as much as I love how soft Gil has become for Thena in the “ten things I hate abt you” AU, I feel like he’s starting to go out of character a bit for this au 😭😭 (I’m not trying to be mean I promise) so maybe could you pretty please write one where Gil has more of that “edge” that his character initially has in this au? Again I’m sorry if this sounds mean and judgy I don’t mean it like that ❤️
Gil took a sip of his beer, not that it was the good stuff. He had to drive home anyway; Thena had driven Sersi, so he would be going home alone tonight.
"Need another?"
Gil looked over at him, only to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. But he wasn't, and it was indeed Ikaris offering him another beer. He just stared at it.
"You hear me, or what?"
Yeah, that seemed more like what he would expect from the gruff and unpleasant Scot. Gil looked towards the front yard again. "I'm good."
"Guess I can't blame you." Oh good, he was still talking. "Probably don't think we have much to talk about."
"I wouldn't think we had anything to talk about," Gil gritted out. He hoped Thena was inside, with Sersi, or even Dane. Far away from this piece of shit, at least.
"Well, I'm feelin' generous," Ikaris laughed, as if it were a favour that they were talking right now. "Warnin' about Princess in there-"
Gil bristled, and not just at Ikaris using the same name he occasionally used for Thena himself. He hadn't come to this party looking for a fight, but maybe the opportunity would present itself.
"Y'know we used to be a thing, I guess," Ikaris surmised, more talking at Gil than having a conversation. "Ages ago, by now. Anyway, things seemed fine, and I knew she wanted it, no matter what she said-"
"Shut up."
But he just kept going, listening to himself talk more than he had heard Gil try to interrupt him.
"But I backed off," Ikaris declared, holding his hands up as if that act were something to respect about him instead of the most basic decency. "Let her call herself a prude. But you-"
"Just don't, man," Gil warned him again. He finished off his beer and tossed the can. His hackles were rising, and Thena wasn't there to lecture him about his reputation or how fighting Ikaris was beneath him.
"You've gotten through to her," Ikaris mumbled with a little more skepticism. "Or at least, I assume you have, 'cause otherwise I don't know why the fuck you're with'er."
"I don't think you get to talk about her," Gil finally turned to Ikaris to face him properly. He leaned off the railing of the front porch. "Ever."
Ikaris' eyebrows raised but he didn't exactly back up from Gil's stance. He was also a tall guy, reasonably strong. And he certainly wasn't going to back down now that he could see his taunting had worked. "So you have had her."
"You shut your fucking mouth," Gil snarled, lunging forward and grabbing Ikaris by the shirt. They butted heads, Ikaris unwilling to look away. "You say one more thing about my girl and I'm gonna show you why you couldn't handle her, let alone me."
Ikaris chuckled, and why people thought he had any charm at all was beyond him. "Hey, little slut's business is none of my concern, now. But if you ask me, her sister's much more worth the effort-"
Gil let his fist fly. It had been a while, and he had almost forgotten how to use his natural bulk and mean mug. Almost.
Ikaris stumbled a little after the first hit, but he wasn't going to go down without a few of his own. He grabbed Gil and threw them both down the front steps. Some of their peers gathered around them, more of them cheering them on than trying to stop them.
Gil rolled them until he could push Ikaris down with his hand. The other he used to hit him, over and over again. Every time he looked at this disgusting prick's face, he hit him square in the jaw. Maybe it would come straight off.
It would serve him right for talking about Thena like that.
Gil remembered when she told him about it. He could remember how she, for all her efforts, had been so vulnerable seeming as she recounted his laughter.
Ikaris clawed at him from below, he got in a few hits to Gil's ribs. He would feel them in the morning, but there was nothing he could really do to stop Gil from wailing on him.
Gil shifted his target, aiming for the nose. "Bastard!"
The nose was definitely broken now.
"Oh my god!"
"Somebody stop them!"
Gil let it all wash over him. He would never get an opportunity like this again. He lifted Ikaris' half conscious head off the front walkway. His head dangled slightly, like a broken toy. "Say one more word about her--I dare you."
Ikaris' mouth moved, but between being dazed and the swelling, it wasn't like it sounded like actual words.
Gil accepted it, though. He swung his fist all the way back again before landing one last hit. It wouldn't kill him or anything, but maybe he wouldn't be dragging his sorry ass to school for a little while.
"Gil!"
He looked up, and at the front of the crowd were Thena and Sersi. Sersi had some distress on her face, but Thena looked as cool as a cucumber. He would expect nothing less. "We were just...talking."
Sersi huffed at him, marching right over and pushing him away. "Boys."
Sersi at least checked if Ikaris was breathing and sat him up. His nose was pouring blood like a fountain.
Thena didn't even look their way, so uninterested in Ikaris' well-being it was more potent than any hateful words she could have had for him. She patted Gil's shoulder. "Up."
He huffed, allowing her to tug at his hoodie and lead him stumbling towards his truck. He was certain he was about to hear how fighting wouldn't get him anywhere and he had to think more about not doing stuff like this.
But he would be satisfied if Ikaris never so much as looked in Thena's direction again.
Thena let him lean against the door, uncapping the bottle of plain old water in her hand. "Let me see them."
He rolled his eyes, displaying his bruised and split knuckles for her like a child being scolded. "It's nothing."
She gave him an unimpressed look. "The tough-guy act?"
Was that how she thought of him? Gil made a point not to wince or fuss as she poured the water over his hands. It did feel nice and cool on the swelling. "You think I'm bluffing?"
"I think you're lucky this happened at some random party and not in the middle of the school day." She was chastising him, but it lacked a certain bite that he knew she had in her. "I would be surprised if Ikaris was in any shape to attend the next few events. Might still have some bandages on by graduation."
"Good," Gil let fly without hesitation. Thena gave him another glare but he shrugged, in no condition to be dissuaded from his pride. "He deserves it."
"Regardless." So, she did agree he deserved to have the shit beaten out of him. Gil scanned her face as she dabbed at his knuckles gently.
"I'm not going to thank you for behaving like a barbarian."
"I wouldn't expect you to," he grumbled. No, that certainly wouldn't be her style, but maybe it would have been nice if she did. Just if she felt like it, or whatever. He thought it was kinda cool to fight for his girlfriend's honour but apparently not.
Thena, satisfied with her work, leaned against the door of his truck beside him. She let out a sigh, like she was completely worn out after passively witnessing his fight. "I didn't realise falling in love with you signed me up to be your personal nurse."
Gil just stared.
"What?" she frowned at him.
All this time--all this time had been waiting to tell her he loved her because he didn't think she was ready. Or maybe he thought she didn't feel the same. But now, for all her talk about how she wasn't going to thank him because she hadn't wanted him to fight Ikaris--now was when she chose to tell him she loved him?!
"What?" she snapped at him.
"You love me?"
"What?" she furrowed her brow, like she didn't even know what he was talking about.
Gil leaned off the truck, though. He moved closer, shielding her from even the chance of being observed. He would never get a straight answer from her if she thought they were being seen. "You said you loved me."
"No, I..." Thena trailed off, and he watched on her face as her mind replayed the incident for her. Horror dawned on her, very, very cutely. "I...I didn't-"
"You said you're in love with me," Gil clarified, grinning at her as she was forced to face the declaration with no escape.
"That's-" Thena blinked, turning a very lovely, very vibrant shade of red. It was impossible to hide with how pale she was, from her skin to her hair to her wardrobe. It shot down her neck and into her ears. "I'm not-"
Gil held back a chuckle. He wouldn't be the one to laugh at her--never. But he tipped her chin up and stole a kiss off her stuttering lips.
"I wouldn't-" she was still trying to form a defense in her name, not that denial was an option, at this point.
"Thena," he tried to intervene, but she was totally in her own head right now. And it could get very deep in there. "Thena?"
"I-I-I-" she was starting to panic, her chest heaving for breath.
"Thena!" he slapped his hand on the top of the truck, over her head, but loud enough to interrupt her avalanche of mumbling. She stared at him like a deer in headlights, unlike the lioness he called his girlfriend. "Listen to me."
She gulped.
"You are gonna come over tomorrow," he began. He had been trying to get her to come over like a normal person forever, now. And now, she was finally going to listen to him. "You're gonna meet my uncle. No more avoiding it."
She shrivelled a little.
"And I'm gonna introduce you as my girlfriend," he finished his instructions, tipping her chin up to him again. She still looked bewildered, flushed and flustered. He knew she still had that bite in her, though. "Got it?"
She nodded. Maybe he should get bossy with her more often.
He kissed her again, finding it a far more pleasant balm than nursing his wounds. Maybe it was all the adrenaline from the fight, but he really savoured it as she melted against him.
Thena gripped the edges of his hoodie, and he let her keep her head tucked close to his chest.
He smiled at her reflection in his truck window, bracing himself against it, completely dwarfing her smaller frame like this. "Bright and early, Princess."
"Anything else?" she puffed, and there was a hint of his usual headstrong shrew. He wouldn't have her any other way, after all.
But he grinned. It was definitely the adrenaline, but he was having way too much fun with it. "No, I think that's it. For now."
"Fine," she huffed, pushing away from him to stomp off with what dignity she could muster for herself.
Gil watched her go with a grin. God, did he love that icicle of a woman. But it was time he got some straight answers out of her, and now he could finally tell Gramps he was bringing his girlfriend to meet him properly.
on the note of the thing i just posted, i really do think some people take the whole “kdj sees yjh as just a character and yjh gets made about him mainly for that” thing a little too far? First of all i don’t think that kdj seeing yjh as a character actually affects the emotions driving his interactions with yjh, nor their genuineness. What it really affects is his assumptions about what yjh’s behavior means and what yjh will do next, which from the beginning yjh is challenging kdj’s perception of him thus never truly limiting kdj’s interpretation of yjh to just a “mere character” as i’ve seen it put.
Secondly, i really feel like yjh, after the initial shock and betrayal, actually takes the whole “being a character” thing really well. Yeah he’s mad and understandably so, but he’s not mad about being a character, he’s mad about what he thinks that means for he and dokja’s relationship, and by extension the relationship dokja has with everyone around him. When hsy’s tells him off for attacking kdj on reincarnation island, he starts to falter because she’s showing him how dokja has always been genuine in his care for them. The reason I feel yjh snaps when hsy calls him a character isn’t because she called him one, it’s because she says something like “You weren’t written to be a character like this” and as such is denying yjh’s right to feel the way he does. She essentially says, oh you’re just a character you shouldn’t be feeling like this (even if that’s not what she meant, it’s likely how yjh takes it) and the forceful loss of agency implied in that is what makes yjh furious. Because he is a living breathing person who has every right to feel and think in the way he chooses. (which for everything dokja thinks of yjh, he never once denies yjh’s agency, the same way that for his companions, he never belittles their emotions or their mindsets whether they’re a “character” or not).
