Colors
FANDOM: Final Fantasy XIV PAIRING: Krile & G’raha, Scions & G’raha, Mentioned WolExarch WORD COUNT: 1,474 LINKS: AO3
Summary: Krile was going to celebrate G'raha's Nameday, even if it wasn't the one on his birth certificate. All of his friends help.
Written for @writersmonth. Trans G’raha lives in my head rent free.
G’raha Tia had never had much in the way of family. His mother wasn’t around, his father was long gone and Miqo’te traditions were hardly inclusive enough to care for his extended family. Thus, when it came to celebrating anything, Krile had found him sorely lacking. When they’d met in their second year of college, she distinctly remembered him spending the entirety of the winter holiday in the dorms. And he had decided to forgo informing her of his nameday until it had already passed.
Krile had done everything after that to ensure he was included with her own family and though they welcomed him, she was not fool enough to think he’d allowed himself to well and truly be part of her family.
But this year, much had changed. The young lady she roomed with in college came out as trans, had begun taking testosterone, had blossomed in the light of support offered by a rapidly growing group of friends.
And so, Krile had elected to celebrate not the nameday of the young lady she had met years ago, but the young man she’d been introduced to just last year and she had recruited his new friends to aid her in this effort.
Unfortunately, she had forgotten what the lot of them was like.
“It’s not straight.”
“I thought that was the point.”
Krile paused to pinch the bridge of her nose, wondering why Nymeia had cursed her with these two.
“I believe I am the one who’s colorblind, Thancred,” Y’shtola says from her spot at the counter, where she’s finishing up icing the cupcakes, freshly baked by the joint effort of Ryne and Lyna.
“He is gay, too, I’ll have you know.”
He sounds so smug , as if he’s won some battle, even as he does as Krile asks and straightens the banner before taking the hammer from Urianger’s waiting hand to finish his side.
“You weren’t the first he came out to, I’ll have you know,” Krile says, clicking her tongue as she turns to help Tataru smooth the wrinkles from the triple-toned table cloth. She runs her hand across pink and blue and white stripes until they’re flat against the table, a smile easing its way onto her lips as she takes a step back to inspect their efforts.
What had once been Raha’s front room had been transformed into a paradise of pride, swathed in the same pinks, blues and whites that were represented on the flag. The overhead banner, the tablecloth, the cupcakes, even everyone in the room had changed clothes to match the theme.
Not that all of them were particularly happy about their apparel.
“Is it truly necessary for me to wear white?” Y’shtola asks, eerily close to reading Krile’s mind.
“Yes! Blue for boys, pink for girls and white for all those in between, lest you wish to mix and match!”
“It is hardly my color,” she mutters, bemoaning the usual black that she wore. And while she was correct , Krile did not particularly care , not today! “And I am icing cupcakes.”
Oh, yes, that white shirt would be stained with pinks and blues before she was done, certainly. All the better, Krile would say, not that she gets the chance to.
Ryne surprised them both by rushing to Y’shotola’s side to deliver another batch of cupcakes, to await cooling before they could be topped with icing.
“You look beautiful in any color, Y’shtola!”
The smile Ryne wore was hard to argue with, even for their monarch of sass. It proved infectious, melting away Y’shtola’s exaggerations in favor of a gentle smile of her own. But there is no time to offer a response before Ryne rushes back to Lyna’s side, the giddy chatter between the two barely audible to Krile’s pointed ears.
“I hope you’ve a solution for the nameday boy, unless you managed to conn him into wearing blue today.”
Oh, but Krile had done no such thing! She couldn’t risk tipping him off and it was G’raha’s boyfriend that had recommended a solution to her. So she paused to retrieve it from the box she’d set in the bottom of his hall closet, where it would be considerably safer during their reconstruction of Raha’s home.
She lifted the top off the box and could feel the heat of a great many gazes on her back as she brought the object in question out of the closet and into the air to show all its majesty. Bright blue with a hint of white dusting at the top was—
“Is that a paper mache crown ?”
"Oh, yes, yes it is! Lovingly handcrafted by the one and only Tataru!"
Alisaie laughs , doubling over with tears of mirth in her eyes at the dramatics of it all. Alphinaud does not grace her with even a glance in her direction, a wide grin on his face that’s just as polite as is his norm.
“He’ll love it, I’m certain,” he says, even as Tataru turns to explain to him that the time allotted to her for its creation had been limited by how hard it was to coordinate all of this when G’raha was all but outright glued to Krile’s side. Between being roommates and working together, that was no small surprise.
Krile is partway through laughing at their antics when Lyna hushes all of them with a hiss under her breath.
“He’s coming!”
Everyone’s reaction is instantaneous. They scatter, scrambling to find a spot to hide in. They bump into each other, curse, the chair Thancred had been standing on earlier gets tipped over. It's sheer luck that the bouquet that was lovingly prepared by their very own hero was not lost to the destruction.
And oh dear, the haste at which a key gets pushed into the lock and the door swings open when the chair clatters loudly to the ground.
“What in Azeyma’s name?”
As soon they hear G’raha’s voice, a trainwreck occurs. A cacophony of voices begin yelling out of sync. “Happy Nameday!” “Surprise!” Urianger whacks his forehead by rounding the too-short-for-Elezen door frame too quickly as they slowly descend into chaos. Alisaie accidentally elbows Thancred, Ryne nearly slips on a stray bit of icing, Lyna nearly topples to the floor trying to save her from impending doom.
And when finally, finally the moment passes and the room descends into stillness once more, it is G’raha Tia who interrupts it once more. He laughs , tears of mirth springing to red eyes as he reaches for the table to steady himself—and misses.
When he hits the floor, still laughing, it spreads to the rest of them.
Krile bursts into laughter, as do many of the others, bolsters when Twelve only knows who lets loose a snort. It makes helping everyone to their feet a struggle that nearly ends in them faceplanting again, Krile having the hardest time of all. Trying to get a man twice her size to his feet was, well, quite a feat!
“Wha— What is all this?” he asked through his laughter, freckled cheeks already wet from watering eyes. “My Nameday isn’t for months !”
“We’re celebrating G’raha’s name day, not G’rahlia’s!” Krile says, face aching from the wide smile and warm laughter. His cheeks flush and the grin on his face shifts from amused to the familiar, sincere glee that she could still vividly remember from a year ago, when he’d come out to her.
“Thank you, Krile,” he whispers, words heavy with a burden that he had long carried, that he could now share with the lot of them without fear of being judged or rejected or any of that ilk.
Red eyes moved from her to take in everyone in the room that had joined them, from the smallest of their efforts to the largest before settling on the bouquet of flowers that sat on the table. He reaches out to touch one of the pink petals, then the white before finally settling on the blue. At last, he finally looks to the small crowd gathered in his apartment, from his foster daughter that loved him with all her heart to young Alisaie who made a show of being cross with him.
“Thank you, everyone,” he finally says, his grin full to bursting, “For…”
He pauses, gesturing into the air at some of the decorations, unable to find words to convey what he wanted. A pleasant laugh follows when Krile reaches out to hand him the crown, ridiculous as he looks the minute he positions it atop his head.
Krile finds her gaze turning from him to the others in the room, to the family he had crafted with his own hands, without the need for something as trivial as blood.
When he speaks again, watery words are warm with affection.
“I love you all so very much.”