name: disproportionate
canon: tales of xillia 2
characters: ludger, alt milla
notes/words: a wip that was sitting pretty elsewhere. 344 words
ao3.
She knows she likes him a hell of a lot more than he likes her.
He smiles at her. He looks at her when he thinks she isn’t looking, with those curious and concerned eyes. He teases her about her relationship with Elle, he asks her questions about her life, and when she snaps at him for both things he doesn’t back down for long. Those become easier to stomach and answer the longer they travel together, but nothing else he does does. He catches her wrist every time she tries to storm from a room, lips pursed. Sometimes he apologizes. Sometimes she does. He doesn’t mind it when she leans against him after a battle, or when she nitpicks the order (or the lack-there-of) of his ingredients on the counter, or when she opens her mouth to say something and closes it just as fast, shaking her head. He asks if she’s okay when he catches her being quiet–citing this, even, as a reason to be worried.
Still, she likes him more than he likes her, and she hates every
single
second of it. She hates liking him, because she involuntarily jerks her hand away when their fingers brush. She abhors liking him, because she jumps when he touches her shoulders and arms and hair. She wishes she could unlike him, because it would be better than feeling her chest cave in whenever he blushes and stutters around the people in their group he does like to the same extent she likes him. Anything would be better than feeling sick around him, or worrying over her appearance when it’s just the two of them, or not being able to keep the strain out of her voice when she denies there’s anything between them. Anything at all would be better than grasping at straws for hope that hey, look, maybe they’re on the same page about this, maybe he does like her the way she likes him and she isn’t just fooling herself like the nagging voice that sounds like her sister’s keeps saying.
