Rebecca and Kana really like going out, anywhere with a good atmosphere. That could be a local festival, taking a trip to a concert, or--and I'm going to pretend there is one of these in Nivio even though I have no proof of it--dance halls. They loooove dancing together. Clubs are also an option, but Rebecca prefers the slightly quieter atmosphere, and Kana prefers making Becca comfortable.
Rebecca/Sebastian
Sebastian really likes dates that are just doing something together at home--cooking together, watching movies, mutually vibing in the same room while they read different books--and Becca is super into that. But if they're going to go out, I think they would do something traditional like going to a nice restaurant together, especially one that takes a while to drive to so they can just vibe in the car.
Sage/Li/Sebastian
Favorite dates for these three would be incredibly nerdy shit. They love staying in and piling under blankets to watch the extended LOTR films, but they would also probably do shit like going to a hobby store to buy and gush (argue) about comics. 100% go to cons together, too.
Yoshiko/Azalea
This is the only couple I have a single, really specific date in mind for lol. Yoshiko and Az love having picnics in Az's garden. They'll spend the morning making each other's favorite foods (Yoshiko needs her sister's help sometimes though bc this woman can and will burn water), and then they meet up and throw out a blanket under Az's maple tree and lounge around together while they eat snacks.
I absolutely love your hurt/comfort bingo, so much angst! And happy endings! Please write "Cradling someone in their arms" for Speaker and Liam 🥺
Title: Cat’s Cradle
Summary: Liam casts a spell to protect you all in a place that encourages magic to backfire.
Warnings: Major character injury, hyperventilation
Notes: It’s been a minute since I’ve done a BTHB piece, and this one is going to be much shorter than some of the old ones, but I really like this idea. (If you sent me a BTHB prompt a long time ago, I will fill it, don’t worry! I just have some late gift pieces to finish first.) I’m sorry that this ended up being a little more gen than you probably intended, but I just needed to give Li some comfort after all of the things @speakergame‘s author dropped on us in the Discord. I hope you like it.
Also here on AO3.
Lily version.
Your first thought is that you should have known. Somehow. It’s not like the clues weren’t there, but you all came here to solve a completely different mystery, and so they might as well have been whispers in a hurricane. Your sister’s headache, Rory complaining of the dark being harder to see though, Kana being even less willing to use their voice than usual... it wouldn’t surprise you, now, to hear that Sebastian or Azalea had been feeling the strain, too. You’re glad that neither one of them had tried to use their respective powers down here.
But Li--
Li.
“Liam,” you gasp, moving forwards as your vision finally clears and the smoke settles, to see him lying on the ground with violet magic sparking from his arms like the tattoos there are a circuit board, not part of a human body. The others are still standing, and you can hear them call out at all different volumes, various degrees of concern ranging from fully-panicked (your sister) to handling-it-but-worried (Kana).
Sebastian starts to say something about someone checking the exits--that’s right, you were all locked in here, right before--and searching for supplies, other dangers, but his voice fades in the face of Li’s shallow, pained breathing. You reach down to try and take his hand when it feels like someone shoves a hot knife through your palm and into your forearm.
“Ah--” You hiss and pull your hand away on reflex, only to see sparks of Liam’s magic crackling off your fingertips as you move.
“Careful,” Azalea says, taking your hand gently in her own. The red impact mark of whatever just happened fades as she rubs her fingers over it, and your heart clenches before you realize she’s not using any magic. The marks are just being soothed away. “We--I think his own spell hurt him. He wiped out...whatever those things were trying to attack us, but it hit him, too. I just don’t know...”
“We have to help him,” you say, and Azalea looks at you with determination and sadness in equal parts. She knows, but she doesn’t know how.
“--have to go,” rasps Liam, drawing your attention. You look down, and there’s a second where it looks like his eyes are completely black. They’re not, of course; they’re normal, but it takes you a second to blink away the panic, and that’s enough time for Liam to curl in on himself, turning away from you as he repeats, “Go. Bef... Before m-more of them--”
He breaks off on a gasp. You’re not sure if it’s the way his whole body shakes through a wince, the way his breath sounds like it’s getting shallower, or the words themselves, like he expects you to leave him there, that hits the hardest.
But it doesn’t really matter because before you can think better of it, you’re reaching out. It’s a good thing your body knows what your heart wants to do and doesn’t need your mind’s help right now because as soon as you touch Li again, that bastardized version of his magic floods into you like the world’s spikiest mouthful of a too-hot drink. You grit your teeth and breathe through the pain as you roll Liam back towards you, getting an arm under his back as you go so that you can pull him up into a hug. One of his hands lands on your arm and the other on your stomach, trying to push you away. But you hold on.
“No,” you grit out. “No, I won’t leave you.” Liam freezes in your arms at the words, and it’s a shard of ice in your heart.
“Wait!” you hear Azalea say suddenly. To your horror, the next thing you feel is a hand on your shoulder. The magic that’s now sparking off of you, just like Li, jumps to whoever touched you faster than you can turn your head, but when you do, you realize with a sinking feeling that it’s your sister who reached out.
It takes another second to realize that it doesn’t hurt as bad anymore. Your sister's hand grows almost painfully tight on your shoulder, but she doesn't instantly pull away like you had, like she’d touched a hot stove. And Liam isn’t almost hyperventilating against your shoulder, either.
“Ow,” your sister says, and she lets go, shaking her hand in the air. “What’s happening? Are you two--?”
Her words stop suddenly when the pain comes back and you hunch forward, putting more of your body over Liam’s like a shield, even though you’re getting the sense that this doesn’t work like that. Liam actually cries out this time, and you squeeze your eyes shut. If he’d started acclimating to the pain, then feeling relief only for it to get worse again was probably harder than getting hurt in the first place.
“I think I get it,” Azalea says. She sounds as frantic as she does hopeful, this time, and you look over to her from the corner of your eye. You want to stop her as you see that she’s also reaching towards you, but you can’t without letting Li go. Her hand lands on your knee.
A soft sound, like she’d just lifted something really heavy (heavy for her, of course), passes her lips, but she doesn’t pull away. Instead she nods, and when she speaks again, it’s loud enough for everyone to hear. (You realize that Liam’s cry probably got all their attention, when it became obvious he was still hurting despite your best efforts.) “Something here is making all our magic turn against us. It’s why some of us have had a headache, and why Kana started feeling sick when they talked. When Liam cast a spell, his magic backfired, and his body can’t absorb it back up because it’s... Well, it’s like it’s been poisoned.”
She uses her free hand to point to the almost thorny lines of violet covering you, your sister, herself, and Liam. It really doesn’t look like Li’s regular magic except the color.
The touch on your shoulder comes back, and you hear your sister hiss a little bit this time. But her grip stays solid, and the pain lessens again. “But this helps?” she asks.
You don’t respond as Liam tries to push away from you again, saying, “Don’t-- I’m fine...”
“Aw, I see!” says Rory, voice bright, circling around the group of you clustered on the floor. “Spread the force over a bigger area, and the pressure gets lighter, right?” Rory’s hand lands solidly on Azalea’s back, and this time you barely notice a reaction at all except for your own pain decreasing. Against your chest, Liam is breathing more deeply, and his muscles are no longer so tight that you feel like you’re holding wood instead of a person.
Kana comes up behind you, crouching in a manner that you’re sure is unfairly graceful before putting a hand on your elbow. They still don’t speak, probably more acutely aware now than ever about how dangerous it is, but their thumb brushes comforting, silent patterns across your arm. Sebastian, at almost the same time, reaches a hand down to your sister, who takes it with a smile as she catches the look of concern on his features.
With all seven of you, it barely takes a few more seconds for the pain--now reduced to a feeling like slightly-too-hot shower water rather than anything truly dangerous--to drain away completely, leaving Liam spark-free and flushed as his face remains buried against the front of your shoulder.
For a moment, you all just breathe.
Then you hear movement. Footsteps, maybe, or something else; you’re sure Rory and Sebastian can hear it more clearly even if the result is a bit of a headache down here.
“Are you good?” Sebastian asks, looking between you and Liam. As soon as you nod, he lets go of your sister’s hand and goes back to trying to find a way out, and one by one, the others go to help.
You notice Liam trembling slightly in your arms as they all move away, and for a horrifying second, you think he's still in pain. But you’re still holding him, and you feel nothing except the heat of his breath where it’s trapped between you. You’re about to ask what’s wrong when he speaks, quietly as always but somehow smaller.
“Told you you should’ve left,” he says, and his voice breaks on the last word. You have a feeling from the tone that he was going to continue and couldn’t. You hold tighter.
“Liam Michael Cowles,” you say thickly, dropping your forehead helplessly onto his shoulder, “we are not going to leave you. Don’t even joke about that. You’re a part of this team--” (family, you think) “--and you’re my friend, and I won’t leave you behind for anything.”
His breath hitches in your ear. You pull back just enough that he has to put an arm down to hold himself up as you move your hands to press against his face. “Whatever’s coming,” you say, “we’ll face it together.”
You smile at him and long for the day when he won’t be surprised to hear you say he’s a part of you.
hello!! if you're still open to these, mayhaps the speaker and Kana with 15 (a kiss on the jawline??)
Hello! I am absolutely still open to these. Thank you for sending one! Please enjoy some established (but new) relationship Speaker/Kana fluff featuring cuddling in bed.
15. a kiss on the jawline + Kana
You wake up more mornings than not to see that Kana has pulled back to their side of the bed, usually specifically to watch you. Maybe from an outside perspective, that should seem strange, but it’s hard to think of it as anything except heartwrenchingly endearing when you keep opening your eyes to see theirs looking at you so softly that the blue there might as well be pure seafoam. The morning light streaming over their shoulders, dancing its way through the ever-changing patterns of their hair as it floats around them…
It’s all very ethereal, and you think Kana knows that. But you’re genuinely not sure if they planned all of it, which makes you unbearably happy—that they could bear to show you an image of themselves that isn’t cultivated down to the last detail.
You hope that the more mornings like this pass, the more free Kana will feel to be themself around you.
“Hello, my dear,” they say, reaching out to brush some hair from your face that’s fallen out of place in the middle of the night (and doesn’t, unfortunately, right itself by magically floating all the time, but if it gives Kana an excuse to touch you, you can’t complain too much).
“Good morning,” you answer, voice still a little breathy from sleep. It takes a few moments of just staring at Kana in awe before you groan and bury your face in the pillow, smiling to yourself as you speak even though they can’t see it. The sound of it carries in your voice. “How are you real?” you ask.
Kana replies seriously, “I could ask the same of you.” Their voice has an amused lilt to it, too, but part of falling in love with them for real meant learning everything about their voice. It’s such an important part of them, one they use so carefully, that you have learned to hear when their humor is for their benefit and when it’s for yours—for the audience.
This is the latter. You look up.
“Kana,” you say softly. Their eyes immediately widen, realizing you’ve caught them, and look away. But they place a hand on the sheets between you, and you take it gratefully for what it is: a conscious effort not to run. You take their hand in yours, warm and smooth and most definitely holding you in return. “This is real. And I’m happy it is.”
Kana laughs, real enough that the bells in their hair punctuate it with their own bubbly chimes, and you watch some of the tension drain from their shoulders. “Oh, well, alright,” they say, pulling you closer. “When you put it like that, my dear, I suppose I must believe you.”
“You must,” you agree. There’s a place for you to rest your head on their shoulder, but first, you lean up to kiss them. At this angle, it’s easiest to kiss the line of their jaw, just a little ways off from their pulse point, which you still feel jump under the press of your lips. You pull away with a contented hum and settle your head on Kana’s shoulder with a surprising amount of grace. Perhaps they’re rubbing off on you.
“I do,” Kana murmurs, turning to press their cheek to the top of your head as you hold each other.
Ahhh I think I wrote down the seer instead of speaker by accident ajdnemdmr I love words 😅 I meant kana and the speaker with 7 (a kiss on the eyelid or the undereye!!) in case I did write the wrong person oof
I gotchu, friend. Thank you so much for your patience~ I hope you like it.
7. a kiss on the eyelid or undereye + Kana
You’re not sure which makes you feel warmer: the fact that when you finally sagged in relief with this whole incident being over, there was a hand at the small of your back to catch you, or the fact that you weren’t surprised to note the sound of wind chimes accompanying it. There’s something special, after all, about knowing that Kana has grown comfortable enough in your presence that this sort of support is natural.
“You’ve done it,” Kana says, staying in your space but waiting to see exactly how close you want them right now. “Yet again, I might add.”
You shake your head, even as you put an arm around Kana’s waist to pull them closer. This was a team effort, you want to say. There would have been no way to succeed if not for everyone’s help—
But before you can even start to form the words, Kana is in front of you. It’s hard, as ever, to look away from their eyes, though the slow, arhythmic way their braids drift at the corner of your eyes is equally hypnotic.
You’re reminded how expertly Kana wields their natural charm when you finally notice their fingers resting under your chin and can’t remember when they got there. The touch is soft, always, always soft. Even in their gestures, Kana never issues a command. Only a gentle suggestion with a clear way out.
You don’t take it. You let them close your mouth, though you still do shake your head in protest.
The laugh Kana answers you with is as unfairly (amazingly) beautiful as everything they do, chiming in harmony with the bells in their hair. “You may not be a Seer, my dear, but your eyes are a gift.” They lean closer as they speak, and the open adoration on their face almost melts you in their hands. You don’t know exactly what you’ve done to make that happen, but whatever it is, it is worth the world.
Confusion must show on your face, though, despite how smitten you are. You’re not entirely sure where Kana was going with that compliment, even if it made you feel like you were glowing. But Kana just smiles and explains, “You see the truth in people, both good and bad. You saw through what happened here the same way you saw through Carmichael when we met, and you use it for good, my dear.”
They tilt your face to reach it better, and your eyes slip closed on instinct, so you’re still a little surprised when you feel Kana’s lips brush over your left eye, then your right. You have to bring your hands up, holding their shoulders. It seems unlikely that you could lose your balance from such a soft kiss, but Kana’s affection is impactful enough that you hold on tighter, just in case.
“Being seen is quite the ordeal, most times,” Kana murmurs. “But what I find most admirable is that perhaps it’s not so frightening when it’s you.”
You’ve always made it your job to take what your sister Sees and make it better. You don’t think this power that Kana thinks you have is a magical one—but perhaps it is a side-effect of the life you lead. Perhaps it’s something to think about more carefully, if it means so much to someone you love.
ooo tell me about Rihnkiki+Tataru sleepover and/or Speaker/Kana singing angst? :)
Hello, hello, my friend!
I'll tell you about both, just because I like answering questions. The sleepover is legitimately just the idea in my head that I want to write Inky and Tataru hanging out together. I have no idea what they'll be doing, but they're chilling and having a good time and bonding (so set pretty early on in ARR).
The Speaker/Kana angst uses my primary Speaker, Rebecca, because I realized that she has some very specifics hang-ups about her voice that would result in her hiding it from Kana specifically (because they are a very talented vocalist to whom music is very important). This probably isn't tenable if I want the two of them in a relationship eventually, so...I had to write something to deal with it. This one is actually WIP, so here's a snippet:
Walking closer, Kana was careful to stick close to the walls so as to minimize the risk of the old house creaking. The song was one they recognized, too—Billy Joel, classic, not really made for guitar, though—though Kana could admit to not having thought about this song in a long time. It wasn’t one they would sing, and the words…
The sound of the refrigerator door closing punctuated the song as Rebecca threw herself into one of the choruses. It was Rebecca, her silhouette easily recognizable from behind as Kana stood in the doorway, and the sudden rush of raw emotion in her warm voice made Kana’s chest ache. It was a vicious, raw empathy, and it took Kana so by surprise that their hands fell lax at their sides.
A small cacophony of bell tones shattered the air as all of Kana’s braids took to the air around them again. A halo of scarlet and gold formed around Kana’s face, reflecting their surprise—both at Rebecca and at their own carelessness. [...] The look on the Speaker’s face was one of terrorand shame and anger, and Kana steadied themself against the wall as their pulse threatened to choke them.
Quickly, Rebecca mostly schooled her expression, shoulders dropping, and the lines of her face relaxed a little. But there was a defensiveness about her posture and her eyes that had Kana feeling like they were treading on broken glass.
This one is for 47. crave + Kana from @speakergame, requested by someone on the Speaker Discord (which you can find in the pinned post on that blog I just tagged) whose tumblr handle I do not know. If she’s reading this and wants to be tagged, just let me know.
Kana has been intimately familiar with temptation from the moment they knew how to act instead of just how to be, like an infant. It is a feeling they control, one that is dangerous and seductive and brilliant at once, inherently. Wielding a weapon, however, makes one especially attuned to how it is used, and therefore also, how it is countered, and so it has rarely in life been an issue for them personally (no matter how they might play it up when faced with a particularly beautiful piece of clothing).
But now, they do feel something. Like the draw of a moth to an open flame, or--and the thought makes a harsh laugh seep out of them like the toxic fumes of a volcano--a siren’s song. It is not their song, nor Kana themself, doing this, nor something that would give them an excuse like the poisoned words of a demon or the charms of a fae. The Speaker--that person--is none of these things, not even close.
Kana decides with a flourish that matters only to them and their ego that they are not tempted. But they do...crave. Even if it is a feeling Kana refuses to indulge any further.
