if you don't mind, i'd like to request a prompt with anaxa and the reader being friendly rivals with underlying romantic tension?
Asymptotes of Flame
Summary: In the ruins of the once-revered Grove of Epiphany, two brilliant minds meet again. You and Anaxagoras — rivals, allies, something more — have always danced along the knife's edge between challenge and connection. Now, as he prepares to risk everything for forbidden truth, you're the only one who dares to confront him — not to stop him, but to stand beside him. Between sharp debates, lingering glances, and shared ghosts of the past, a flame flickers. Some truths are too heavy to carry alone. Some fires burn brighter together.
Tags: Anaxa x Reader, Friendly Rivals to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers (Emotional Flavor), Academic Angst, Romantic Tension, Mutual Pining, Philosophical Themes, Found Family Undertones, Post-Fall of the Grove, Angst with Hopeful Ending, One-Bed Energy Without the Bed.
Warnings: Mentions of death and past trauma, Emotional manipulation (from third parties, not Anaxa) (?), Existential themes and philosophy, Subtle references to bodily experimentation (non-graphic), Survivor’s guilt, Melancholy tone with bittersweet resolution.
A/N: Thank you! <33
The first time you beat Anaxa in debate class, he glared at you like you'd just spat in his wine.
"Your rebuttal relied on misapplying Göthel’s soul-chain theory," he said with that telltale sneer, hands tucked into his capelet like some exiled monarch. "Elegant performance, but sloppy logic."
You smiled — and bowed. "Better to perform than to lecture an empty room, Anaxa."
He hated that nickname.
That was years ago. Before the Grove cracked under the weight of divine paranoia. Before your mutual experiments were sealed away in the Forbidden Annex. Before he lost his left eye. Before the world decided knowledge was a sin.
Now, you stood before him again — older, wearier, and with ink-stained gloves that trembled only slightly. Behind him, the faint blue glow of soul-lamps flickered through dust-covered manuscripts. Anaxa, the Demised Scholar, perched half-draped over his cluttered workbench, flipping through one of your essays.
"'Entropy of Memory Constructs in Artificial Souls'... hm." He glanced up with his lone, magenta-ringed eye. "Still misquoting Göthel. Consistent, at least."
You folded your arms. "Still pretending sarcasm is a personality."
That earned a low laugh, the rare kind that didn't sound like it came with a knife. “Touché.”
He gestured to a vacant seat across from him — the only one not covered in notes or alchemical residue.
You sat, and silence nestled between you like a third rival — old, comfortable, expectant.
The candlelight danced across the lines of his face: weary, worn, but no less sharp. That mind of his was still a storm behind glass — and you knew you were the only one he ever let close enough to see the lightning.
"You came all this way," he murmured, eyes not leaving the pages. "Not to argue over academic footnotes. What is it you're really after?"
You hesitated. Truth be told, you weren’t sure. A warning? A goodbye? Or maybe — just maybe — a final chance to see if he still felt it too. That frisson of shared madness. That friction of genius against genius. Soul against soul.
"I read your last log," you said. "The fusion theory. Using your own soul as the vessel—"
"Don’t try to stop me," he said, and his voice was suddenly sharp. “I’ve already failed once. I won’t let that truth rot with me.”
"I’m not here to stop you," you said quietly. "I’m here to tell you... if you fall before dawn, it won't be because you lacked knowledge. It’ll be because you tried to carry it all alone."
That stopped him.
For a breath, he looked more like the boy you once knew — the one who asked if dromases feared the sky.
"And what?" he said, softer now. "You're offering to carry it with me?"
"I always have, haven’t I?" Your voice wavered, but you didn’t look away. "Even when we were trying to outwit each other. Even when you said I was a distraction. Even when you flinched whenever I called you—"
"Don’t say it."
"...Anaxa."
He groaned. You laughed — and just for a heartbeat, you caught the way his eye softened, like he was afraid to show how much he missed your voice saying his name.
“Anaxagoras.”
That stilled him more than anything.
“I won’t stop you from chasing your truth,” you said. “But if you insist on burning yourself for it… at least let me be the one to light the match.”
He blinked. You saw it — the flicker of something deeper than rivalry. The kind of gravity that drew stars toward their end. Or maybe their beginning.
He reached across the desk, callused fingers brushing your ink-stained ones — and just held.
"...You always did ruin my experiments," he said, with the faintest smile. “Fine. We’ll ruin this one together.”
A suppressing amount of time for this chapter was spent on just trying to figure out the names for classes. And then a reason for why a class would only be taught during fall or spring semester, not both..... and then needing to go back and fix the pervious classes that this new rule invalidated.
The next chapter will go live sometime on Sunday the 28th.
***** ********** is the Fucking Worst, he’s a short man on an academic power trip trying to make my summer apps even more hellish than they already were by deciding AT THE LAST MINUTE that he wants more work from me. every school has that one professor that gets off on being difficult, if you go to my college you almost definitely know who I’m talking about because he’s NOTORIOUS and everyone RIGHTFULLY HATES him, now he’s dangling two credits in front of me and hemming and hawing over whether I’m jumping high enough for them, and like! I totally understand demanding high quality work! taking pride in your institution! calling your students to be better than they thought they could be! like what the fuck ever, do what you want, but don’t come in at the 11th hour changing your mind!!!! this class was pass/fail, my writing wasn’t amazing but it was NOT bad and!!!!!! FFS I leave the country in three blessed DAYS!!!!
he says my writing was “thin” and like!!!!! this is about actual blog posts!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!! and THEY WERE EACH 2+ PAGES LONG W/O SPACING ugh ugh ugh
It feels like no matter how much time and effort I put into doing my work, it’s never good enough for me. I always feel like I could be better, that there needs to be more, until it’s not enough of this and not enough of that that it is nothing at all, because I’ve worked myself into a pressurized pod of anxiety and haven’t done any more work on it. It remains incomplete, and I remain not good enough.
