hi! i absolutely adore your CR drabble series on AO3. could you do a drabble where either yeza takes care of veth when she's overworking herself OR they both are tired and taking care of each other? I love any sort of domestic fluff. I know you don't usually write veth/yeza, so no worries if you decide not to write this one!
The baby is crying. There's smoke coming from the oven, thick and choking. The bell over the apothecary door downstairs jingles. In the storage room, somethings tips over, crashing to the stone floor. Yeza swears. The baby cries louder. The laundry has been sitting in its dirty water for two days.
Veth stands in the middle, eyes burning and mind buzzing. She doesn't know where to begin, which emergency to address first—the baby. The baby is crying.
She moves mechanically to his crib, scoops him up and does her best to wrangle his thrashing limbs. "Hey, my little button," she coos, half-delirious in her exhaustion. "There's no need to cry." Smoke continues to billow from the sides of the closed oven door. "Okay, we're about to suffocate to death, so maybe there is a need to cry."
She needs to address the smoke situation—baking bread for the first time is not the thing to try when there are a thousand other things going on, it turns out—but she doesn't want to bring Luc any closer. She's just about to call Yeza up to come take him when her husband's voice reaches her first. "VETH, A LITTLE HELP, PLEASE."
Yes, Veth thinks. I would love some. Better to bring the baby down, anyways; smoke rises. She scurries down the stairs, still failing to quiet Luc's squalls, and she's greeted by a line at the apothecary counter, four people with baskets that will take forever for Yeza to tally up. She was always better at math than he is. She slips beside him and passes him the baby. "Let me do this. You go put out the fire."
"Fire?" Yeza squeaks, but she shoos him off. She hasn't slept in two days, but somehow she adds up every order, takes the gold, pays back the coppers and silvers, until the line is gone and the smell of smoke is no longer so threatening. She slams the register closed, and Yeza appears at the top of the stairs, sans Luc. "Are we good?"
"We're good. I short-changed that human guy, he was being a dick." She slumps against the counter. "Is Luc okay?"
"Back asleep." Yeza comes down and begins massaging Veth's shoulders. She might just pass out right here, right now. "Veth, it looks like a war zone up there."
Just like that, she's wide awake and seething. "Yeah, well, I'm trying my fucking best—"
"No, no, no." He stops, spins her around, and takes her hands in his. "That's not what I meant. What I meant was I didn't know you needed help."
She fights the urge to roll her eyes. "Of course I need help, Yez. We have a baby and a home and we need to eat and as smart as you are, you can't do basic math."
"You're right, which is why I asked you for help. Maybe you could try it sometime?"
Okay, she gets his hint. "I just...you have a lot going on. With the store and your experiments. I love your alchemy, you know that."
"I do know that. I love it, too. I just love you and Luc more."
Veth leans forward so her head is tipped down onto his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm just...not used to having people I can count on."
His hand rubs up and down her back. "I know," he murmurs in her ear. "But you've got us now, and I'm never gonna let anything happen to you and Luc."
And she believes him, because Yeza is many things, but he is not a liar. She lets him hold her behind the counter of their store, beneath the floorboards of the home they made together, and she knows herself to be safe.
