Hello there! If your writing stuff rn may I request headcanons for cyno becoming close with reader (perhaps she's a friend of a friend) who also tells jokes but they can range from just having amazing comedic timing with the things she says about something happening or just straight up dad jokes like-
Cyno and reader simultaneously: "with your eyes :D")
word count. 2.1k
note. this turned out more fic-like than planned, but hope it makes you smile :)
– You actually meet Cyno because you get lost.
– Not dramatically lost in any way that could provide you an excuse for being so. Just regular, embarrassing, I-was-definitely-paying-attention-except-apparently-I-wasn’t lost, somewhere between Gandharva Ville and a “shortcut” Tighnari had, with deeply misplaced confidence, assured you was simple.
– You’re going to have words with him later.
– For now, you’re standing at a fork that shouldn’t exist according to your mental map, squinting at both options with your hands on your hips, when a voice behind you says, “Negotiating with the road?”
– Under normal circumstances, a man materializing behind you in the middle of the forest would be deeply alarming. Under current circumstances, you’ve already spent your emotional budget on being annoyed at the terrain. So, you turn with remarkable calm and observe him leaning against a tree with his arms crossed.
– “I am,” you reply. “It’s not going well. The road is being unreasonable.”
– Somehow, that earns the faintest shift in his expression—a suggestion that a smile could happen under favorable conditions.
– He tilts his head toward one path. “Left.”
– “How do you know where I’m going?”
– “I don’t. But the right path leads to a Sumpter Beast breeding ground, and you don’t look prepared for that.”
– You glance down at yourself. He has a point.
– “Left it is. Thank you, mysterious forest man.”
– “…Left it is. Thank you, mysterious forest General Mahamatra man.”
– This time, the corner of his mouth twitches.
– He pushes off the tree. “I’ll escort you to the main road.”
– “Because I look that lost?”
– “Because there have been bandits in the area.”
– “Ah.” You nod solemnly. “So I look conveniently robbable.”
– You laugh, and he falls into step beside you.
– Conversation continues smoothly after that. By the time the road opens up enough that Gandharva Ville is no longer in question, you’ve learned his name is Cyno, that he speaks with the gravity of someone giving sworn testimony, and that talking to him is oddly easy once you stop expecting him to be conventionally expressive.
– You part with a polite goodbye and the lingering sense that the encounter was stranger—and more pleasant—than it had any right to be. You only find out later, quite by accident, that your mysterious road-escort and Tighnari’s oldest friend are the same person.
– This comes up when you’re in Tighnari’s home a few days later, helping restock first-aid kits while also taking the opportunity to complain about his shortcut, which he maintains was perfectly valid.
– “In any case, you still made it back,” he finally sighs after failing to convince you that your navigational choices were your own responsibility.
– “Only thanks to some mysterious man in the forest named Cyno.”
– “You know him? He said he was the General Mahamatra, so I assumed that was either true or the most committed impersonation I’ve ever seen.”
– “Yup, that’s definitely Cyno.”
– “Small world.” You tuck bandages into a box. “He walked me all the way back to the main road.”
– “That’s odd—he was supposed to be leaving for the desert that afternoon,” Tighnari muses. “He must have turned around to accompany you.”
– “What? Why would he do that?”
– Tighnari squints at you. “I’ve learned not to speculate on his reasoning. It’s better for my health.”
– The second time you meet Cyno, it’s coincidentally at Tighnari’s. You’re halfway through the doorway with an unreasonable number of herb bundles in your arms when Tighnari says, with immediate disapproval, “I told you three.”
– “You said, and I quote, ‘Bring what you can carry,’” you rebut, balancing the teetering pile against your shoulder. “This is a failure of instruction clarity.”
– “This is a failure of restraint,” he corrects as you glance up and find Cyno leaning against the wall in almost the exact pose he’d had when you first met.
– You brighten immediately. “Mysterious forest General Mahamatra man!”
– He looks almost surprised to see you. “You know Tighnari.”
– “Apparently, you know Tighnari,” you counter.
– The herb bundles tilt ominously. Cyno is beside you before they can spill, lifting half the stack from your arms with practiced ease.
– You blink. “Oh. Thank you.”
– “Preventing avoidable disasters is part of my work.”
– “That sounds less impressive when the disasters are me getting lost or dropping medicinal plants.”
– “A disaster is measured by outcome, not dignity.”
– You stare at him for one beat, then laugh outright. And there it is again—that near-smile he seems to permit only under tightly regulated conditions.
– After that, the overlap in your lives becomes impossible to miss.
– You help Tighnari when his workload gets ridiculous, which is often. Cyno, of course, visits him regularly. So now there is a new and deeply unfortunate pattern in Tighnari’s life where he will look up from his work to find both of you in the same room, consequently suffering twice the usual number of puns.
– “Why did the scholar bring a ladder to the library?”
– You look up from your book. “Why?”
– “To reach a higher level of understanding.”
– You grin. “So the research had its ups and downs?”
– Cyno’s eyes sparkle. “But overall, it elevated the discussion.”
– Tighnari winces from the other side of the room. “I’m revoking your speaking privileges.”
– The thing about Cyno is that most people don’t really laugh with him. They brace for or tolerate his jokes with weary resignation. Tighnari, in particular, reacts to each pun like a fresh personal injury. You are the first person in a long time who hears his jokes and answers them in the same language.
– “That was well-constructed,” Cyno says to you approvingly, ignoring Tighnari.
– “Thank you. I believe in craftsmanship,” you quip.
– He looks absurdly pleased.
– This is, you realize, the key difference between you.
– Cyno treats comedy like architecture: deliberate, measured, built piece by piece. You treat it like weather: sometimes you summon it, but often you’re just in the right place when the air pressure shifts and something absurd blows through. Somehow, it works. He lays the foundation; you throw open the windows.
– By then, friendship has already happened without either of you formally acknowledging it. You start saving small stories for him: strange things you saw in the Bazaar, bizarre essay titles, Tighnari’s latest debate with some stubborn scholar. He shows up with things he thinks you might find interesting: an old text, an unusual trinket, an enormous beetle (which you politely ask him to remove from your immediate vicinity).
– It’s not long before you start landing on the same joke at the same time.
– Collei steps out of her room, smoothing her new tunic nervously. “How do I look?”
– You and Cyno answer simultaneously: “With your eyes.”
– Collei groans. Tighnari makes a sound like his soul just left his body.
– There’s a moment of recognition as you and Cyno turn toward each other. Oh. You, too.
– You break first, laughing helplessly. Cyno’s mouth curves upward after a moment, like he’s decided that if he’s already complicit, he might as well accept it.
– The escalation is, technically, Tighnari’s fault. He keeps inviting you both to the same things because, in his words, “I’m not reorganizing my life around your collective nonsense.”
– This proves to be a strategic error.
– Cyno delivers a structured joke. You riff on it. He refines the riff. You take the refinement somewhere unnecessary. What begins as a pun becomes a volley, then a construction so specific and self-referential that nobody else in the room can follow it anymore.
– “This is a new problem,” Tighnari tells Collei.
– “I think it’s kind of nice,” Collei says. “He seems happy.”
– Tighnari looks at Cyno, who is indeed more animated than usual, leaning forward slightly as you argue about whether camel caravans count as “sandwich delivery” in the desert because they transport goods between layers of sand.
– “That’s what concerns me,” Tighnari says.
– But the real proof of how close you’ve grown shows up in unspoken ways. You learn that he rereads the same book when he can’t sleep. That he sometimes rehearses jokes in his head before saying them aloud. That the burden of being General Mahamatra is not only the responsibility, but the isolation—the way people pull back when they understand what he represents.
– He learns that you are dependable in every serious matter and hopeless with personal clutter. That you love learning but hate the Akademiya’s tendency to treat knowledge like property. That you’re one of the few people he trusts to read the mood—yes, even he knows he doesn’t always get it right—and you help him without making him feel corrected.
– Most importantly, he learns that your humor is not, and has never been, a deflection; it’s a way of reaching sincerity without forcing anyone to sit exposed in it longer than they can bear. Maybe he understands this instinctively because beneath your different deliveries, the two of you are trying to do the same thing: make moments easier to hold.
– This, more than any joke, is why he trusts you.
– One evening, Cyno returns to Gandharva Ville long after sunset, with blood on his sleeves and a heaviness that has nothing to do with fatigue. You don’t comment on the stains or ask for details. Instead, you hand him water and say quietly, “Sit.”
– “Want alone time or company?”
– You sit beside him. Just that. After a while, you add quietly, “If you ever need to talk, I’ll listen. And if you don’t, I won’t force it into a lesson or a joke.”
– He looks at you for a long moment. “Thank you.”
– “Of course.” Then, because gentleness is easier if it doesn’t stare at itself too long: “Though if you eventually want a joke, I do provide emotional support in several formats.”
– A breath leaves him that is almost, almost a laugh. “Noted.”
– Cyno is not oblivious. He notices patterns. He notices how often he ends up matching his steps to yours, how he slows without thinking when you’re distracted. He often finds himself asking, “Are you heading back?” instead of “Farewell.” He grows used to the sound of your voice fitting neatly into the spare spaces of his day.
– Even the children in Aaru Village assume you come as a set. They run up to both of you with things like, “I made a joke today!” Another asks Cyno to “teach me how make people laugh with the serious voice.”
– He raises an eyebrow at you. You crouch down. “Step one: believe in the joke completely. If you don’t believe in it, no one will.”
– Cyno considers this, then adds, “Step two: leave room before the punchline. Anticipation improves delivery.”
– The children absorb this like sacred instruction. You and Cyno spend a morning helping them invent jokes. None of them are structurally sound, but he insists that “creative expression should not be stifled in early development.” The children glow under his praise.
– That evening, the two of you sit watching the horizon burn itself slowly into dusk—you because you like watching the sky change, him because you’re there—and a thought surfaces.
– “Do you know why I kept talking to you? After that first time on the path?”
– He looks over at you. “Because I gave you correct directions.”
– “No.” You pull your knees up, resting your chin on them. “Because you walked me all the way back even though you were heading somewhere else. And you never even mentioned it. I only found out because Tighnari told me.”
– His gaze slides back to a cloud dissolving into flames. “I didn’t do it to be mentioned,” he says.
– “...That is why you kept talking to me?”
– A small smile pulls at his mouth. “I see.”
– The sky behind him is doing something absurd with color—gold bleeding into violet, the kind of sunset that feels too deliberate to be ordinary.
– “And you,” he adds at last, “You understand the joke, but you do not mistake it for the whole of me.”
– Both of you are quiet for a moment, taking in the marvel of the sky. Then you bump your shoulder lightly against his. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
– And somehow, that makes it better.
– After a moment, Cyno observes, with perfect seriousness, “For the record, your sense of direction is still poor.”
– You stare at him, then laugh. “There he is.”
– “I had to end this conversation in character.”
– “And people say comedy is dead.”
– This time, his chuckle is unmistakable. Above you, the sky finishes its display and settles into dark. Neither of you moves.
– There’s nowhere else either of you needs to be.
