I love that this was created before part 2 came out. So this artist still had hope for Joel and Ellie’s relationship. I like to hold this as a separate universe where nothing bad ever happened.
summary: is it possible to miss a stranger, or does one thing negate the other? maybe you miss sevika because she isn't a stranger, because she stuck her claws far too deep in you and never let go— or just because she looks really fucking good sitting there, looking at you like she's waiting for you to say "hello again".
warnings: mild descriptions of violence, smut (mdni!), pre time jump sevika!
notes: my thesis with this one is that eating out a woman you love will revolutionize you in a way nothing else can and i'm joking but also dead serious. also dear god please me and who… okay bye i love you
・。.・゜✧・. ────
“You know, I’ve always liked this place the best.”
It’s the first thing you remember him saying, blue uniform to match his now slightly reddened eyes, vile alcohol in his breath. You’re at a different bar, not Vander's, the first actual job you ever had if you don't count what came before— the shiny rock of a stranger’s ring in your pocket, another’s gold coins in your bag, all from the quick trips to the city above with your father. “It’s not difficult to steal from a Piltovan,” he’d say, squinting at the engraving on the inside of a sparkly bracelet, a small bounty spread over the kitchen table, “they’re all show, all ego.”
Now watching the smirk on the Enforcer’s face after he downs his fourth glass without taking a breath, a laughable skill for an audience of no one, you find it hard to disagree with your father’s assessment. The well nurtured instinct to wonder what you’d get if you slipped your fingers inside the pockets of his tailored jacket grows loud and tempting in your head, but you shove it away and keep your eyes on the dusty floor you’re meant to sweep, determined to keep this job.
“The drinks are better than up there, I’ll give you that,” the drunk man continued, half empty fifth glass tipped dangerously towards the brooding barman, your only coworker tonight. There’s barely anyone left in the bar at all except a couple regulars. Tension has been brewing through the entirety of your shift, an argument in one of the booths during your first hour, a drink on someone’s face by the third, a wave of tired scoffs when the man in uniform walked in near the end of the night; the last nail on the coffin. In your head, you’ve listed all the possible exits you could use to escape enough times to memorize them.
The man takes a surprisingly controlled sip, thin lips furrowed in a grimace. “Wish it was enough to make up for that fucking stench.”
The air in Zaun is different to foreigners. You’ve never minded it the way they do. It's your air, the first to ever fill your lungs, the one you’re so used to that you can feel the way it shifts— the way it becomes a stench, as he called it, when blood is about to be spilt.
The barman does, to his credit, offer you the chance to leave. Or orders it, morelike, his sharp eyes meeting yours and then a tilt of his head towards the door. Maybe he pities you for the nerves splashed all over your face, or maybe he’d just find it a shame to lose an employee he hired barely a month ago. “You. Out.”
“Out?” the Piltovan repeats, turning his head, his voice grossly high pitched. “Why? What's gonna happen now?” he’s drunk enough that you notice the seconds that pass before his eyes properly focus. You remember the exact way his smirk faded, the deep-set wrinkles between his eyebrows when he recognized your face, a nauseating anger. “No. No, you don't move.”
Enforcers never go anywhere alone. Maybe the man had just remembered this, just now realized the true risk of his cockiness when it's not backed up by two or three of his colleagues. Maybe that's why he finds it easy to target you rather than the angry figures lurking in the tables behind him. Maybe that's why he draws his gun so fast.
“I know you, little thief—”
A woman approaches at the same time he does, and you don't know why exactly you decide to focus on her instead. A plea, maybe. You remember the dull gray of the brass knuckles on her fingers, the thick leather belt hung around her lower waist, the thump of her boots against the old floorboards. You've never noticed her before. How ridiculous it feels to think that she was there all night. How lovely that she could be the last thing you see. There's comfort in her being there, a morbid, sad thing that feels almost like company. At least you’re not alone in the room with the monster, at least there's someone to watch you die.
Her hand falls on the Enforcer’s shoulder and she pushes him back with little effort, the quickest movement, almost without thought. The man stumbles (blame the well praised alcohol or Sevika’s strength), and the glass that had stayed in his hand shatters against the edge of the bar at the same time his gun fires a loose shot to the wall behind you.
Next comes a blur, a vague memory of hearing the Enforcer hiss in pain, a thread of red spilling down the open palm of his hand.
“You got somewhere to go?”
Her voice is the first and only thing that brings you back, the only sound louder than the heartbeat pounding in your ears. She sounds smooth, clear-headed, not like a woman who just stepped in the middle of the fastest paced violence you’ve ever encountered. Gray eyes move across your face, then the rest of you, and you quickly look down at yourself as if to check along with her that you’re actually unharmed.
Your lips feel awfully dry when your tongue brushes against them, enough air passing through to let you breathe, but not quite talk. You nod your head and remember in a rushed, distorted thought— somewhere to go, yes, home, now.
Sevika returns your nod, small praise, an odd way of saying something like good job. Less odd than the quiet satisfaction you feel for having earned it. She tilts her head towards the door, short black hair brushing her shoulder, her voice the kindest you’ve ever heard to this very day. Perhaps the thing you remember most. “Go on, love.”
─────✧･ﾟ: *✧･
Years pass, deaths and joys and new odd jobs, and you still think about it. She sits at the back of your head like a softly worded reminder. And then one day, as things go, you find her again. Her making a deal at the back of The Last Drop, you behind the bar serving drinks.
There's a chance she doesn't remember it. What are the odds that she thought about you at all after the incident? You were just a stranger on a random night. It's not often that people fully understand the weight of what they did for someone, the trickle down of an action, of a kindness. There's a chance for you to go home, alone and unchanged. Instead (and not for the first time) you work for an hour longer, unpaid labor for a chance to serve her a drink.
Sevika doesn't come every night. You see her maybe once a week, talk to her maybe once a month. You don't expect tonight to be any different, but—
“You gonna watch me all night?” she mutters it into her glass, swallows the last sip before she looks at you. The are tiny wrinkles beginning to form on the corners of her eyes now, along each side of her lips from her smiles. Watching her is entrancing, the easiest thing you do, as natural as drawing a breath. “What are you still doing here?”
You blink downwards at the washed glass in your hand, continue to dry it like it could ever be half as interesting as being under her spell. “Working overtime.”
“Vander can't afford to pay you overtime,” Sevika scoffs, the corner of her mouth lifting in a smirk.
You frown, maybe a little flustered. “He—”
“She's right. Why are you still here?”
The man himself stands tall to your left, glaring at this one permanently stained spot on the bar, working at it with a rag like he hasn't tried the same thing a hundred times before. There are dark shadows under his eyes, a purple hair tie on his wrist— Powder’s, if you were to guess. You’ve grown close to Vander since you met him, even closer when he hired you to work here. “‘S not a favor,” he’d said, quickly catching the suspicion on your face. “Just a gesture to him.” Turns out a lot more people knew your father than you thought; Vander isn’t old enough to have grown up with him, but they still found ways to end up at the same places. If he hadn’t been so secretive about who he was beyond the man who raised you, maybe you would’ve met Vander years ago, became friends at some bar in your teen years instead of at a diner a few days after your father’s funeral. But gaining a friend is a timeless thing, it obeys luck, not sensitivities. One day he wasn’t there, and then the next he was.
You spray some cleaning liquid over the spot on the table, roll your eyes as he leans closer to wonder at how the stain begins to slowly fade. “I’m working,” you repeat.
He looks at you from the corner of his eyes, one eyebrow raised. “I ain’t paying you.”
“I know, okay? It's fine,” you cross your arms over your chest, embarrassed to have been caught even though neither Vander nor Sevika seem to know what the real reason behind you staying late is. “It's a busy night, take it as a favor.”
“I can't afford favors.”
“Good thing they’re free, then,” you deadpan.
Sevika chuckles at the banter, forever amused at your unreserve, how simple you make things. It makes no sense to her to be that generous, that open, but it makes even less sense to think that you’d be any other way. Sevika isn’t particularly trusting, but she is loyal— the more you talk, the more watching you becomes addicting, her thing. She fixates on learning new things about you, clings to your words like a cat to its owner’s scent and wonders, over and over and over, if you remember her. From all those years ago. From last week. With you, she’d take anything.
And when she does finally see you up close, finds a good enough excuse in asking you for fire or a refill, there's little you could ask that she would say no to. It's senseless and thrilling and above all, it's true. She feels it down to her bones, painfully clear, like it's written all over her face.
“What do you do, Sevika?”
Sit and wait for you, she thinks, and instead replies, “What?”
“For work,” you clarify, your hand against the bar, leaning slightly forward. “I see you every week and I still don't know.”
You do know what she does, at least as much as anyone else does— too little to run your mouth, enough to stay away. And if you didn't know, you know her enough to be certain that she wouldn't tell you. It's a pointless question. Unless, of course, you’re as infatuated as you are.
Sevika takes another gulp of her drink, her eyes tracing over the line on your waist where the apron ties behind your back, the soft curve that the pull of it forms. She needs a smoke. “Same shit as everyone else,” she answers, and palms her pockets for a cigarette case. “What do you do? Other than this.”
“This is it,” you watch her flick open the case and shrug. You don’t sound particularly sad or frustrated, just plainly aware. “I pour drinks for people who all seem to do the same shit.”
Sevika hums, sets the case down, a click of metal against well worn wood. An unlit cigarette sits between her index and middle finger. “Be honest,” she starts, and it's the same voice that's been talking to you this whole time, but the gruffness still manages to catch you off guard. “Am I just as bad?”
You chuckle, the same addicting shimmer of genuineness in your eyes that she chases everytime you speak. “Just as bad as what?”
Her eyes follow your hands where they go to pull a lighter from the chest pocket of your apron. “The drunks that flirt with you while you do your job,” she lets the cigarette hang from her lips and leans forward.
“Hm,” you hum. The reflection of the flame sparkles in her eyes before you pull it away, orange against gray, odd and pretty. “I don't know.”
You’re not sure if she looks amused or slightly offended. It's a nice view regardless, the way her eyebrows lift and her lips curve downwards for a second before she breathes out, spilling smoke from her mouth as she talks, “You don't know.”
“I guess I didn't realize you were flirting with me.”
Sevika chuckles, a tiny half moon of a smile line on her cheek when she smirks, smugly aware of the way your eyes are looking at her. “You’re funny.”
Sevika is loyal. It would be easy to say that she doesn’t get what this feeling is, that it’s meaningless, that she doesn’t understand it— but she knows. She knows what it is even if it goes unnamed, because she’s the one deciding to keep it, stubborn and tight gripped, close to her heart. It’s in her dreams, in her first thought of the morning, in the disappointment that sours her mouth when she doesn’t find you at the bar. It’s in her stomach, tugging with need, when she looks at your face and realizes that if she asks if you wanna go home with her tonight, you will say yes.
She takes the leap. Parts her lips, names herself yours. “You wanna get out of here?”
─────✧･ﾟ: *✧･
You rarely pour your own drinks anymore. It’s a funny thing— Sevika doesn’t ask about your preference, which liquor is your favorite, if you’d like for her to do it for you. She figures it out like she does most things, making a study out of it, watching you enough. Maybe a little extra, too. The cork slides up with a pop!, her fingers around the neck of the bottle. The warmth of her still lingers on your thighs, your own fingers sitting restless over your lap now that her hair is not close enough to play with.
It’s been months since the first night she came home with you. You wouldn’t yet say that the newness is gone, or that you’re as quick of a student as she is, but there are things you know about Sevika already. Vivid truths, bright like the visions of her in the sunlight that you dream about sometimes. Reassurance is one of the first languages you learn from each other.
For Sevika, it's almost always about touch— you notice it immediately at the core of most of her silences, the way closeness makes her demeanor shift to something calmer, more true to herself. Slide closer to her on the couch and her arm will find itself around your shoulders immediately. Pat the empty spot next to you on the bed and she’ll let out a heavy sigh of relief, join you in sleep instead of torturing herself about tomorrow’s line of business. Part your lips when she's kissing you late at night with no goal other than to kiss you and she’ll let out a sound that vibrates through you and changes her mind on what was once an innocent gesture; she’ll tug your shirt off instead. Brush your hand over her shoulder when she's resting her head on your lap and she’ll guide it to her face instead, a lazy hold on your wrist while your thumb brushes her cheek. Coming to love her is the warmest science. But it’s not always exact.
You watch her pour you a drink at the bar table that sits in front of your bed— watch the dark hair that sits against the nape of her neck, messy and loose, watch the waistline of her pants sitting low on her waist, watch the bareness of her back. If there’s a reason why you decide to say it now, you don’t yet realize it. The words just spill out of you before you have a chance to stop them. “I remember you, you know."
Sevika’s hand hovers over the whiskey glass before she hums, resuming the movement and bringing it to her lips. "You didn't say."
“You didn’t ask,” you rest your back against the bed frame, watch her carefully.
The air sits still and you see her shoulders lift, muscles shifting as she shrugs, a big gulp of golden liquor sliding down her throat. Her voice comes in a mutter, low and almost shy, "Thought I might scare you off.”
The idea is so ridiculous that it's almost laughable. A startled chuckle dies in your chest and leaves room for aching sadness, your back leaving the frame as you lean forward and pray for her to turn around. "He was going to shoot me. Nobody moved a finger but you, Sev," you shake your head, try to manage your expression from saying too much, from confessing to something that’s been inside of you for years. At the tip of your tongue sits a raw desperation for this exact unraveling, for her. "How could you scare me?"
Another moment passes before Sevika turns to face you, lower back against the edge of the table, holding her drink down by her side. She won't look at your eyes— can't, maybe. You wonder if she's considering leaving, if she's already decided that she will, as soon as this is over. A part of you, small but dramatic and loudly pessimistic, is surprised that she’s entertained you this long. Even more surprised when she asks, "Is that what this is?" a turn of her head and the gray in her eyes finds you in a second, mechanical and unforgiving, the snap of a bear trap. You don't think you could look away if you tried. "Are you here because you think you owe me something?"
Your reaction is something close to a flinch, your frown deepening, feet firm on the floor instantly. "You can't seriously think that."
Sevika feels the regret come instantly. It splatters on her face, the pads of her fingers rough when they're brushed over her cheek to wipe herself clean of it like she does blood, gunpowder, fear. She watches out of the corner of her eye the way you part your pretty lips and can hear it in her head, imagine it so clearly, you asking her to leave.
She's already reaching for her coat to make quick work of obeying your wishes when, instead of that, you ask, "You wanna know why I’m here?"
Sevika lowers her hand and the glass hits the table with a thud. Her head tilts to make the slightest nod— and that's as much of an answer as you'll get, you think.
“Look at me,” your finger sits under her chin, a touch barely there, the rise of her head more her choice than your doing. “You’re good, Sevika,” she grimaces, feels like she's swimming in gross viscous shame older than herself and barely surviving it. You press your thumb into her cheek, firm but kind, and keep her from being swept away by it. If she used to find your openness sweet, right now she finds it fucking miraculous. How can you call her good and mean it, how can someone else know so deeply that she could be, that she will be, when most days she doesn’t even know it herself? How can she look you in the eyes and deny you that truth? Her face relaxes, grimace replaced by an aching need as she listens to you. “I see it better than most, but they all catch up eventually. Whatever you put your mind to, you’re fucking good at it,” you pause, try to read her expression and find yourself unsure, but calm. How lovely to think that there's still so much to learn. “You don't owe me and I’m not trying to change you… you don't need—”
Sevika rests her hand over your cheek, a warm hum from her throat to acknowledge what you're saying, a desperate shake of her head to say but I do. “I need you,” her forehead falls against your own, in her brain a chant of please.
You look at her through your lashes, nod your head and feel warm, warm, warm. Her hand guides your face closer, a needy pull of her fingers where they press against the back of your neck, your whisper of “me too” spilled into her mouth. Sevika kisses like there's nothing in the whole fucking world she’d rather be doing, nothing that could possibly distract her. She has kissed you in nightclub bathrooms even with someone's knocks shaking the flimsy door, in alleys with her knuckles still bloody from a fight, dangerously close to opening hours with your back against the very bar where she rests her drinks every night. She's hungry, insatiable, and every time you can't wait to part your lips and let her in.
It takes godlike strength to hold on for as long as you do, but there's power in making her wait too, a satisfaction that feels drunk and just as divine as it makes its way down your spine. A few more chaste kisses take seconds or a century, and Sevika indulges them for as long as she can before she breaks, falls to her knees at your altar and breathes, “Please.”
There's nothing you like more than hearing her beg, except maybe what happens after you give in— the relief, the sigh against your mouth, the wet warmth of her tongue and the desperation in the way she pushes her body against you like she hadn't til then realized just how famished she’d been. Her hands wrap around your waist meanly, pressing indents, and you're too busy soothing your own hunger on her lips to realize that she's switched your positions.
You feel the harshness of the table against your back and pull away to look down, catch up, your daze maybe a little too obvious judging by the curl of her mouth. She's panting as much as you are, though, tongue peeking out barely to brush over her lips, tingly and wet from your kisses. “Up,” she says with a tilt of her head, more a warning than a command, her hands already down on your hips to get you sitting over the wood.
Sevika is a sight, pretty and inviting and overwhelming— you reach for her waist and pull, entranced by the way she follows, the way your legs interlock. A thin layer of sweat glimmers over her chest and you've never found so much beauty in the undercity’s humidity, never felt yourself get wet as easily as she makes it, never been so desperate to find some relief from the aching between your legs. Your thighs squeeze into Sevika’s and looking up to meet her eyes feels like a punch, like the sweetest blood, a sea of glazed-over gray barely visible against the black of her pupils. A mirror of your wanting; how the hunger grows when it meets reciprocation this delicious. You lean forward to taste it from her lips and she meets you halfway, a hand traveling up your spine and ending at your neck.
You don't know when you started grinding against her, but you know you want more. And you know Sevika’s holding back, savoring the same power you’d tried before, a smirk against your lips when she feels you speed up, hears you moan from somewhere deep in your throat. It suits her, the way she holds control. Sevika likes to wonder if she’d ever hold on longer, make you really wait. Sometimes she thinks she might, and then (like now) your voice fills her ears and clouds every thought that says anything other than please, god, fuck, let me make you feel good. “Don’t be mean,” you say this time, breathy and achingly sweet. “Please, Sevika.”
The first grind of her thigh against your pussy makes you end a kiss with your teeth biting into the meat of her lower lip, rougher than you intended. “Fuck, Sev—” you say, cut yourself off with a gasp when she does it again. Sevika figures out the angle unsurprisingly quickly, a hand on your hip and another on your ass to guide you back and forth at a rhythm that matches the movement of her own hips, enough fervency behind it that you know she needed this as much as you did. Maybe more, judging by the groans she spills on your neck every time you press up into her.
Full lips kiss at your pulse, open mouthed, her breath cool against your skin when it meets the wetness she left there. Your nails rake over her shoulder, over her scalp where your fingers are buried in between strands of dark hair— and when Sevika groans it sounds raw, a broken noise, her hips moving desperately faster. You can feel her warmth on your thigh and you've never wanted so badly to have her undressed, laid out, rubbing her pussy against you, leaving a mess on skin rather than the fabric of your pants. She's getting carried away, you know it, chasing her high and barely giving you a chance to catch up. You've never wanted anything more than to let her use you.
“You feel so fucking good,” she grunts, wrecked with need for you to pacify when she lifts her head from your neck, her eyebrows furrowed. You watch her get lost on your lips and you can imagine what they look like, how plump she left them, how the pride of that must simmer in her lower abdomen. Her thumb brushes over them once, then again, and you barely register that she's asking for permission before your mouth moves on its own accord to let her index and middle finger inside. It's filling, just what you needed; how beautifully unsurprising that she knew it more than you did, or that she needed it just the same.
You're fully caged in now, your back pressed against the wall, Sevika’s free hand on your waist still steering you back and forth on her thigh. “Too— hm, fuck,” her fingers slide out of your mouth and press wet indents into your cheek as she holds your jaw, traps you in her eyes. She’s far too gone to warn you but she doesn't have to, it's so painfully clear. Her eyes two dark pits to swallow you whole, lips parted, the grinding brutal and so fucking good— she says it until she can't form the words anymore, her head tilted back, thighs stuttering and tightening around your leg as she comes.
Your tongue tastes the skin of her bared neck and you feel yourself get closer and closer, fed by the feeling of her nipple under the pad of your thumb, by the shaking moans she spills into your ears as you keep grinding against her. Sevika must feel it too, in the same way you did, notice the change in your breath or the speed of your hips— because she pulls away and knows to soothe the needy desperation on your face with a messy kiss before she gets down on her knees.
“Shh,” her shushing comes soft and agonizingly kind, your whines barely contained as she presses kisses to the inside of your thighs. “What happened to my patient girl?” she asks, a tilt of her head and a smirk, the meanest angel.
Your palms press onto the table to lift yourself up enough to let her slide your pants and underwear off in one motion. “Spoiled me too much,” you answer, your mind foggy, drunk on the sight of her kneeling in front of you.
It takes Sevika a moment to reply, the pads of her finger pressing into your thighs. Her eyes meet yours and she wants to tell you, how could I not? You’re not trying to change her, you’d said, but you do. These days, she doesn't think about anything else like she used to— I love you prefaces everything. I love you, so I’m winning this stupid fight and making some money. I love you, so I gotta get home alive. I love you, so I think we could change this city. I love you, you should have every-fucking-thing. But Sevika's not really a woman of many words, especially not when you're looking at her like this, especially not when she's this hungry, so she shrugs her shoulders and says (like it explains everything, and maybe it does), "Look at you.”
The intensity of her makes your legs squeeze together, but you barely make it an inch before she’s pulling them apart and hooking them over her shoulders exactly how she likes.
Your face feels like it's burning, heat crawling up your neck, your grip on the table tight. “Please.”
Sevika barely manages to pry her eyes away from where you're open and glimmering, soaking her fingers after just one brush of them against your lips. Her voice comes out strained, drowned in hunger. “Please what?”
You must sound worse, but the thought barely registers, hardly matters. “Please, Sevika, make me come.”
And she does— pretty nose bumping perfectly against your clit whenever her tongue is too busy inside you, her lips shiny and wet and relentless. Like everything else, she's fucking good at it.
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