word count: 2102
fandom: final fantasy xiii-2
relationship?: CaiRai duh! ... Kind of? It’s 5am, let me live.
a/n: I’m not dead just sleeping and distracted. I... need to figure out how to get from point A to point B in order to finish off Of Masks and Mirrors before publishing the rest, but in the meantime here’s this!
To fall in the star is to be nothingness
To escape is to be empty.
Fall into the star and then we won't exist
Or escape into the nothing
This battle was simultaneously their first, and their last. The next one would be just the same, but Caius probably wouldn’t have minded if this battle stood as the permanent record. Under the timeless gray skies of Valhalla, where a mockery of daylight only shone through the cloud cover to provide light in the gloom and the dust of battle, the city crumbled beneath them. Caius found himself briefly winded – an impressive feat in and of itself – after being thrown straight downward and out of the sky, crashing through several thick slabs of concrete that comprised seven stories of one of the skyscrapers in the inner-city of Valhalla, if it had any denizens to give any regions proper meanings. The dust drifted down as a shaft of light shone through the hole he’d left, several times bigger than he himself was.
Violet eyes blinked past the haze, and he reached for his sword. Things were quiet, for the moment – as they often were after he’d been incapacitated. Though tireless in his quest, the same could not be said to his rival; something always stopped her. Something inside her refused to deal a decisive blow, and it came up a few times during their bouts as a subject to taunt her with – which, if they were close enough, usually ended with her spitting in his face (gross!). He could shrug such crudeness off with ease, of course; it was but a feeble act of defiance, one more effort to delay the inevitable. Their war was just as much psychological, waged with words just as much as it was with swords.
The dust had scarcely even started to settle before he was reaching for his sword to pull himself up. After a brief fit of coughing when some of the concrete dust found its way into his lungs, he was on his feet again, supporting his weight with a blade that looked far too sinister to be used as a cane.
“Wings of blackest night…”
The words on his lips were barely more than a mumble – and for what it was that he meant to do, they were hardly necessary. The beginning of an incantation he’d learned back in his days as a Paddraean l’Cie, when he’d succeeded his predecessor as Yeul’s guardian. When the various priests and clergy, lesser followers of Etro and those who helped the young Seeress with more worldly duties, tore his eidolith from his brand and forced him to faced his demons – horribly insignificant to the troubles that plagued his mind and heart now, over fourteen hundred years later.
But it provided him familiar comfort as Bahamut’s wings tore from his body and the Guardian and eidolon both became melded as one under a veil of thick black smoke, stirred by gale-force winds that shook the building’s foundations and carried away the sound he made when the dark dragon tore his flesh and turn his body inside-out. But he wouldn’t die, not from this – if it were that easy, if he’d had his way, then this would have been his end hundreds of years ago.
He made his swift ascent, and took the smoke with him, the veil only dispelled when he was clear of the roof. Lightning awaited him, immediately on guard and ready to block his crushing claws with Odin’s blades. She shook with the effort of keeping him at bay, and a sound halfway between the laughter of a man and the bestial roar of a dragon echoed across the cityscape. He pulled his claws back and took a backhanded swipe at her with his off-hand, tossing her like a ragdoll to a roof two buildings over. She landed with a dull thud, the breath knocked out of her. Now it was his turn to wait – wait for her retribution.
Of course, it was hardly retribution, as he welcomed it and he knew as well as she that she had chosen to engage in a war of attrition that she could not win. No amount of begging; no amount of praying; no amount of good intentions or good-old-fashioned blood, sweat, or tears would change the fact that he had the upper hand. He would not be denied victory forever.
He glided over to her on silent wings, now-crimson eyes glowing brighter in lieu of being able to smile upon seeing that she’d left a red streak behind on the roof when she’d landed and skidded. She laid on her stomach now, her gunblade laying several feet away from her outstretched hand. As his shadow loomed over her, she shifted – and maybe it was her joints that cracked, audibly. Maybe it was her armor. Either way, she let out her breath in a hiss ass instead of getting up, she continued to lay prone, her body having given out beneath her.
“Serah…” The name escaped her lips as little more than a rasp, and if she knew that he was there (which she certainly did; his shadow loomed over her and it was fairly impossible to miss the form of Chaos Bahamut digging its claws into the stone as it found a perch).
After a few moments of clinging to the side of the building with his claws, he stood beside her not as a monstrosity but as a man (well, as much of a man as he was these days; even before the world had died a slow, agonizing death, he’d earned the right to be called a monster by those who knew of him and his myriad deeds and his unwavering and singular dedication to the Seeress of long-fallen Paddra), his form coalescing beside her in wisps of black smoke and the crimson glow behind his eyes and in his chest subsiding. He stuck the blade of his sword in the concrete only a foot away from her face, and she sucked her breath in more on reflex than out of any real fear.
(Perish the thought.)
She kept her gaze fixed on his towering frame as she crawled into reach of her gunblade before she pulled her way to her feet, the daylight filtering down from the clouds and striking her armor in such a way that it seemed to glow, possessed now of a will of its own. A shock of red ran through rose-colored bangs and down the side of her face, over her eye where she’d impacted the building – and a similar shade of red marred her exposed shoulder. She was unsteady on her feet but hid it well enough by spreading her feet apart and bending her knees… Though she couldn’t hide the sloppy grip she kept on the Overture. A tired haze fell over her features, though the determined spark in her eyes told a much different story.
“Have you had enough?” The words came to Caius’s lips easily, flowing over his tongue smooth as honey as he took the first agonizingly slow step toward her. Then another, and he lifted his sword from the stone.
She took a moment to spit on the ground – saliva and blood. “Hardly.”
Her response made a low chuckle rise in his throat, and it was only a moment more before he was close enough to reach out for her—
But before he could fist his hand in her hair and force her head backwards to expose her throat, he found his own weight turned on him. In one swift motion, she cast him off of the roof, and by the time he realized what had happened, his back was arching mid-air as a scream tore from his throat, though the noise was drowned out by the peal of thunder that followed a bolt of electricity that she’d cast forth from her fingertips. The bolt arched downward, flowing through his body and scorching his flesh, his hair, and the leather armor he adorned himself in, then grounded itself by way of an exposed steel support beam. The current suspended him mid-air for a moment, and the world went black for a few moments. He was certain that he’d stopped breathing for a moment, but when he came to he was still falling – and not only that, Lightning had gotten the wise idea to bring down a building over him for good measure. But such things, she had to know, would serve as temporary solutions at best.
He held out his hands in front of him, and a clear sphere formed in his palms before it too-quickly and too-slowly expanded outward, catching the falling rubble in a sort of stasis while he continued to fall downward. A snap of his fingers, though, and he started falling upwards. He landed on the underside of a large chunk of concrete with a few rusted support rods jutting out of it in a crouch, his eyes slipping momentarily closed as a smirk crept to his lips. In the absence of gravity, his violet locks floated around his head and framed his face somewhat oddly, though it settled down (up?) into a logical sort of order, down over his shoulder with his bangs obscuring one eye after a moment.
Even in the absence of a usual war cry, he caught Lightning’s blade in his hand easily when she leapt at him off of a lower chunk of rubble. Caius met her gaze levelly, faint wrinkles forming in his sun-kissed skin as a devious sort of grin parted his lips and reached his eyes. The impact seemed to ripple through the air for a moment.
“Too slow.”
“We’ll see!” Using his grip for leverage, she twisted and flung herself upward, twisting the blade out of his grasp as she did so. In response, he reached for his sword only to find that it had fallen somewhere out of reach in the interim, and he cursed himself and propelled himself down from his perch to retrieve it just in the nick of time, as an explosive round from Lightning’s gunblade blew apart the platform he was standing on previously.
Making his way through the gravity-less dome he’d created was a little bit like swimming in air, though the speed at which he moved wasn’t reduced in the slightest; no, the similarity came in the way he maneuvered his body through the air as he made his way down to his sword. Lightning let off four more rounds, three of which he managed to avoid simply by twisting out of the way or stop the bullets midair entirely using the very same magic that created this space to begin with – but the last of which buried itself into his shoulder and made red-hot blood well up through the wound. His breath hissed through his teeth as white-hot pain momentarily blinded him, but the adrenaline rush that typically came with the heat of battle allowed him to push through.
Caius landed only long enough to use his own weight as leverage to pull his sword out of the stone in which it was once more embedded, but then he was flying up through the air again at where she was currently suspended. He brought his sword over his head with the intention of perhaps slicing her in two – which he knew wasn’t likely to succeed given that he knew she saw him coming, he was working with an injured shoulder, and there was only so much force he could put behind his swings when he had nothing to brace his weight on or use as leverage.
But what he didn’t see coming was the swift kick to his face when he got close. The heel of her armored boot came down on the bridge of his nose with a gut-churning crunch, and if the bullet wound wasn’t painful then oh, God, that sure was. The heat of his blood rushed forth, spurting over the lower half of his face as the fires of pain licked over the upper half, and he could feel his eyes starting to roll back in his head. He was fairly certain he blacked out for a few moments, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recall dispelling the magic, and the next thing he could recall with any sort of clarity was laying flat on his back over a pile of rubble, with his nose bleeding profusely and almost certainly deformed, but his primary concern was that he could not feel his legs. Moving anything hurt immensely, and his breath came as a rasp; the world closed in around him horribly, agonizingly slowly, but before he finally stopped clinging to consciousness, he managed:
Word Count: 3268
Author Notes: I actually rewrote the entirety of this chapter. It was miserable. Note to self: write things right the first time next time!! Very happy with the end result, though, and I’m sure y’all are too (you don’t wanna see the mess that was the original write-up of this chapter; trust me!). Only gotta tweak a few minor things down the road. And rewrite another whole chapter to include the tiny-but-kinda-important-just-not-right-now details that I edited out but hey. That’s for future me to worry about. And future me also gets to hear any feedback you may have! Man I’m chatty today.
Entire Work · AO3 · FFN
XIV. Foresight
They spent the morning flitting about along the paths branching out from the house before heading down to the house just a bit before noon. Caius held Yeul close in an attempt to shield her from overly-curious eyes. It wasn’t every day that these people saw newcomers; that much was obvious – and they stuck out like sore thumbs. Well, more the Guardian than the seeress, given he stood easily around one and a half feet over his charge and was decked out in all-black leather armor on a white sand beach that was rapidly approaching the summer months. Yeul kept her eyes cast away from the strangers that populated the general area of the town, instead focusing on their destination and also apparently on trying to simultaneously not trip over her own feet and keep sand out of her shoes as she walked – which lead to high steps and Caius offering to carry her the rest of the way once they passed through the rather unsightly chain fence that acted as the town’s ‘official’ border. She declined of course, and simply picked her feet up instead of walking normally – and had they been alone Caius was certain that she’d ask if they could make a fun game out of it, and like the loyal Guardian he is he probably would have joined in until they got tired of it.
Caius let Yeul ascend the steps first – and he followed soon after. Despite the house being open to the air there was still a pretty clearly defined inside and outside, with the inside being bounded by air conditioner vents blowing straight down and inwards, cooling all of the air inside to a noticeably lower temperature. How the heat of the outside didn’t manage to filter in must have been one of the many miracles and marvels of Cocoonite technology – one that he didn’t understand or particularly care to learn the inner workings of, but was momentarily thankful for nonetheless. These past months were probably the coolest (temperature-wise) that he’d experienced in centuries, barring autumns and winters spent in the mountain ranges of Gran Pulse. He lingered on that boundary line for several moments while Yeul took a seat beside the younger Farron sister, whom greeted the seeress warmly before looking up at Caius and giving a stiff nod with a faked smile that he honestly would have preferred weren’t there, but he supposed it was some sort of common courtesy, to pretend that unwelcome guests were welcome when there was no other choice but to deal with their presence.
Caius returned the nod – but didn’t bother with the smile. Serah looked away after a few moments before folding her hands in her lap and readily accepting Yeul into the conversation. Noel sat across from them and cast a glance over to Caius with a far more genuine smile and bright blue eyes before inviting him further in with a nod.
And, after a moment, Caius gave in to the request, taking a seat on the floor as he had the previous day. Not for lack of room this time; Yeul, Serah, and Noel were, in truth, the only ones who seemed to be present (strangely enough; at the very least he’d expect to see Lightning, but…), although he didn’t bother trying to peek into the other rooms. The kitchen was quiet and pristine – obviously either recently cleaned or not used since the previous day in the first place.
“So… Caius.”
He looked up at Serah and she met his gaze levelly, cold and resolute behind that mask of friendliness. He almost wanted to scoff at it, to tell her to drop the act – but that would be rude, wouldn’t it. She was – all of them were – kind enough to allow him within five feet of the town in general, and he wasn’t particularly keen on screwing that up at the moment.
“Been getting along well?”
“With your sister? As well as I suppose I can, given our previous circumstances.”
“Hm. Well, at least you’re making the effort.”
The corners of his lips twitched a bit at her words – how transparent. Perhaps the façade of friendliness wasn’t meant for him, but rather for the child whom accompanied him… But then, he and Yeul shared a knowing glance and he knew that she saw through it, too. Hmph. Well, two could play at that game. Caius let his elbows rest on one of the few clear spaces on top of the coffee table before him and he looked away from the woman who leapt through time in an attempt to find her sister – an attempt cut short by her sister being, even if temporarily, returned to her by the graces of Etro (though of course, such an act was not free of an ulterior motive). “Believe it or not, I am capable of being civil.”
“Oh, I believe it,” she amended with a wave of one hand. “You just never struck me as type. Like, it wouldn’t suit you to get along with her, y’know? And same in reverse. You’re both so stubborn.”
At that, he actually did scoff. “From what I hear, she’s talked about me behind my back. Hardly civil.”
Serah pressed her thumbs together. “Well… I mean, not a lot. Just if anything major happened,” she replied, an edge of bitterness creeping into her voice, “like after you killed her.”
“Can we—“ Noel’s words were cut off when Caius raised a hand; he didn’t need his former apprentice to defend him.
“Then perhaps it’d be wise of you not to give me too much credit just yet. I have my reasons for seeing this through to the end, and for the moment my agenda does not include doing your sister or anyone in this town any harm, but I can if you wish it of me, Serah.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see how she shifted uncomfortably at his words, how she pressed her lips together. And so he smirked and added, “Don’t worry. That’s not a threat.”
“Even if it was, I could take you.”
“Perhaps… Your skills in combat really are quite impressive.” He cast a glance to Noel. “Maybe you ought to show him a thing or two.”
Serah’s lips quirked a bit into a not-quite smirk.
Noel blinked and if Caius hadn’t been paying attention he would have missed how – just for an instant – he looked a bit offended, before he replied, “It’s not like I couldn’t beat you, Caius – you just—“ He cast a glance to Yeul. “I won’t do it.”
“I’m aware. I didn’t mean it like that. But did you truly believe that I became the warrior I am by learning from one person?”
“Well…” The brunet took a moment to actually take this into consideration and then, quietly, shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Caius chuckled a bit. “Precisely.”
Yeul reached forward and plucked a simple metal loop puzzle off the table from where it was about half-hidden by some magazines and started working on it quietly. “They’re stronger than you?”
“That depends,” he replied, watching her for several moments. “But at the very least under the right circumstances, both Noel and Serah can claim victory over me in battle – be it by their combined or individual efforts.” Caius paused and let his gaze shift first to Serah, whose slight smile faded, and then to Noel. The Guardian let his chin rest in one gloved hand as he continued, “That’s not something many can say – and not something to be taken lightly.”
“But you’ll be my Guardian forever, right?” Her eyes left the loops but her hands continued to work until they were free, and one half of the puzzle was clutched in each of her pale, tiny hands. Those eyes were all-too knowing, for better or for worse – and not just because of her curse.
He had to admit that he hated it sometimes. Hated how easy it was for Yeul – for all of the Yeuls – to read him. Hated how easy it was for them to trap him; they knew every tick and they knew that deep down in his heart, no matter how gnarled it had become over the centuries… Caius would never be able to truly deny their wishes.
“Of course, Yeul.”
“So, if Snow is Serah’s fi… ‘fee-antsy’…”
“Fiancé,” Serah offered.
“Fiancé,” Yeul affirmed, “Then since he can beat you, will Noel be her Guardian?”
“I’m not concerned about that.”
“Uh – actually, I haven’t had any visions since the gates acted up and sent us all the way back here from Noel’s time. I guess that’s a good thing, but it’s not like I need a Guardian for anything.”
Yeul’s brows furrowed and she looked to the armored man in response to this revelation but Caius merely hummed, and to Serah said: “Hopefully it will stay that way.”
“I’m not sure I mind either way, actually…” Serah shrugged. “I guess it’s nice knowing that I’ve got the chance to see everyone again, and that Lightning’s back for the moment… But if I had to live with the visions then I would have, gladly.”
“You wouldn’t have lasted.”
“Yeah. I know.”
They lapsed into silence. Yeul slowly and half-heartedly started trying to put the metal loops back together again before giving up and setting both pieces on the table. Caius retrieved them and they were back together within a few moments – and he gave the loops a few solid tugs in opposite directions to confirm that they weren’t going anywhere. “I hope,” Caius began after a minute or three, “that you’ll excuse my words.”
“Excused,” Noel replied.
“You’re just being honest, I guess,” Serah added.
“Still.” Not everyone was as eager to face death as he was – though he certainly commended Serah’s ability to accept that her death was imminent had Etro not intervened in the way that she had. He couldn’t help but be a bit curious as to what that particular timeline held… Oh well; it was inconsequential now. “There are better topics for such a bright day.”
“Yeah,” Noel agreed. “Y’know, the weather’s been pretty great lately. Not a cloud in the sky.”
Caius nodded an agreement. “A bit warm for my tastes.”
“I figured,” Serah put in, gesturing towards him – no doubt in reference to his armor. He couldn’t even object, instead shrugging as she continued, “You have that change of clothes we lent you. Why not wear that instead of the armor?”
“Discounting the heat, my armor’s actually quite comfortable.”
She pressed her lips together and directed her gaze to the ceiling, crossing her arms. “Whatever you say.” Then, apparently deciding that that topic of conversation was due to be over and done with, offered, “Do you or Yeul need anything?” With the question she rose from her seat and crossed into the kitchen.
“I’m fine,” Caius replied, looking to the seeress.
Yeul considered for a moment before requesting some water; Noel requested a(nother) cup of coffee – a request which Serah adamantly denied.
A little bit later, Maqui and Yuj made their appearances – and shed some light as to where, precisely, everyone was. Apparently Gadot, Snow, and Lightning were out trying to formulate a plan of action for dealing with the zirnitra (Caius was still convinced that they were making it much harder than it needed to be) while Lebreau was with a friend at one of the houses over the water and wouldn’t be back until it was time to get dinner started. They seemed to think it was a shame, as did Noel and Serah; Caius and Yeul were mostly indifferent on the matter but before Yuj and Maqui could raid the kitchen for junk food, Serah claimed it and started on lunch. “Nothing complicated,” she assured them, before making sure that no one had a particular preference in the way of what sort of bread they like for sandwiches.
Nothing complicated indeed – or so he assumed before she broke out a skillet. It was only a few moments before they had toasty sandwiches with some sort of meat that was definitely not ham and several slices of melted white cheese placed in front of them, two at a time. Despite eating in swift, measured bites, Caius was still one of the last ones done – behind Yeul but finished moments before Noel. The sandwiches were pretty to look at and the meat in them was thin-sliced but flavorful – but the cheese didn’t really taste like anything in particular. Disappointing, really, but food was food and the Guardian was not about to complain given that Serah had been kind enough to feed him. And out of the kindness of his heart he offered to help clean up, but Serah declined and did it herself, mumbling something about how they had a system and it would just be easier if she did it. Fair enough, he would have figured, if she didn’t allow Yeul to help and if she weren’t more than happy to show the seeress where everything went – though granted her aid quickly ran out when it came to actually putting things away, since she couldn’t reach the cabinets that they put the plates in. Once her time as a kitchen aide came to a close, she took a seat next to Caius on the floor, leaning against him a bit.
In the meantime, Maqui and Yuj broke out a board game – chess, from the looks of things, and although he didn’t particularly care to pay attention to the game itself, watching them devolve into piece-stealing and petty attempts at cheating brought an ever-so-slight smirk to his lips. Yuj attempted to teach Yeul to play, but in the end she wasn’t too interested, much to the blue-haired man’s dismay; the games ended when Snow (the cat) hopped up onto the table and sent pieces askew. She meowed up at Yuj, tail swishing until he picked her up and set her on the couch – or rather, the cat set herself on the couch, after wiggling out of his arms and apparently scratching Yuj in the process, if the way he flinched away and clutched his forearm was any indication. “Ungrateful cat—“
“Cats’ll hate you even if you give ‘em what they want. You of all people ought to know that.”
Caius knew without looking who that voice belonged to, and the calico meowed up at Etro’s champion several times before Lightning finally gave her some head-scratchings. And Snow the cat started purring so loud that Caius could hear her from where he was sitting. Lightning sat down on the couch roughly across from where he was on the floor and the cat moved out of the way before deciding to loaf on Lightning’s lap, which she allowed with a defeated huff.
“How’d it go?” Noel prompted, and her attention was pulled away from the cat in her lap.
“Hn—oh. Went fine, I guess; so turns out the damn thing has like three eggs in its nest… As if our job wasn’t hard enough. Fighting those things – what, three times? – was enough trouble when we were l’Cie.”
“Are… Are they that bad?” Noel rubbed the back of his neck.
“Considering that they can spit poison at you and are about twice the size of an amphisbaena – yes.”
“Yeesh.”
“That’s right.”
Caius rolled his eyes and looked to Yeul, who let her hand rest over his on the table. She smiled up at him, though the smile didn’t reach those knowing eyes for whatever reason – perhaps he’d ask later.
“By the way, Yeul.” The seeress perked up at the sound of Lightning’s voice and she continued, “Could I borrow Caius for a moment? We’ll just be outside.”
Yeul hesitated, then nodded, and with a sigh, the Guardian rose. He had a feeling he didn’t exactly get a say in the matter of whether he spoke to Lightning or not.
The sky was clear save for clouds so low on the horizon that they resembled hills at a glance, and the water lapping at the shore several yards away was a crystal clear blue. People wandered the vast swath of beach that had kind of been agreed upon to be a town square of sorts, although given that Bodhum lacked much to see or do unless you actually lived there or really, really liked beaches, it was pretty barren structurally-speaking. Some people were sprawled out on beach towels and some school-aged children splashed about in the shallowest part of the water or collected shells, but there was nothing fancy; briefly, Caius wondered if the ‘old’ Bodhum had been as sleepy as this little beachside settlement. Probably not.
It seemed that they had both taken a moment to admire the scenery, because Lightning’s eyes were fixed on the horizon, and she only looked back to the armored man when he called her name. She hummed a response, meeting his gaze and letting her fingers trace patterns on the wood of the barrier separating the deck from the sand below. “Oh.” Her eyes widened a bit and she turned her gaze back to the horizon to hide her embarrassment at having apparently gotten so caught up inside her own head that she’d forgotten that Caius had been there; how charming. “So I was thinking. In light of the fact that I’ve needed to get your gunblade fixed not once, but twice—” she apparently couldn’t be bothered to mask the edge of irritation in her voice—“And we’ll definitely need to fight once we set out, I’m going to teach you how to use it properly.”
He scoffed. “A sword is a sword.” Besides, it wasn’t like Lightning had any use for it anyway, and if it didn’t suit him then he just wouldn’t use it.
“You would be surprised.”
“Even if it should break, I have magic.”
“Yeah? Good luck casting magic when some beast has you cornered.”
That wouldn’t happen, he was sure. But nonetheless, he pressed his lips together… “Point.” And there were a fair number of monsters across Gran Pulse that were resistant if not outright immune to magic – even the sort he could conjure, surprisingly enough. “Fine.”
“Glad that’s settled. We start tomorrow; be up before dawn and we can get started.”
“And what of Yeul?”
“Serah’s usually up pretty early even when she’s off; school teacher and all. She can take care of her.”
Caius wasn’t sure he was completely comfortable with that idea, but relented because judging by the tone of Lightning’s voice, it had already been decided. “And what would you like in return?”
The question gave Lightning some pause.
“I cannot recall a time we have given each other something for free. What is it you want in return?”
“How about, your cooperation and you not forming a habit out of breaking the Organyx.” And to punctuate the statement, she held her hand out to him.
He snorted. Simple enough. Caius nodded to indicate that he’d understood the terms before taking her hand – the whole of which fit easily in his. Their eyes met for a moment and for once there was no hostility on the part of either of them – or perhaps, it was merely masked by the mutual understanding that if they were going to finish this Focus (and see what ‘reward’ Etro had in mind for them), they would have to be willing to work with each other to some extent.
They shook on it, then lingered a moment before Caius slipped his hand from hers.
Fandom: Final Fantasy XIII(...-2...?)
Characters: Caius Ballad, Lightning Farron
Author Notes:
pledge-of-the-sea-and-the-moon said:
1) Give me a pairing: Light x Vodka x Caius 2) Give me an AU setting: Light's apartment in uh Paris. (WTF)
Note: Ich spreche kein Französisch. (I barely speak German...)
She swore she would never make the same mistake twice, and yet, here she was again — hushing her boyfriend of, oh, six months (?) and pulling the sheets up over his shoulders after forcing him to drink an entire bottle of water (he acted like it was a bigger issue than it was). Though, he protested; he always protested. Frankly, she'd rather deal with three sober Snows than one drunk Caius, and that was saying something (no offense intended to her sister's husband-to-be, or anything).
One last whine of protest escaped his lips as she flicked off the nightstand lamp, leaving the room in darkness save for what filtered in through the curtains. Then, after some effort, she planted a kiss on his cheek and made to leave him to sleep – he was going to sleep; there was no room for debate given he had a train to catch sometime around 10 in the morning – while she tidied up the living room. No big sprucing project or anything, just making sure the trash was in the trash and the plates and glasses they'd dirtied were cleaned and set on the rack to dry – and put the half-empty bottle of strawberry-flavored vodka she'd bought specifically for this occasion back in the freezer. And getting that done was, naturally, a simple affair, although there would be some dragging herself through the inevitable hangover to tidy up the rest of her little apartment before heading out to take care of some errands (and visit her sister, as first-Saturday-of-every-month tradition demanded).
She let out a sigh when the last plate was clean and placed in its proper place and she tested the lid of the vodka bottle to make sure it was screwed on tight before stepping away from the counter and colliding with something very solid, very warm, and very cuddly.
Lightning sighed, rolling her eyes, and Caius slipped his arms around her waist – half in a gesture of affection and surely half to make sure he didn't sway so hard he fell over or something ridiculous like that. “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?”1 he asked, words soft but nonetheless slurred. She could have smelled the alcohol on his breath from about halfway across the room, she was absolutely certain.
She set the bottle of vodka back on the counter for the moment. “Le matin venu. Et – on peut se tutoyer, non?”2 A hint of humor crept into her voice and she patted his hands before letting her own rest on top of them.
He hummed in response, letting his chin rest on top of her head. She took another step back and he went with her, surprisingly willing to follow her lead – which was just fine. She stowed the vodka in the freezer before leading Caius to bed. At this point, she considered any further efforts to get anything done futile, really; there ws no getting rid of a drunk Caius. Which was part of the reason she'd rather deal with three sober Snows, but hey, the violet'haired man glued to her back was her drunk Caius, and even if he was a little but frustrating to deal with, she wouldn't trade him for the world. Or three sober Snows.
That night, they fell asleep huddled in each others arms underneath the warm sheets as the moon traveld over the city of light. That morning, they had the worst hangovers.
1 “Do you [formal] want to go to bed with me?”
2 “In the morning. And – we can address each other as 'tu', don't you think?”
