what you do know
aaric x reader (sunny!)
words: 1.7k
🏷️: one business year later, we continue! our sweet prince is the best teacher slash personal trainer ever <3, no spoilers in this one, dain cameo, a lot of the girlfriends like subdueing challenge opponents with knives because I’m bad at writing fight scenes and know nothing about hand fighting at all lol
You are absolutely going to lose this challenge match. There is no other possible outcome than you getting your shit kicked, even with the week’s worth of extra training you’ve gotten from Aaric.
He’s been endlessly patient, holding his tongue when he realized you didn’t know some of the most basic things about hand combat, being gentle with his critique and careful not to startle you with any physical contact he needs to correct your form.
Like he knows.
No, if he knew, he wouldn’t spend so much time on keeping you alive and afloat in class, and would have decided weeks ago that you were hopeless, and weren’t worth the effort.
He’d put you through the paces yesterday, in the hopes of you not being stomped on the mat today, and asked you at the end of your lesson — “So, what are you going to do tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” you’d panted from where you laid flat on your back on the gross floor of the training room.
“Then use what you do know.”
Well… It might not be allowed, but you could plead ignorance afterward; you still haven’t made it to the halfway point of the Codex they’d given you. Your days are hard enough without a mental workout on top of everything you’re already struggling with so desperately. Any free time that isn’t spent working with Aaric is spent asleep.
But... fuck it. What do you have to lose, except your life, which isn’t even really yours?
This girl likes to fight at close range, and she doesn’t seem as poised and as sharp as Aaric, not by a long shot. She probably wouldn’t notice. Especially if you can time things right, get a good hit in somewhere.
She lacks something else Aaric has, too — tact. It’s widely known that you suck, and she’s eager to be seen taking someone down. That’s probably why she comes in swinging as soon as Emeterrio gives the go-ahead.
If she had done any research, she would have known that the one thing you’re good at is dodging. And not to throw her entire weight into a blow like that, because if it doesn’t land, she’ll trip.
She also should have taken off her knives before she got on the mat, because this is supposed to be a test of hand combat, not weaponry.
Her loss, literally. She’s too busy regaining her balance to notice the weight disappear.
You fall into a pattern of trading hits, just like you would with Aaric, only hers actually land instead of falling an inch from your skin. And she’s getting two or three for your one. But these matches are timed, and you’ve managed to add a good thirty seconds to your defeat time each round.
And taking longer to be “killed” is good. If an enemy would tire themself out by fighting you, then at least your squad will have a better chance at survival, more time to rest or to run or to come save your sorry ass.
It’s unclear what the consequence of failing every week is, but it probably isn’t good. And how will you figure out what works if you don’t fuck around a little and take a few risks?
There had been one thing Aaric mentioned offhandedly, but unable to demonstrate it to you without hurting you or another squad member -- but if you dig your thumb into the skin below her collarbone hard enough, in just the right spot…
Yep.
Her knees hit the floor with a scream that has even the third-years looking your way. You release the pressure near immediately, but keep her in place with your newest acquisition — that she finally realizes isn’t yours.
She pushes your arm away easily, going after the professor instead. “She cheated!”
He looks completely unfazed. “She clearly had full control of you, and a knife to your throat. That’s where it ends, because that’s where your life could have ended.”
“But she didn’t — it’s not hers!”
“Professor, you said if we strip them off an opponent in a fight, they’re ours to keep, right?” Sloane adds for you, looking innocent.
“That is correct.”
“Sucks to be you, then,” Dain says dryly, before turning to you. “Sleep with one eye open, kid. Though I guess you have the advantage over her with those.”
You fight a smile as you see it dawn on her — Dain said those, plural. She had a second knife, too, that is now tucked into the waistband of your pants. Thankfully she decides to quit while she’s behind, storming off to pout with her squad.
“That was pretty sick,” Ridoc says, grinning ear to ear on your behalf.
Aaric hands you back your original knife and your necklace, giving you a curt nod of approval before his focus returns to the new match that is about to start.
———
“You feeling okay?” He asks as he slides into his seat in the lecture hall with his usual grace and ease.
“Mm. Just tired. The reading took me forever,” you explain through a yawn. “I didn’t get to sleep until late.”
“It was only ten pages,” Sloane says, cocking her head to the side.
“Oh,” you manage. “I must have read more than one chapter then. Guess I’ll be ahead for next week.”
As if. The idea of you being ahead in anything academic is laughable. You’d only managed to keep up because winning your match yesterday earned you a night off from extra sparring with Aaric.
Thankfully she doesn’t think much of your excuse, settling into the seat beside you and getting out her notebook as Kaori starts his lesson. Hearing it discussed aloud, the reading makes more sense. No wonder everyone else considered it easy — it was.
It should have been, at least.
How do you even spell Gormfil— whatever he just said? It definitely isn’t Krovlish. Maybe not even the common language. But then again, you aren’t the gold standard for vocabulary around here.
A quick look around shows that everyone else is still writing, following along easily, their eyes still on the professor. No looks of confusion anywhere.
But if you spend too long puzzling this out, you’ll miss more information.
Aaric underlines the word on his own page with a quick scratch of his quill, and you copy it down before he notices, committing the proper spelling to memory.
This isn’t technically cheating, right? It’s not a test or anything, just a lecture. And if Kaori had written that on the board when he first mentioned it, you wouldn’t have needed to copy Aaric, anyway.
The guilty feeling is replaced with more scrambling to keep up, to glean every bit of information you can from this lecture so you can squeak by with only half the reading.
Aaric hears the scratching of your quill stop again, sees the tip hovering over the page in hesitation.
He underlines another word, this time scooting the notebook over toward you ever so slightly. All of the letters on his page are immaculate, the lines of text perfectly straight and structured, organized — unlike your sprawling web of arrows, with circles around things you’d deemed important.
Most of the points on your page have circles around them. And most of said circles have been smudged before they could dry. How his page and his hand is perfectly clean is beyond you.
———
You don’t want to know how long you’ve been sitting in this damn chair. But the bell tower tells you anyway, with its quarterly chiming, that it’s approaching eight. You’d settled here after sunset, when you were required to go back to the dorms, and thankfully very few people decided to use the rest of the night to study, as you three — as Aaric, really — had.
“I’m calling it,” Sloane announces, stacking up her books and papers. “I’m going to bed. If I know it, I know it; if I don’t, I don’t.”
“Fair enough,” you reply, equally exhausted, but you’re nowhere near done with your review. “Do you want me to walk back with you?”
“I’ll be fine,” she says with a wave of her hand, holding up her textbook. “If anyone tries anything, I’ll just swing this at them.”
You manage a laugh. “Sounds like a plan. Goodnight.”
“Night.”
There’s a moment of quiet after Sloane’s footsteps recede. You shake your head to clear it, looking back at the page in front of you. You can do this. Just work through it and get it done so you can get some sleep. How hard can it be?
Hard. Very hard, actually.
Aaric chooses his words carefully. “It’s not the subject that’s hard for you, it’s the reading, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” you admit quietly, still focusing your gaze on the textbook, the blurring wall of words that takes up the whole page. “I didn’t spend a lot of time in school as a child.”
He doesn’t ask why, nor dig any deeper. “Would it help if I read it to you?”
It would be so easy to say yes, so you can get this over with and go to bed, but he’s already helped you so much… and he won’t always be there to hold your hand. You can’t get used to relying on him for everything — you need to soldier up and figure this out yourself.
“I can do it,” you answer. “I just need time.”
“I know you can do it. I asked if it would help.”
You chew your lip for a moment, your resolve crumbling. “It would.”
“Okay,” he says simply, sliding the book toward him and starting to read aloud from where you’d left off.
You focus on his voice, closing your eyes and imagining the words as musical notes, working together to create phrases and verse.
It all starts to make sense.
You reach for your notebook, scribbling rapidly, not concerning yourself with the spelling, just the facts and the formulas, and the way things are connected.
“That’s the end of it. Do you want me to read any of it again?”
“I think I got it, thank you,” you say softly. “That really helped.”
He gives you a soft smile. “Of course.”
Something about Aaric is just different. Attention from him feels warm and fluttery, unlike the unsettling, sticky feeling of the men in Calldyr City. His smiles are warm and genuine, not creepy, and he’s always been gentle, aware of the strength of his hands — the one time he’d caused you pain, he’d noticed, and withdrawn immediately, going so far as to apologize.
Maybe this is how men are supposed to act.