sparks
req by: @lilie-on-mars WC: 2.4k
Fintan x human!reader ; In which Fintan Pyren is oddly intrigued by a human in his studies of the forbidden cities…
content: I didn’t state age exactly but reader is implied to be mid-20s just so an Ancient isn’t going after some 19 year-old… ; college mention (graduate studies); reader is hinted to be a little off the hinges; gun violence mentioned; some foul language
27 minutes and 13 seconds.
That was how long Fintan had been watching her.
For today, obviously. He had first laid eyes on the human woman about seven analysis sessions ago — and she had appeared in three since then.
He sat atop a rooftop, gazing out over the bustling society below — parents pushing their kids about in strollers, pairs walking side by side to their jobs or for leisure, individuals in stiff jackets with phones to their ears. Everyone had something to do; life was in a hurry, Fintan noticed.
But this one… she moved slowly. Not hesitantly, but as though she was calculating something. Each time he saw her, she was taking her time. It was as if she didn’t know — or care — of her human ephemerality. His watch lingered on her actions longer than he intended. He watched her set the bowl of food she was walking with on the ground in front of a stray cat. She crouched down in front of the creature for a few minutes before picking up the now-empty plastic and throwing it in a bin nearby. He didn’t know why, but his eyes couldn’t leave her. She opened the door to what appeared to be some type of coffee shop… but didn’t step inside. Rather, the woman turned around. She stood in the doorway for a heartbeat.
The back of his neck tingled moments before — a reflex he was startled to realize elves even had.
The woman turned around.
She glanced around — looked up.
Her eyes were set straight at him.
Despite the way his heart skipped a beat (out of shock… of course), he didn’t blink. He took it as any other battle of dominance, not looking away. How could she even see him from so far? Fintan only observed from such a distance because of the strength of elvin vision.
She turned back inward, the door closing behind her.
No matter, Fintan thought. She must’ve seen something else.
Just then, an alarm went off. It marked the hour to switch from rooftop watch to integrated observation for the day.
Against his better judgement… he felt called to the building she’d slipped into.
The smells hit him instantly — humans brewed their coffee with such potence.
He took a seat in the far corner of the bustling room, sitting where he could look out over the activity, listen in on every shared word. These were the studies that taught him the most.
“Excuse me, sir?” A waitress brought him from his focus, drawing his attention to the beige cup in her hand.
“…Yes?” Fintan could practically see her go a little cold. He tried to mask into human society as well as possible, but finding common ground when you had five thousand years on them was a little difficult. He was bound to seem… off.
“A, ah, young lady ordered this for the…” she paused to read the scribbled writing on the side. “…‘Spooky man with the… Legolas hair.’ So… here you go.”
Fintan furrowed his eyebrows, hesitantly taking the cup from her hand. “I’m sorry, who?”
She nodded toward the side exit. “Chick just left.”
He looked just in time to see the wave of the woman’s hair outside the glass, hearing the chimes ring with the door. “Hm. Thank you.” He pulled a spare Forbidden Cities bill from his pocket (was a hundred enough for this type of thing? He still wasn’t entirely sure of human financials in the current era, but apparently inflation was quite severe) and slipped it to the waitress without another word, taking his coffee and shoving swiftly out the side door and into the neighboring alley. He glanced around, wondering where she could’ve possibly gone.
His head hit the wall.
“What in Sources’ name—”
“Why are you following me?” The woman had swung him by his sleeve into a wall a little farther from view, his head against the bricks and her forearm at his neck.
To tell the truth, he had no idea. But it certainly wasn’t any human’s place to ask anything of him, let alone to demand.
“Get your hands off of me—” he channeled some heat into his hands, shoving her away by the shoulders. He supposed he hadn’t thought too deeply about that.
Her eyes widened, but she returned her resting face within seconds. “What was… how did you do that?”
“None of your business.”
“The fuck it’s not.”
Fintan furrowed his brows. “Excuse you?”
“You’ve been watching me from rooftops for the last month.”
“Very bold of you to assume it is you that I’m watching.”
“I’ve seen you in completely different parts of the city three times!”
Fintan sighed. “That has all been coincidence. Had I been following you, you wouldn’t have noticed, to start. Secondly… if you considered me a threat…” He silently lifted the cup of coffee in his hand, raising an eyebrow in something that looked to be judgement.
She pursed her lips. “Thought some attention get you to leave me alone.”
“Lie.”
“Fine,” she folded. “Figured if you were so interested, I’d meet you face-to-face.”
He put his hands out plainly. “Here I am. Satisfied?”
She glanced him up and down — her examination stirring him in a way he couldn’t describe. “Very.”
Fintan may have never been so confused in his life. He had lived a very long life.
“Whatever your… motivations may be,” he cleared his throat, a certain heat brewing beneath his collar that didn’t seem associated with his ability. “What do I have to do for you to leave me alone?”
“Do you want me to leave you alone?”
“Yes? Clearly.”
“The color rushing to your ears says otherwise. …Hey, next question, what the hell is up with your ears?”
The breeze had managed to tug his waist-length locks away from his ears, and he hadn’t brought a Masker with him this time. This girl had completely disarmed his cold, sharp defenses. He was running out of options.
He closed his eyes briefly. He didn’t want it to come to this. He reached into the pocket of his cloak—
and the Melder he had halfway pulled out was sent flying from his hands.
He grasped his aching hand. “What the hell, don’t kick me!”
“Don’t shoot me!” The girl put her foot down, smoothing her jacket.
He blinked. “…Why would you do that?” He knew humans were violent, but considering they had just meant, he wouldn’t have expected such reflexes from a woman of her age and composure.
“I’m a female college student in a heavily populated area; God forbid I take a self-defense class. You should know better than to pull a gun on me in broad daylight.”
Fintan rolled his eyes. “It’s not a gun—and at this distance, it would’ve stunned you with minimal memory loss… I think.”
“Okay, well, here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re going to take off that stupid ominous coat with the armory in your pockets, and then you’re going to tell me where you’re from.”
Fintan tilted his head, daring to take a few steps forward. “And why would I do that?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Because I have a phone, and you don’t have a gun anymore, and I can call the cops.”
He knew he could just leap home any minute and make every effort to never see this woman again. He could also simply kill her now. For whatever reason, he felt compelled to do neither of those things.
“…Fine.” In complete and utter spite of himself, he shrugged his jacket off of his shoulders, left in the closest thing a tunic could be to a T-shirt. He held the jacket out in one arm. “Happy?”
Her eyes traced his now-exposed forearms—one heartbeat before she pried herself from distraction. “…Walk with me. It looks weird just standing here.”
Fintan ran a hand down his face. Was he actually about to do this?
…
“I’ll answer six of your questions. You have to promise you won’t tell a soul, and I can’t promise you’ll get complete answers. Then I leave.” The words felt odd in his mouth, the thought of obeying someone else—obeying a human—leaving more bitter an aftertaste than ruckleberries.
The woman crossed her arms. “Why six? Why not… seven?”
She paused as though that was expected to have some meaning.
He shrugged. “Fine, seven.”
“…I guess you wouldn’t get that, would you… Perfectly fine for me. Are you human?”
He pursed his lips, avoiding eye contact as he recovered from the whiplash. He had been expecting a ‘are you here to hurt me?’ or maybe a ‘do you work for the government?’ It seems she went straight to the point. “…No.”
“Great. Alien? Wait, that wasn’t my question. Two — what are you, then?”
He sighed. Completely avoidable situation, by the way. “Elf.”
“Ha! So the Legolas bit was right.”
“Those books have been out for one hundred years. I am tired.”
She gave him a sideways glance, then trained her gaze forward once more. “You shouldn’t be. He’s hot, it’s an honor.”
Fintan’s brows furrowed. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
It was as if she’d sensed his headspace shift, because she abruptly changed topics. “Okayyy, number three. Oh, I’m takin’ these down pretty fast — how old are you?”
“Extremely.”
She paused in her steps. “Like… a really good 50? Can you give me a little more than that?”
“Not unless you want that to count as number four.”
“Ugh, old people are no fun. Fine, four: explain your elf-land to me.”
He clicked his tongue, lazily tying his hair into a low bun. “That’s not a question.”
“Well, maybe I’m not asking.”
He slowed his steps, leaning down to speak lower. “Mind you, I still have seven knives on me.”
She stilled for a moment. “…I have one, and I think it’ll work just fine.”
He narrowed his eyes. He was being tested, and he hated it — but he couldn’t possibly stop. It was for his own amusement, clearly. He could get a kick out of blowing her mind a little. If she ever turned into trouble…
“…It’s called the Lost Cities. The places you humans thought were long gone or just outright fictitious; we alongside all the creatures you dismissed call them home. We travel on lightbeams and almost all of us have powers—that’s how I burned you earlier. …You passing out yet?”
She was quiet for a few moments, their steps in the evening being just barely heard over the street beside them.
“…Okay. Yeah, okay. Atlantis? Don’t even answer that one, I knew it. I’ll think all of this over later, you seem like a busy man. Five: why are you here? Why are you watching me?”
Fintan blinked a few times. She had just… accepted all of that. He felt there was more he didn’t know. He hated it. There was nothing he didn’t know. “Again with the ego. It’s not you, none of this is about you. I’m… studying humans. I want to know what sets you apart from us, why you act the way you do. How we are so similar yet so far apart.”
“…Interesting. Number six — yeah, why don’t we know about you guys? You look, like oddly human, except for…” She didn’t know a non-awkward way to say your paralyzing beauty or your piercing eyes. “…You know, the uncanny valley vibe.”
“We used to be intertwined. But we were too advanced for humanity’s barbaric violence, the ways driven by such short, anxious lives. We vanished from human life and cut ourselves off from you all before you destroyed all of us and then yourselves.”
Her eyes widened a little. “Okay, damn. Screw us, I guess. …You’re probably right, though.”
He steered them around a corner, ducking them into another alley. It was quiet in a softly understanding way. “My turn: why are you okay with all of this?”
She sighed. “I mean, it’s a lot to take in, but it’s… exactly what I’ve been expecting. I’m a little bit like you.”
Fintan seriously doubted that, but he let her continue.
“I’m working on my PhD in theoretical physics, and I… kinda needed this. Like, I could build an entire thesis off of you. But I don’t know the odds of that, so I’ll take what I can get. All that to say… I’ve spent years poring over studies, and I knew we’ve been missing something.”
There was something so deeply intriguing, familiar about her that kept Fintan in the conversation. “I’ll accept that. …One more question, human girl.”
“Drumroll, please. Number seven…” She stepped impossibly closer to him — he managed not to back away. “What do you use on your hair?” She tucked a loose, windblown strand behind his ear. “I mean, this is—”
He snatched her wrist, batting her hand away from his face. “What are you doing?”
“Ow!” She cradled her hand, now red and steaming. “Holy shit, are you insane?”
“Have I not made that abundantly clear?”
She held her burnt wrist in front of her face, blowing on it softly. “…Yeah.”
Something cold settled in his chest at the pain etched into her features. He didn’t know why he couldn’t control himself by now. How he managed to hurt things so quickly.
“I… I’m sorry.”
Sources, Fintan was going to go home and brush his teeth of all the words that have felt disgusting in his mouth.
Her eyes softened. “No, I—I should be careful.”
The silence grew almost awkward. He had to break it. “I’m glad you found my existence helpful. I must go. And this time, I expect not to see you again.” He stalked further down the alley, raising a leaping crystal from around his neck.
“Right. Hey, Goldilocks—can I get a bonus question?”
In spite of all of his better judgement… Fintan turned around. He said nothing, simply raised an eyebrow.
“Same time next week?”
The woman’s smile was unlike anything he’d ever seen before—it didn’t look particularly different in any way, but the way he felt his insides contract, as if his stomach were full of halcyons fluttering their wings. It was excruciating, and he wanted to feel this way every day for the rest of his life.
He cocked his head. “If you can find me.”
The last thing he saw was a glimmer in her eye before the light took everything away.
…He had never gotten her name.
•••
A/N: long overdue!! thank you again for how patient you’ve been with me on this one, I hope it’s what you hoped for 🫶🏽 had to step out of my regular characters on this one and I hope I did him right. I’m kinda invested now lol