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[incinerare-moved]

arguments

L'yuta eventually finds her at the Hourglass.

The innkeep recognizes him and lets him through easily once he asks about Cessna; it’s times like these that he’s somewhat grateful for the familiarity granted by the number of times this innkeep’s witnessed them stumbling back into the inn together, ready to drop at the sight of a warm bed.

She’s never bolted away without a word like this before, so he’s careful to put an ear to the door before knocking, wanting to see if she’s crying to herself. He’ll come back later if that’s the case - he knows better than anyone how important a private moment free from judging eyes is.

L'yuta strains to listen for anything until he realizes he’s been glued to the door for five minutes without hearing a single telltale sniff or sob (and Cessna’s a sobbing kind of crier, he knows this for sure - she lost the last of her food rations once on a particularly taxing day and, well, the rest is history). With a slight pang of alarm, he knocks on the door and calls out softly.

He does it two more times, and neither try yields any response - it’s extremely uncharacteristic of her, and with a mounting worry he tries for the doorknob, expecting it to rattle locked in its socket. Surprisingly enough, it gives easily, and he steps into the room to find Cessna curled up in the farthest corner of the room, sitting with her knees drawn to her chest and her head down.

He takes a few tentative steps towards her, then faintly realizes he’s never seen her like this and doesn’t exactly know how to handle it. (The crying over food episode was fixed easily enough, obviously, once they had gotten back to camp. This, however, is an entirely new thing altogether.)

“Cessna,” he starts uncertainly, completely unsure of how to proceed.

She doesn’t move or respond at all for a good minute, and his first thought is Did she fall asleep? I wouldn’t put it past her to fall asleep - until she looks up from her knees to squint at him through red-rimmed eyes. Ah.

L'yuta scratches the back of his head awkwardly. What do you even say in this situation? He’s never been in an explosive argument with a sibling before (he’s never really had a sibling to argue with, so that’s probably a small blessing in a sense).

Cessna continues to gaze up at him wordlessly from the tops of her knees, and he drops his hand and lets out a sigh. “You really shouldn’t be sitting on the floor, you know. You’ll get your clothes all dirty and gross.”

That’s a normal enough thing to say, right? he thinks to himself. Cessna lowers her head again and mumbles something out - he doesn’t catch it the first time, so he stoops down to touch her elbow slightly, repeating his plea. “Hey, come on, Cessna. That’s a particularly dusty corner you’re sitting in, and you know you hate doing laundry -”

“My clothes are black, it’s not going to show,” comes the muffled response. L'yuta pauses and rolls his eyes despite feeling rather relieved - if she can still sass him at this point then he guesses there’s not much tiptoeing he has to do around her just yet.

He pats her elbows slightly. “Well, get up, anyway. I know you’re just going to roll straight into bed if I leave you here, and there’s no way I’m letting you get grime all over the sheets.”

Cessna just murmurs stubbornly into her knees again, refusing to budge, and he’s feeling a little exasperated at this point, so he sits on the floor beside her (dust be damned, he’ll worry about it later). The gesture makes her turn to him in surprise, and he shrugs.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he begins, now that she’s looking at him. He figures talking is the best thing he can do at this point. Cessna stays quiet for a few seconds, then lets out a shaky exhale and whispers, “He’s never yelled at me like that before.”

L'yuta shivers slightly. After today’s events, calm, composed Hellen Forsythe shot straight to the top of his list of people he didn’t ever want to see angry, much less make angry. Cessna, unfortunately, squarely hit both points earlier, and the results were unexpectedly disastrous.

He doesn’t want to coddle her, though. Cessna messed up, and although he does think Hellen shouldn’t have yelled at her the way he did, it was something she needed to hear. “Hellen could’ve done it in a better way, but he’s not exactly wrong, you know. What you did - what you got yourself in with Atreus - that was really, really foolhardy of you.” I’d be angry, too, if you put yourself in such a dangerous situation like that again without thinking properly, he wants to say, but he elects to hold off for now.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she says, but there isn’t much bite to her words. He knows she understands his point, and Hellen’s too: she has a tendency to jump blindly into things once she’s spurred herself into action, but today is the first time it’s gotten herself very close to being seriously hurt at the very least. “They were planning to get rid of Atreus. I know I can’t even stand him most of the time, but I can’t just not do anything knowing something’s happening while he doesn’t even seem to have a clue.”

“Someone in his line of work definitely knows when something’s up, Cessna. I don’t find his company to my taste, either, but I think you give him far too little credit,” L'yuta replies. “A man like Atreus knows how to press his advantage whenever possible, and I’m pretty sure he knows how dangerous it is being around him - why do you think Hellen hates it so much when he finds out you’ve been tagging along again?”

At this, Cessna chuckles dryly and retorts, “Please. I’m pretty sure Hellen only gets mad because he’s not with Atreus, but that’s a story for another day.”

L'yuta shakes his head slowly, but manages a small wry grin. “Pascal’s been putting really strange ideas into your head lately. You Forsythes are weird.”

This small segue makes her laugh a little, thankfully, and L'yuta figures it’s as good a time as any to get his point across. “It still stands, though. If Hellen and Atreus hadn’t gotten there in time, you would’ve ended up with more than scraped knees and a few bruises, and you only even got those from tripping while running.”

Cessna makes a vague disgruntled noise beside him, and L'yuta leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, remembering how close of a call it had been. Cessna had snuck out and gone off on her own to investigate whatever it was that was bothering her while L'yuta made his way to the merchant alley to pick up supplies; Hellen and Atreus were off running their own errands. It turns out that the man she ended up following wasn’t alone - they were a fairly small-scale operation, praise the Twelve, but they were enough to overwhelm a single person cornered in Pearl Lane. They had been keeping tabs on Atreus, but in her nosing around Cessna had gotten herself involved now, and she would’ve paid dearly for it had it not been for the timely arrival of her older brother and Atreus himself, who decided to dispatch his pursuers then and there since it proved convenient for him (and upon seeing that Cessna got pretty much nothing done in way of taking care of business for him).

It was L'yuta who noticed the commotion in the alley and called Hellen over linkpearl, but he’s not telling Cessna that. He doesn’t want an earful from her about how she was doing just fine on her own - they both know it’s auroch shite, and L'yuta knows how to pick his fights. He wasn’t about to leave her there, but jumping into the fray would’ve complicated things further despite their combined efforts; he’s just glad it ended without serious injury on their part, at the very least.

Serious physical injury, he reminds himself, remembering the way Cessna flinched in the face of her brother’s (justified) anger and feeling a tinge of sympathy. She’s still curled up into herself as tightly as ever, and she managed a smile and a chuckle earlier, but her tension beside him belies her true feelings still.

Speaking of tension, she’s as tightly wound as before, and it’s almost painful to look at. He puts a hand on her shoulder by way of small comfort, and she buries her face in her knees once more.

“It’ll be all right,” he ventures, keeping his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure Hellen didn’t mean to hurt you - you’re his baby sister and he cares a lot about you. He was really worried, and you know as well as I do that people sometimes say or do things they don’t really intend to when they’re really upset. In fact, I’m pretty sure Atreus is getting yelled at really badly, too,” he chuckles faintly, trying to lighten the mood once more.

Cessna seems to shrink once more at the mention of her brother’s outburst, and L'yuta sighs and pulls her close. “Cessna. You’ll be fine. It’ll all be fine.”

The gesture succeeds in getting her to wind down, and she ends up burying her face in L'yuta’s shoulder without a sound. He awkwardly pats her shoulder, not knowing what else to do, and they stay like that for a few seconds until Cessna starts shaking softly and he feels a dampness on his shoulder and - “Augh, Cessna, you’re leaking on me,” he halfheartedly fusses.

Cessna doesn’t even look up. “I’m sorry, L'yuta.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s your brother you should be apologizing to, not me,” he replies, stroking her hair. Well, I got worried too, but I’m kind of used to this by now, really. It’d be weird if I wasn’t.

“No - I’m sorry. For everything. I really am. I know I get into trouble a lot, and I keep pulling you into things you probably don’t even want to be involved in, and you have to pick up after me sometimes, and -” She trails off quietly, trying to find more to apologize for without repeating herself.

L'yuta just shushes her gently and lets her stay in his arms for a while. For all her effusive bluster, this is the most vulnerable he’s seen her yet, and he doesn’t want to push her if she just needs time to gather herself for now - the day’s events had obviously shaken her deeply, and if it’s L'yuta’s presence she wants right now, it’s what she’ll get.

It’s at this moment that he notices he left the door ajar when he came in, and he looks up to see Hellen slowly pacing outside the door, looking into the room every now and then with open remorse on his features.

L'yuta puts a finger to his lips and Hellen nods and turns away for now. There’ll be time for a much-needed conversation later, but right now, he’ll give Cessna the small reprieve she seeks.

[incinerare-moved]

birthdays

Pascal shoves a parcel into his brother's arms, grinning widely. "Go on, open it!"

Hellen, taken aback, gingerly turns the parcel over in his hands with a small "thank you" and pulls on the string absently to open it, until he remembers it's a present from Pascal (which usually means he has every reason to practice caution, especially in public).

With this ominous thought in mind, he stops abruptly mid-pull and his eyes dart from the parcel back up to Pascal's mischievous grin. "What is this, Pascal," he deadpans, taking care not to sound ungrateful but also painfully, perfectly aware of the pitfalls that come with his little brother's strange sense of humour.

"It's a surprise, bro. You'll have to open the thing if you wanna find out. I promise it'll be good," said little brother sniggers. "In fact, Cessna helped me pick it out! We both think it's perfect for you, man. Trust me!"

At the mention of Cessna's name Hellen breathes a small sigh of relief - it should be a reasonable present then, he thinks to himself, if Cessna is involved. He doesn't trust Pascal half the time when it comes to these things, but the youngest Forsythe is, thankfully, a little less inclined to pull silly things on her eldest brother, so he allows himself to let his guard down a little.

Speak of the devil, though - Cessna comes bounding in their direction, her friend L'yuta in tow. She sees the parcel and claps, her face positively lighting up with excitement. "Hellen! Open it up! I'm so glad I didn't miss it - I want to see you open our present!"

There is a mischievous little twinkle in her eyes, too, but Hellen is fond enough of his little sister to be able to write it off as nothing more than sheer excitement; he decides there's no harm in not waiting until he's home to open the present.

He doesn't notice L'yuta surreptitiously trying to look everywhere but the parcel in his hands.

Slowly, he pulls on the string tying the brown paper together once more (feels like some sort of cloth, what is this thing, really?) and the packaging falls apart to reveal -

- an apron?

Hellen blinks. He's sure his face is currently one big question mark (why an apron? He doesn't even cook, that's more of Pascal's thing), but Pascal and Cessna are staring expectantly at him, looking suspiciously like they're trying very hard to hold their breaths, so he shakes the apron loose and flips it over curiously.

It takes him a moment to register what the design on the apron is, but yes, he sees it, and he promptly chokes - apparently this is his siblings' cue to collapse into a fit of loud, roaring laughter in front of him.

He can't believe this. The apron is designed to look like the torso of an ancient gladiator, with gleaming pecs and abdominal muscles lovingly overrendered in fine detail. That's fine, he thinks, how artistic, but then he reaches the leather pteruges, and he just stands there and wonders how cold it must be to go commando under an already stark lack of armour because that's what this painted gladiator is apparently into.

Pascal and Cessna are still laughing, and -- upon seeing that Hellen's first reaction isn't murderous -- even L'yuta is making a gracious effort (and failing somewhat) to bite down a smile; Cessna's sitting on the ground valiantly trying to laugh through a stream of laughter-induced tears, and Pascal's shifted his attentions to his sister, cackling at her futile attempts to keep only one expression on her face. He notices Hellen shift, however, and turns back to him, beaming. "Beautiful, right? You should put it on!"

Hellen opens his mouth to protest loudly, preparing to lightly smack Pascal in the face with the apron, but something at the corner of the cloth catches his eye and he relents. There's a small black ink scrawl at the back of the apron which, on closer examination, turns out to be a handwritten message.

Happy birthday, bro! We love you! Don't tell Mom we got you this! She'll probably kill us all :) :) :)! is written in neat, rounded letters. At the bottom, in a hastily scribbled longhand, is The 'sexy gladiator' thing was Pascal's idea!!! I swear!!! It's funny though, isn't it? L'yuta said you'd probably strangle us for this, but I know you love us too much. ... ... Right? Right.

Hellen ends up laughing out loud at the message, touched despite the silliness of the present itself. With an exasperated fondness, he watches his siblings lean on each other and wheeze themselves into oblivion, and figures he can put the apron on just this once. It isn't very often that he gets to see them both in the same place anymore, after all. (It makes him a little sad, but it is what it is.)

He ties the apron on, chuckling all the while, and bows with a flourish, to everyone's amusement. Cessna starts chanting at him to strike a pose, and he's mid-flex when a familiar voice in his periphery suddenly sneers, "Ha, Forsythe, what the fuck are you wearing?"

Hellen freezes, mortified.

Two out of three Forsythes turn at the voice, but Hellen doesn't need to look to know who it is, which horrifies him somewhat - he'd know that voice anywhere. Atreus walks over, egi trailing in his wake, and gives Hellen a quick head-to-toe, smirking all the while. "So this is what you're into now, huh?"

Pascal bursts out laughing, the traitor. Hellen, blood rushing to his cheeks, slowly pinches the bridge of his nose and tries not to scream.

[incinerare-moved]

close quarters; [roomie AU]

Cessna’s sitting on the couch in the dark, watching the newest season of How to Get Away with Murder with a bowl of cereal in her lap, when the doorknob rattles violently. She looks up with a start (– it’s past 3am holy hell I'm going to get murdered while watching a show about murder –), but before she can panic, she makes out the sound of someone fumbling with his keys and swearing tiredly, and she exhales in relief and knows who it is right away.

“Someone’s home early,” she quips, turning back to the screen as the door finally swings open. L’yuta flips her off halfheartedly and dumps his backpack on the kitchen counter with a huff. “Early in the morning, that is. Hot date tonight?”

“Yeah, unidentified male cadaver. Innards are sooo hot,” he deadpans back, rubbing his face tiredly and squinting at the glow that Cessna’s currently engrossed in. She’s watching her show intently and shoving cereal into her mouth with an energy L’yuta wishes he still had after an entire day at the gross anatomy labs; he almost forgets the fact that she deals with children on a regular basis and that that same energy is probably the only thing keeping her alive for a job like that. “What are you doing up? Don’t you have work tomorrow?"

Cessna turns to wrinkle her nose at him. “It’s the weekend, silly. Little kids don’t go to school on Sundays, remember?” She takes another bite of cereal and taps her spoon on her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe you did, though, haha –”

L’yuta doesn’t bother to dignify that with a response and goes to get a glass of water instead. He knows she never really means it when she takes lighthearted digs at him for working hard, and if it isn’t hard work that’s gotten him to where he is now, he doesn’t know what else did.

They’re both working hard, really. He’s in his first year of medical school (self-explanatory right there), and Cessna’s picking up little volunteer shifts at the nearby kindergarten after her classes in a last-ditch effort to pad her extracurrics right before grad. He suspects that it’s also because she enjoys the fact that volunteers get to take part in the kids’ snack breaks, but he’s seen the way she treats them – he’ll never be able to tolerate children, but Cessna loves talking to them like they’re little adults, and they all look up to her as some role model of sorts. (Which he thinks is kind of a bad idea on the kids' end, honestly. He never mentions it to Cessna, but he thinks it’s hilarious that the kids think she's a shining example of Cool Adult.)

He doesn't know how she manages to stay functioning through all of it, though. It's only the middle of the term and he is already so tired; so, so tired.

A dull ache somewhere at the back of his neck nudges L'yuta from his increasingly tangential thoughts and reminds him just how exhausted he is, and he feels a desperate urge to sink into soft couch pillows and close his eyes. He puts his glass in the sink, walks over to where Cessna is hogging the entire couch, and makes little shooing motions at her, but she's too busy staring at her laptop screen to see him gesturing and doesn't budge.

He is definitely too tired for this shit.

He waits for the moment Cessna raises her cereal bowl to her lips and (quite literally) flops into the tiny couch, not caring that she's still firmly planted pretty much in the middle of it. She squawks indignantly and tries to kick him off, then quickly realizes it's pretty hard to kick someone when their entire body weight is on your lap.

"Augh, hell, you're heavy, get off," Cessna whines, jiggling a knee in a futile attempt to get him to move. L'yuta's face, however, is planted firmly in a soft couch pillow and he hasn't known bliss like this in forever so he can't be assed to reply with anything other than a slow drawling nnnnnnnah.

She sets her cereal bowl down precariously on the cushion between her hip and the couch arm and folds her arms. "You know, if you want to take part in this currently solo Netflix-and-chill, you can ask me nicely instead of trying to crush me to death."

The only response that comes is a lazy shrug. Cessna sighs in resignation and scratches his head gently, to which he makes a muffled noise that she thinks mostly sounds like content.

"Wow, you are just a big lazy cat, aren't you," she murmurs in mock awe, running a hand through his hair and scritch-scratching a little more for good measure. Out of the blue, she has this sudden mental image of a cat-eared L'yuta with a tail, and thinks that if he did have one he'd probably be swishing it lazily – it sends her into peals of laughter of the belly-shaking kind, and L'yuta just buries his face deeper into the couch pillow and tells her to shut up already god Cessna it's 4am.

L'yuta wakes up just like that on Sunday afternoon – with a cramp in his back and a hand that somehow, inexplicably, found its way into Cessna's half-empty bowl of squelchy cereal through the night – and wonders if there is a God.

(Cessna jerks a knee up and into his midsection in her sleep and he is very tempted to think otherwise.)

[incinerare-moved]

furrows

There are tiny frown lines between L'yuta’s brows.

They’re tiny, but they’re there - Cessna’s spent enough time looking at him to realize she hasn’t just been seeing things after teasing him for being prickly for so long.

They’re not always there though, she notes; L'yuta doesn’t have a case of what she likes to call “resting bitchface” like she does sometimes. He has a way of showing disapproval with the smallest amount of facial muscle movement possible, though, she laughs to herself - he’s good at expressing annoyance with the slightest narrowing of eyes or a quirk of the brow if he so wishes - but it’s been happening a lot more lately, they’ve been running themselves quite ragged as well, and she’s not sure what to say, or do, or think (have I been too careless lately? gotten hurt too many times? made things more difficult for him to handle -)

She thinks it’s far too early for someone their age to even have lines like that, but doesn’t have the heart to question it anymore after the nth failed expedition to Thornmarch. She’s exhausted, frankly, and wonders if L'yuta sees changes in her countenance like she does his, because she can only handle so many retries and the rest of the Twelvesdamned team seems to be okay with letting Good King Moggle Mog XII (bless his soul, eyeroll) make all of them eat dirt. She understands the familiar furrow between his brows because she can feel her own knit together too.

The two of them head back to Ul'dah after a particularly grueling encounter, battered and bruised and very much done for the night, and Cessna’s eyes widen in growing alarm as L'yuta – instead of making a beeline for the inn like any normal exhausted person would do – heads toward the merchants’ alley instead, seemingly regaining energy the closer he drew to his destination.

Oh no, she thinks, are you really going crafting again at this hour, L'yuta, please, we have to rest (she very nearly hollers after him; he took a beating from an ill-timed moogle-go-round and if it’s anyone who needs to lay down it’s him, “I can heal myself” be damned -)

Sparing a longing glance in the direction of the Hourglass and its comforts, she sprints after him anyway.

Once Cessna gets to the shops, she is out of breath, and L'yuta is equally as out of sight. She weaves through the late-night crowd, trying to find him, and realizes he’s probably made his way to his favourite spot in front of the market board by now; he sees her approaching, waves merrily (how are you still standing, Cessna mutters under her breath), and goes back to his spinning wheel.

She slumps to the floor tiredly beside him and leans against his leg, yawning. L'yuta, unperturbed by the sudden weight against his side, continues to work the wheel with the ease of a professional. Cessna almost falls asleep then and there, soothed by the sound, until she remembers she hasn’t made her displeasure at his choice of not-sleeping at this time of night known yet; she turns to him and opens her mouth to say something, and it’s then that she manages to take a good look at him.

He’s smiling to himself.

Cessna blinks. Once, twice. It’s not like she hasn’t seen him smile before, but this is… different. It’s nice, she thinks, and almost laughs out loud; for once, despite his exhaustion, L'yuta actually looks like there’s nothing that can faze him. She very nearly makes a playful jab at him about having a serious crafting obsession again, but realizes a few moments after that maybe - just maybe - she doesn’t want to break the spell just yet.

In the end she just lets him sit there (crafting, absorbed in his own world, radiating an open, almost oblivious sense of happiness), watches him grin widely with each success, and decides she doesn’t care how much gil he spends and makes back only to spend again, or how he’s still crafting an entire city’s worth of material at ass o’ clock in the morning instead of being in bed - she doesn’t often see L'yuta this blissfully content, and if it’s the salve that eases the lines between his brows, then she sure as hell is going to try and make sure it’ll always be there for him.

(If smiles were currency L'yuta’s would be the entire Jumbo Cactpot, but she’s not telling him that. Her dignity can stand to die another day.)

(He’d laugh at her until he passed out, probably.)