HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLLIE!! A long time ago, you asked for "First Aid" from my Fluff Bingo card for Sylvix and WHO AM I TO REFUSE so I've been holding onto this thing until your birthday to use it as a present. Now here it is! I hope you enjoy!!
Set pretty early on in FE3H! Like, the first few months of the game. When these two are still babies at Garreg Mach.
- o - o - o -
Circling Skies
[Read on AO3]
- o - o - o -
It wasn’t the first time Mercedes had asked her persistent shadow, “Sylvain? Can I help you?” but it was, perhaps, the first time she finally realized what he was staring at each time she turned around. His amber eyes, usually so aloof and guarded, were carefully watching the work of her hands.
She caught it only for a split second; when she turned around, there was laughter bubbling out of him and a dismissive, “Oh, y’know. Just tryin’ to get a good view.”
Mercedes smiled. She knew him better than he thought she did. “Do you have any questions?”
His eyebrows shot up behind his messy bangs. There was a flicker of his eyes again, a quick, furtive movement at the roll of gauze in her hands and the ointments sitting on the tray at her elbow. But it just as soon disappeared, replaced by his usual confident smile and lackadaisical pose, hands folded behind his head.
Sylvain shrugged. “Nah. Unless you wanna get dinner later?”
She giggled politely. “No, thank you.”
“Worth a try.”
It was a lie, but a kind one, and Mercedes could appreciate his effort when she knew perfectly well whose company it was that Sylvain truly loved to share a meal with each and every night.
- o - o - o -
Sylvain became somewhat of an odd cross between a fixture and a wallflower in Garreg Mach’s infirmary. At first, he tried to pass off his presence as, “Oh, I’m just here to appreciate our lovely, hard-working nurses,” but after a while even Professor Manuela eyed him with suspicion when he would inevitably, day after day, find some corner or stool or post to watch them from.
“You know, you can learn magic,” Mercedes once tried to tell him while laying a cool rag over another student’s feverish forehead. “I would be happy to share some of my books with you and teach you what I know.”
“What? Nah.” Sylvain had scoffed and looked away. “I wouldn’t have any use for it.”
But Mercedes watched the way he, in turn, worriedly watched his childhood friend across the field in their mock battle under bright, circling skies and wondered.
- o - o - o -
“So, the first thing I’m going to do is stop the bleeding,” Mercedes hummed. “This can be done either through a healing spell, or if magic is not available, making sure to tightly cover the wound.”
“Uh…okay,” the kid with the bleeding arm muttered. Her eyes looked up at the hovering redhead over Mercedes’ shoulder.
“Of course,” Mercedes continued breezily as if Sylvain fucking Gautier wasn’t right there, watching her every move like he wanted to memorize the pattern of movement of her hands. “If possible, it’s definitely important that I clean the wound before I go about wrapping it with the intent of leaving it to heal. Under the pressure and chaos of the battlefield, however, cleaning the wound may not be possible or even wise…”
“Um. Cool?”
“So when I am in that situation, my first priority is getting the wounded soldier out of danger and wait to clean the wound and bandage it until we have as sanitary an area as possible.”
“But…”
“That ‘bacteria’ you mentioned,” Sylvain murmured as if what she was saying actually made sense.
The girl looked between them, wondering if she had missed some sort of joke or training or lecture that would explain what was going on. Her ponytail smacked against her cheek with every turn. “Aren’t we at school? Can’t you just heal me and get this over with?” Was the please in her voice too obvious?
A loud clap filled the infirmary as Mercedes brought her hands together, her sweet smile lifted above it. “Yes, of course! But most importantly of all…”
“Y-yeah?”
“I shouldn’t forget how helpful water can be if I have no true medical supplies and ointments available,” Mercedes chirped and Sylvain, with his handsome angular face oddly serious, nodded.
“That’s…that’s great…” the kid sighed.
- o - o - o -
Felix wasn’t an idiot.
He had known Sylvain far longer than he was comfortable with other people knowing, so he knew when the young man was doing something behind his back. It was embarrassingly obvious. He wasn’t fully sure what it was, though; the instant he had narrowed down the location of Sylvain’s haunting grounds to the Garreg Mach infirmary, he lost all interest in pursuing the query further.
Sylvain is trying to chase the skirts of our healers, he thought and wrote the matter off because it was so unbearably Sylvain of him.
They were placed on cooking duty together because—well—Felix can’t quite remember the reason, exactly; the Professor mentioned something she had to run and take care of, but Felix couldn’t exactly make out the words under the woman’s breath. Formidable swordsman she may herself be, she didn’t always use her full volume when speaking outside of lectures and the battlefield.
So there Felix and Sylvain were, side-by-side in the kitchen, talking idly about the latest scuffle against bandits the Professor had led them against over the weekend. And Felix had just switched hands on the pan to reach for a pair of tongs as Sylvain said, “Of course I was watching you; what else was there to look at?”—which is exactly when, and probably why, everything went wrong.
“What the—” Sylvain yelped the same instant Felix did as the pan jerked forward, hot oil splashing out over his hand and up his wrist. The roasting chuck catapulted to the floor. The pan followed suit a second afterward, clanging loudly against the tile.
Sylvain leaped forward over it. “Felix! Shit! You okay?”
Immediately, Felix yanked back and pulled his hand tight to his chest. A sharp breath sucked in through his teeth. Blissfully cold. “Fine.”
“What the—of course you’re not!” There was a split-second of terrible uncertainty and for Felix, it seemed to go on for hours until Sylvain finally swore again and turned around for the sink, grumbling, “Ugh, damn it! Of course you get burned! I didn’t even think to ask how to take care of burns!”
“Wh—”
“Here.”
And in the next second, Sylvain was there and his hands were warm through the cold rag that he pressed over Felix’s hand. Another cold, sharp breath shot through Felix’s teeth.
“That hurts.”
“Sorry,” Sylvain muttered, frown pinching his face. “Can’t exactly help with that.”
Felix huffed because it seemed the only thing he was capable of doing. Whatever anger he wanted to muster wasn’t building. He sighed instead. “Whatever. At least…you didn’t get any oil on yourself?”
“No.”
“I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s fine.” Sylvain chuckled and the sound, as always, drew Felix’s eyes to the handsome sweep of his smile. “Actually, if you think about it, it’s kind of ironic.”
“What is?”
“Oh, I’ve been…” Sylvain’s eyes slipped to the side. There was a moment where Felix thought he might actually be honest, but true to Sylvain’s nature he just chuckled and shook his head. “Never mind. Gotta admit: sorry to say, but I don’t think I’ll be much help here. Want me to grab Mercedes? She’ll have you fixed up in a jiffy.”
Felix looked down at the fold of Sylvain’s hands over his. He should be able to feel the angry burn, right? So how come it feels so detached, as if someone else’s hand must have gotten singed by oil instead of his? Felix shrugged after a moment. “Do what you wish. It’s not my sword hand.”
Sylvain rolled his eyes. On his way past Felix, he was sure to add, “As if that makes it any less important! Weirdo.”
Alone in the kitchens, the ends of Felix’s mouth finally soften into a smirk.
He looks at the rag wrapped around his hand and leans against the nearest table. “So that’s what you’ve been up to in the infirmary. How unlike you, Sylvain.”
prompt: “Telepathic Connections of Conversations” + Nayden & Kaimana
requested by: @moominquartz
hello i’m back with my uh “I’m Your Dad Now” modern-day AU of my own OC’s laksjdf I hope you enjoy these shenanigans?
this is a companion piece to “Temblor,” which I did a bad things happen bingo prompt with “hostage video” and Nayden so consider this the, uh, sequel? maybe there will be a third one and we can see if Boaz is all right? he did put himself in danger after daring to pull in an outside person to save his sister... :3c
anyway, if you read, i hope you enjoy!
- o - o - o -
Jump In
[Read on AO3]
- o - o - o -
The kid isn’t picking up his damn phone, which is, perhaps, the one thing that ticks Kaimana Lee off more than anything else that has happened this wild whirlwind of a day. He still doesn’t know what to do about the other one strapped to the seat behind him, watching him in the rearview mirror with round brown eyes. The one with the intangible Too Loud Too Loud Too Loud that insistently presses against his skull. He wishes he could shut it out, shut her up, but even he isn’t cruel enough to stick those damn yellow earmuffs back on after everything.
“Hey! Could you shut off your thoughts for like, one second?” he asks her, shifting his gaze up to the rearview mirror. The back of his white-knuckled hand, clenched around the body of his navy flip phone, bangs against the fake leather of his steering wheel.
Nayden presses her lips together. She tilts her head. She seems amused, which is just great. At least there’s one person getting a kick out of this nightmare.
Not good?
“Not good,” he rumbles and jams his thumb onto the call button for the thirteenth time. He pulls the phone up to his ear.
A red light. Great.
The car screeches to a stop.
C’mon, Boaz. He grunts as the call goes to voicemail again. Fourteenth try’s the charm, right? Why the hell aren’t you answering me, kid? I’ve got your sister. What more are you going to put me through?
Two hands latch onto his shoulders immediately. Kaimana’s thoughts burst with warmth and joy and at the same time, worry--all not his own. He almost bites his tongue in the surprise, hissing and sorely wondering why the hell he thought it was a good idea to buckle the telepathic girl into the seat behind him.
“Bo sent you!” she cries in his head and ears.
“Fuck!”
Green light. The car wheels screech from how hard Kaimana shoves his foot onto the pedal. He thought who hired him was obvious, but maybe it isn’t.
There’s another thought that rides in on the coattails of the other sensations pushing into his mind, a soft and grief-ridden: Then Dad didn’t.
“Course not,” Kaimana mumbles under his breath. He glances up in the rearview mirror the same instant he gives up on trying to get a hold of the other Diggory kid. After snapping his flip-phone shut, he tosses it into the seat next to him and takes a turn. Change of plans. “You as smart as your brother, kid?”
Probably not.
“Do you know what Boaz knows?”
It’s strange, the way you can suddenly be made to feel like a photo album. A page flips inside his own head, memories postmarked like printed 4x6’s, framed in transparent plastic sleeves to gleam up whatever answers someone’s searching for. There’s a few more flips until the right image and memory is found: the one where he first met Boaz in the cornflower blue office, old and dusty and poorly decorated because when the hell does someone like Kaimana Lee ever have time or money for actual decorating?
Oh.
That single word--is it even really a word?--presses with it so many other sad feelings, too. Something bitter, almost acidic on his tongue. Disappointment? Is that what he tastes?
I had hoped…
So Boaz was the smarter of the two.
Another red light. This time, their stop is much more natural and easy. Kaimana lifts his gaze to the rearview mirror again. The fake leather of the steering wheel whines under the tight squeeze of his hands. “Mind explainin’ how the hell he knew it was your father in the first place?”
An image is passed over in return: a flash of the strange, obnoxious yellow earmuffs. The sensory press of them over his--her?--ears, and the dead silence of the world that followed.
No outside thoughts.
Just her own.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, um,” Nayden mutters like a confession. “Dad’s been careful ever since they…woke up? I guess you’d call it? No one else knows about our abilities outside of the family.” There’s an uncertain, iffy: I think, anyway, but Kaimana ignores it because now, ahead of him, there’s a much larger and much more important question.
Now what?
Kaimana wishes he had a toothpick to chew on as he racked his brain. There had to be a way to get out of this mess; what was the right thing to do here? Was it just to heedlessly jump in? How else was he supposed to extricate himself from the ugly situation of two superpowered kids that had a cruel enough father to stage their own kidnapping and ransom?
What was even the point of that? Where would the one million dollars have gone, huh? Back in his own fucking pocket?
“The audit.”
Kaimana’s eyes jerk up in time to catch both the green light and the matter-of-fact look on Nayden’s face as she stares at him in the rearview mirror. “Excuse me?”
“Dad was worried about an upcoming audit before I got kidnapped.”
Nayden says it so simply, as if it is supposed to line up perfectly with all the other pieces floating around in this giant mess of a jigsaw puzzle.
“What the hell does that mean?” Kaimana curses and shakes his head. He turns to take the ramp. “Never mind. One thing at a time. Kid, you’re good with this whole mind…conversing…speaking…thing, right?”
How the hell is he so chill with this, anyway? Sometimes, Kaimana surprises himself.
Of a sort, yeah.
“Think you can tell me how to get to your house?”
There’s a flit of surprised joy. Cloudy, airy, and light. Golden. And You’re taking me home? only to be quickly counteracted by Kaimana’s own grim premonition that there isn’t most likely a good reason why her brother isn’t answering his cell phone. In fact, it’s probably very bad.
If we’re going southbound on I-49, then…
The route sears itself into his mind. Clean and clear and precise.
“Got it,” Kaimana grumbles and shoves his foot onto the accelerator.
MAN THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE also largely healing considering that canon suf is really tearing me up man. it’s so good but i’m literally having difficulty sleeping laskdjflkajsdf
so take some tooth-rotting fluff instead
set somewhere in Season 4, prbly!!
o - o - o
Teehee Valley
[Read on AO3]
o - o - o
Some of the buildings are barely standing under the midday desert sun. Worn paint peels off of rotting wood. Planks that cross over one another, boarding up broken windows, sag beneath the sweltering heat. There’s a tattered flag that marks what was once a saloon but now hangs listless, unmoving under the lack of wind.
As their horses trod into the stuffy carcass of Duston, Sheriffs Lapis and Stephanos have the uncomfortable feeling of being watched.
Lapis dismounts first.
“Well,” she mutters as she casts a blue eye over the decrepit ghost town. “I guess that means we’re here. Now what?”
“Now…” Stephanos hops down from his horse and gives her nose a big, appreciative kiss. (The horse’s nose, he is sure to clarify, though he adds that he wouldn’t mind giving Lapis’ nose a big, appreciative kiss if it was feeling left out. Lapis snickers and says something to the effect of, if her nose was feeling neglected, he would be the first to know.) “I think Sheriff Perrington said the Rhombus Bandits were supposed to be here, right?”
“Oh, right.” Lapis draws her twin water pistols. “So, what, do we roll initiative?”
Stephanos shrugs and brings their entire game to a halt.
o - o - o
“To clarify,” Peridot points out with a lifted finger. “As a reminder for those who have a bad habit of not paying attention to the rules: you do not have to roll initiative until the fight actually begins.”
“Okay,” Lapis says. She shrugs. “So I shoot a guy. Now do we roll initiative?”
Steven has to smush a hand to his mouth to stifle his giggle at the strained look crossing Peridot’s face.
“You just want to fight.”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Ugh, fine.” Peridot rolls her eyes and her lifted hand. “Yeah, okay. You see a pair of eyes peeking at you through a gap in one of the boarded-up windows, so you fire a shot. Roll initiative.”
o - o - o
“All right!” Stephanos cheers as the water hits true. They hear a surprised squawk from the squatter behind the boarded windows of the local grocery. “Go Lapis!”
“Eh. I’m just that good.”
Soon after, other bandits attack and either reveal their hiding places to the sharp-eyed Sheriff Lapis, or crawl out into plain view for her to shoot at head-on. Lapis makes quick and suspiciously well-rolled work of the bandits as Stephanos covers her back. Under the medic’s care, Lapis is continually protected and buffed.
Then the leader of the Rhombus Bandits finally steps into the center of Duston’s road and Stephanos gasps.
Lapis squares her shoulders.
(“This is gonna be just like one of those old Western quick-draws, isn’t it!”
“That is the point of the final round in all Badlands & Bandits combat sequences, yes.”)
“Well, well, well…” Yellow, the leader of the Rhombus Bandits rumbles from deep in his broad chest. “So you’ve come all this way from tiny ol’ Barnopolis to fight little ol’ me? Why, Sheriffs, I’m flattered.”
o - o - o
Lapis howls and clutches at her stomach. Steven laughs, too, but really it’s far more at the fact that Lapis finds it so funny. She has to lean against his shoulder to keep upright. His legs, sticking into the air behind him, kick idly and giddily.
“What? What the heck is that?” Lapis gasps.
“What is what?” Peridot’s face flushes into deep cedar green.
“That accent!”
“It’s a character voice, you clod!”
That sets Lapis off all over again, making her laugh harder than Steven has ever heard before.
It reminds him how much he likes Badlands & Bandits.
o - o - o
“Yeah, we, uh--” Stephanos looks to Lapis for a little help, but she’s still wiping tears out from under her eyes. “--we came all this way because of what you’ve done to poor Sir Perrington in Barnopolis! How could you steal all of that man’s wealth and livelihood?”
“You Sheriffs just won’t understand. You never do…why, when I was once a noble Sheriff, I--”
Lapis stuffles her snickers with a snort. She lifts her water pistol. “Yeah, whatever. Can’t we just get this over with?”
Yellow gave a long, drawn-out groan. “You never let me finish my evil villain monologues! Fine! Whatever! Draw your weapon. On the count of ten, we fire!”
Seven beats later and Lapis is the victor, much to the disgruntled game master’s dismay.
o - o - o
“Steven, don’t encourage her!” Peridot squawks at the boy’s enthusiastic cheers and high-fives. “Lapis totally cheated!”
“Nuh-uh!” Steven pouts. “Lapis cleared that dexterity check fair and square!”
“Yeah, her dexterity check…to cheat!”
“It’s not cheating if the rules say I can.”
“You’ve been rolling abnormally high all game long, anyway. It’s possible you may have done something to alter your die unfairly.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“A likely story!” Peridot ruffles her own hair with a grimace. “Ugh, you always do this! You never pay attention to the rules! You never care about the story and the ghost towns I spend hours crafting! You’re just here because Steven is, too!”
“Guys! Guys!” Steven pushes himself up off of his tummy and onto his knees, hands extended between the two. “Can’t we at least finish this session? I mean, we’re so close to the end of the quest! We’ve defeated Yellow, so now we just gotta return Sir Perrington’s gold and we’ll be done for the night!” He swallows back the urge to add, And then you never have to play it with me again, but he’s sure the sentiment is already felt.
A peculiar look crosses Lapis’ face. After a moment’s pause, she leans back on one hand. “Or do we?”
“What?” Steven and Peridot ask.
“Do we have to return the gold to Sir Perrington?”
“What do you mean? It’s his.”
“Yeah, but.” Lapis rolls her free hand loosely. “He’s sitting all cozy in that uppity mansion of his in Barnopolis, right? And he only got all of his riches off the backs of his workers in the mines. So who really deserves all his gold?”
Steven’s eyes widen. “You mean you want to redistribute it to his miners?”
“Why not?”
Peridot looks to Steven and frets at the genuine thought that creases his round, young face. “Steven! You’re not really considering giving Sir Perrington’s money to other people, right? You guys are Sheriffs!”
“Yeah,” Lapis shrugs. “But we need a new antagonist for the next part of the story, right? And how interesting of a twist would it be if it was the man who was once our, uh, ‘humble patron’?”
Peridot freezes with her mouth open and pointer finger extended. After a moment, she closes her mouth and sits back. “I see your point.”
Steven’s eyes shine like stars. “So we can do it? We can really Robin Hood his money away?”
“And you’re both going to be in on this?” Peridot says by way of answer. “Neither Lapis or Stephanos have any reservations about going back on their word to Sir Perrington? They did promise on their stations as Sheriffs to safely return his gold, if you remember. I would think if anything, Stephanos and his medic vows would keep him from being dishonest.”
Lapis and Steven share a look.
Lapis smiles first. “Yeah. We’re in this thing together,” she says and Steven cheers with both fists raised.
prompt: “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” w/ Steven & Peridot
requested by: @moominquartz
so I got this prompt from my darling husband a while ago, and then the new episodes of SUF aired, and I got Feelings and realized these feelings could perfectly fit said prompt
so here, have my feelings.
basically s06e11, “In Dreams,” but from Peridot’s perspective
- * - * -
Cobalt
[Read on AO3]
- * - * -
When Peridot asked her, Lapis had shrugged her shoulders and said, “Meh,” a word and an emotion that Peridot could not, for the life of her, empathize with. If there is one thing Peridot has learned in her life-changing short time on Earth, it’s enthusiasm.
So Peridot went to Steven and Steven promised that he’d record the first reboot episode, and that’s what he did. To Peridot, this is the proof of ultimate friendship: that Steven is willing to sit alongside her and see where this new version of the Best Show In The Known Universe goes.
Her gratitude went and still goes beyond the usual, “Wow, thanks,” and more so into the territory of volunteering herself to bring the soda and popcorn as is customary, she understands, to these sorts of things.
But the new Camp Pining Hearts--if it can even call itself that--is awful. What the actual fuck is Rodrigo?
So the idea to remake the show with their own ideas and using Steven’s dreams and ability to somehow manipulate the television to project said new version of the rebooted show is ingenious.
It sounds like such a good idea at the time.
- * - * -
There is something frightening in the way Steven doesn’t wake up from his latest dream. On the television screen in front of her, the young man sits upright in his bedroom but when she looks behind herself, Steven glows bright pink and slumbers tight-faced underneath his blankets. So Peridot watches with her legs pulled to her chest as Steven finds her, somehow, impossibly, in his own head, staring at the screen with a discolored visor.
The dream gets stranger.
There’s a party? In a floating version of the beach house? Peridot doesn’t know what to make of what she’s seeing, only that her dream-self is intent on attending said party as Steven chases after her.
The house tries to rid itself of him. It’s the only way Peridot can explain the floor breaking open under Steven, splitting right down the middle like an ancient booby trap. Then the screen breaks into a busy signal of multi-colored rectangles and it buzzes, distorting Steven’s desperation as he reaches out to the image of her in his dream.
And Peridot unplugs the television.
- * - * -
She is stupid.
She is so, so stupid.
It had sounded like a good idea at the time.
She had known Steven was hurting. Hadn’t she? Hadn’t someone mentioned it to her? Hadn’t someone, somewhere, said the words, “Hey, I’m worried about Steven”? They had to have, right? Garnet? Amethyst? Pearl?
Had they not?
Did no one notice that their round, bright-eyed starchild has been battling something eating away inside of him?
For how long?
Peridot’s boots pound across the bedroom floor. She shakes both of Steven’s shoulders, calling his name over and over again and when Steven presses a hand to his face to hide the big, round cobalt tears slipping down his gasping face, he finally wakes for real.
“I saw everything!” she says.
And the Peridot of two years ago may not have known much about human customs and friendship, but she knows Steven now. She knows everything they’ve gone through; she knows the kid that held her in the drill at the center of the Earth and said, “I love you,” and the instant she can, the instant he’s sitting up and curled over--so, so big now; how can it be he’s grown so much and yet at the same time, he’s still so, so small?--she gets her arms around him and holds him tight.
“It’s okay,” Peridot says as many times as she can in between her words of comfort, as many times as he may need to hear it.
Steven breathes against her. It is shaky and weak.
She hopes he knows how much she cares about him.
When Peridot takes off her glasses and wipes at her eyes, Steven looks at her with such relief and joy that it nearly drowns out the fear and anxiety swimming thick underneath.
Peridot sets down her glasses. She hugs him again.
She lets him hug her for as long as he needs to until he believes, for real, that she’s not leaving.
