Hey, if you’re still doing the short fic thing, how about Ascot and Caldina for #6 (platonic, of course)? If not, just ignore this.
I realised - while I was working on a bunch of other fluffy nonsense - that I never did write this. Which was bad of me. I had to go find the post in question, to go find the prompt. I think it was this post, which means it was Ascot and Caldina living in a crowded apartment together.
Does a crowded house share count?
Temporary - Teen - Modern AU
It was a temporary situation.
That’s what Caldina kept telling herself. This was only temporary. Eventually, she would have enough money that she and Ascot could go on and find a better place to live - without all of these losers.
A place without that bitchy Alcyone writing passive aggressive notes on the whiteboard about other people not doing the washing up.
It was one thing for her to do it. Another, entirely, for her to be doing it with a permanent marker rather than a dry erase one. Was she too narcissistic to notice the difference, or was she just stupid?
And what was she doing including Zagato in her notes? She didn’t speak for him, or his feelings on cleanliness. (Caldina was pretty sure Zagato was one of the ones leaving dirty plates in the sink, just to piss Alcyone off.) It also wasn’t like Alcyone had a chance with him. The guy had a girlfriend, and a serious one, at that - Caldina had heard him talking to Innouva about a ring a few months ago.
Pulling the board off the wall for the third time that week - and it was only Thursday - Caldina pulled the cleaning spray out of the cabinet and started to scrub off that sickeningly girly handwriting. There was a part of her that dearly, desperately wanted to just write FUCK OFF across the board with the biggest, brightest, and stinkiest permanent marker she could find. But she wasn’t ready for the drama that would unleash.
And Ascot didn’t like the squabbling. (It made him nervous. Poor kid.)
She hung the blank board back up on the wall. There was no point rewriting the cooking rota. She and Zagato were taking turns this week because Innouva was too busy with some big project, and Alcyone couldn’t be bothered. Ascot still offered to do a night on his own, but after the pasta incident, none of them were ready to let him alone with the hob again.
Turning on the water, she picked up the bottle of washing up liquid and a sponge.
Caldina was just putting the last dish on the draining board when the front door rattled open and Ascot called that he was home. She dried off her hands and walked out into the corridor to greet him, only to find herself face to face with a hulk of tall, blond muscle carrying an almost equally large box.
“This is LaFarga,” Ascot said cheerfully, pushing his way around toward the kitchen. His school tie missing, cardigan hanging off his left shoulder, and what looked to be paw prints on his shirt - again. “He’s moving into Lantis’s old room. LaFarga, this is Aunt Caldina.”
“Oh,” Caldina said, looking up at LaFarga. “Hi.”
“Hi,” LaFarga said with a gentle smile. “Which room is mine, then? All Zagato told me was that it was his brother’s.”
“Um, upstairs,” she said. “Second door on the right. I think it still has an old ‘keep out’ sticker on the door.”
“Thanks!” he said, and head the way she pointed.
Caldina tried her best not to stare as he walked away, but damn that man was fit!
Maybe this living situation wasn’t so bad after all.
Mokonalord, your friendly neighborhood Ascot Enthusiast, here. Just curious about something. I personally headcanon Ascot as autistic. Any thoughts on that?
I definitely think it’s a possibility! Honestly, I’ve barely been reintroduced to the character, so I don’t think I’m in a position to really say right now. But you’ve known the character for a while, so if you think your headcanon’s got evidence to back it up, I believe you!
So this moment, I think, is super important to understanding Ascot. He’s just flat out told Hikaru and Fuu that they’ve been killing his friends.
Then he says that people told him that monsters like those couldn’t be his friends because they’re monsters, but Ascot claims they’re just misunderstood. And I think that tells us a lot about Ascot right there. I’m veering straight into headcanon territory here but this is what I’m starting to think. His whole life he’s been able to summon monsters and communicate with them, kind of along the lines of the way Hikaru communicates with Mokona. But people keep telling him that it’s not right (and let’s be real here, with him being so young people were probably worried about him getting hurt). So he isolates himself, making friends with his beasts instead of with other people because people are araid of and shun his monsters, and to a lesser extent, him. And when Zagato needs someone to summon monsters and fight for him, Ascot was all over that. Here is his chance to prove that his monsters can do some good, that they’re not weird at all. That Ascot’s relationship with his monsters is not weird, but helpful. But Ascot wasn’t counting on the Magic Knights being so strong. He was youthfully arrogant in his assumption that his beastly friends could defeat anyone he sicced them on, but he was wrong. So in his anger and grief, he keeps ill-advisedly sending his friends against the Magic Knights, watching as they kill every one in turn. You know, he probably saw that as yet another attack from society punishing him for daring to be friends with monsters. Which finally culminates in the breakdown we’re seeing here.
And Hikaru has had enough of his finger pointing. How DARE Ascot accuse them of killing his friends, when they would have been fine in the first place had he not sent them to fight? Was he actually okay with sending them to their deaths? Didn’t it make him hurt to see them hurting? Why didn’t he help them when they were in danger? How can he say he cares for them when he just kept sending them to die? Who does Ascot really care about, if not his friends? Hikaru just cannot comprehend anyone being willing to see their friends suffer when she cannot stand it herself. But she’s not letting Ascot place the blame solely on the shoulders of the Magic Knights; he has to realize that his friends’ deaths were as much his fault as anyone elses.
