Tori didn’t remember, even after news of all the deaths they went through. “Tis understandable, Tori.”
The Auri man choked back a sob, grateful for the curtain of hair between them. “He was more, so much more than I could ever ask for.” His words came out disjointed, an unnatural, painful noise behind his words.
Aymeric shushed him quietly, gently, the sound enough to be maddening, yet not enough at the same time. A noise Tori would’ve very much liked to be his own, should it be in another lifetime. “He truly was. I am honored you have found enough of him in me, to even go this far.”
He buried his face in Aymeric’s pillow, not even taking his horn into account as he pressed the side without one deeper in. This way, nobody would have to see his tears.
A pale moon rose in between them through the massive window the curtains blown open with a gentle draft.
🎉 First time bringing this on Tumblr: Patch Party! ⚔
With each patch of FFXIV that comes out, I make it a point to plan a party in VRChat for everyone waiting on the game to attend and hang out! We’ve been doing this since 5.2 and it’s become a tradition ever since, and this time it’s for 6.1 dropping on 4/12!
-We’ll be meeting at 3:00pm EST on Monday, April 11th, the day before 6.1 drops (and the day of the 24 hour maintenance)
( Headcanon symbol meme) ✍ - writing style and ✄ - nervous habits
✍ - writing style
Tori's handwriting is very neat, especially when signing his own name. Because he keeps a homemade sketchbook that acts as a bestiary, he's constantly writing in the margins; if one were to look at his original observations, they would find them practically chickenscratch and difficult to read. However, as time passed, he became much more refined in his process and words. He never really wrote creatively aside from observational pieces, so his actual style is influenced as such; much more curt and down to the intent of what he has to say.
✄ - nervous habits
He's become rather adept at hiding when he's nervous about something; he used to wring his hands and pick at the scales along the back of his knuckles, but has since stopped because of how obvious it was, and others began picking up on it. Now, his new tick is grinding or chattering his teeth very fast behind sealed lips. It's much more subtle, so he can get away with it more often than not.
Tori has an... interesting lineage. Nobody knows how far back it traces or how it happened, but the great wyrm Azdaja sired children under a human guise, resulting in Tori’s ancestors. The power awakened in Tori after the strain he put himself under to use magic by burning his own aether, the latent draconic aether seeping in to serve as a life support and fill in the gaps. As a result, extreme strain would trigger a transformation, but as time passed his grip of control has tightened; from a loose idea in A Realm Reborn, to learning exactly how to use it by the end of Shadowbringers.
As a dragon, Tori very much takes after what Azdaja is theorized to look like. A second pair of horns curves backwards from his skull, nose ending in a hooked point. He still retains his scale coloring as a Raen, however a darker pigment has been seeping in down his spine especially.
Capable of both flight and breathing fire, he’s almost like every other dragon from the broods, the differences shedding away as time passes. In A Realm Reborn, his scales felt like the chitinous exterior of an Au Ra’s scales, being replaced with the familiar leathery scaled hide that true dragons possess. Standing easily twice the height of the average roegadyn, Tori’s capable of carrying a rider on his back without strain, however he’s not one to allow just anyone passage. He’s more apt to dive in on his own, without worry of injuring anyone for his sake.
He’s still deaf on his right side, even with his heightened senses. However, his sense of smell greatly picks up for lack of it; opening his mouth even more so as he can practically visualize his surroundings (post-EW only, recent development, and one he rarely uses at that).
“This is my place. mine. I sit here. On your lap. I fit. No complains.”
short // tall sentence starter
<<Accepting>>
He sat there rather awkwardly, holding his knees together as he was all the more conscious of the weight on his lap. The usual antsy bouncing of his leg was gone, replaced with a statuesque stillness as to not risk the Miqo’te tumbling off. Arms at his side, hands resting under his own legs, he leaned gently into the figure atop him as if to keep himself from causing a fall.
“I--I guess there’s no complaining from me, then,” he laughs nervously. Tori wasn’t exactly lying in his statement at all; having some form of weight comforted him, grounded him from the flights of fancy he was prone to when left alone for all too long. Perhaps unconsciously, he leaned in a little closer, loosening the confines of his hands enough to close in a bit more. “Should that be the case, there would be no complaints from you if I decide to use you as a headrest then, correct?” he chuckled, letting his scaled chin rest gently atop Misaki’s head.
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