Relationship: Cyril Ashley/Monica Everett/Isaac Walker
Word Count: 5,689 words
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Spoilers for Volume 9 (Secrets of the Silent Witch), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cyril-centric
A/N: Belated thing for Cyril's birthday!
~
Cyril Wayne is five years old and has writing on both of his wrists.
It’s always been there. His mom says his right hand was empty until he was about two years old, but of course Cyril doesn’t remember being two years old. He knows that now, at five, he has writing on both of his wrists that looks like someone stamped them on with ink, but it doesn’t come off even if he scrubs with soap. One says “Ike” and the other says “Monica”.
His father’s wrist has “Myra” on it in the same big bold lettering. His mom has his father’s name, too. Cyril asks her if that means he’s supposed to be married to both Ike and Monica, and she pats him on the hair and tells him he doesn’t have to. That the people whose names are on his wrists will be important to him someday, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be in love.
He learns the word “soulmates” that day. It’s a hard word to spell, but so is “Cyril”—none of the letters look how they sound. Ike and Monica both have easy names, so he spells them out in the dirt for practice and hopes they turn out to be nice people.
posting concept fics at 1AM and other inadvisable decisions, a novel by summer
Summary: Techno reflects on his past while waiting for a meeting.
CWs: Dehumanization (in the first half).
also on AO3 here!
Techno really, really hates multi-night group jobs.
He still takes them, because the pay is good and they’re free transportation to a new city when he’s thoroughly terrified everyone in the current one. But.
“Why the fuck did we get stuck with him?”
“Did you see him earlier against those raiders? None of us even got out of the cart and they were dead.”
“He’s still got blood on his face, he doesn’t even care.”
Techno scrubs absently at his cheek, gaze fixed stubbornly on the middle distance.
But he hates them. Because he’s sixteen, and apparently that makes him a child, and if he shows a hint of a flaw then they’re all on top of him squawking about how unqualified he is. And then when he does his job right, he gets this nonsense.
“Of course he’s taking first watch. How are we meant to sleep like this? What’s he planning to do while we’re out?”
“Think he’ll try to kill us to keep the payout?”
“Nah, he’ll do it ‘cause he got bored.”
Techno snorts and gets to his feet, turning to the group. “I’m going hunting,” he tells them. “I’ll be back by morning. Someone else will have to take watch.”
Someone (he doesn’t know the girl’s name, he doesn’t bother learning anyone’s name) begins to voice a complaint, but he cuts her off. “Sorry I’m keeping someone from getting sleep. Good luck working it out.” He slings his sword back over his shoulder and starts to walk away from camp.
“He doesn’t even need sleep?” someone else asks in a stage-whisper, and Techno starts running instead.
~
“Phil.”
“Phil, please wake up.”
“Phil, the meeting is in fifteen minutes and we are making a terrible impression.”
Techno does his best to fix Phil with his most authoritative glare. Phil, for his part, snorts and nuzzles his face into Techno’s shoulder, leaning even more of his weight against Techno’s side.
See, this is why Techno struggles so badly with Phil. Because Phil has never once been afraid of him. Annoyed with him, sure, thought he was being an idiot, but never scared to tell him so. And he hasn’t once hesitated to touch Techno, throw an arm around him or grab his wrist to show him something.
And here he is, passed out on Techno’s shoulder in the middle of enemy territory fourteen minutes before a very important trade meeting. Snoring away without a care in the world, as if he’s entirely convinced that not only would Techno never hurt him, but that Techno will keep him safe while he sleeps.
This is why Techno, despite all the obvious reasons he shouldn’t, is struggling so hard not to fall in love with Phil. Because he’s warm and vulnerable against Techno’s side and he’s never once been afraid that leaving himself open around Techno will get him hurt.
“Phil,” Techno says under his breath, “if you keep making cute faces like that around me, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Phil dozes on. Techno may have to miss the meeting.
Isaac Walker and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Relationship: Cyril Ashley/Monica Everett/Isaac Walker
Word Count: 9,308 words
Additional Tags: Sickfic, Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fever Dreams, Post-Canon, Additional Warnings In Author's Note
A/N: Written for Day 5 of @polyshipweek! Mind the info in the beginning notes.
~
Isaac wakes up with a pounding headache and a sore throat.
His first response to this is to assume maybe he had gone out with Silas and gotten so drunk that he’d forgotten all about it, but no, he’d been home last night because Cyril is in town. Neither Cyril nor Monica can hold their drink to save their lives, and as funny as it is to watch them drunk on a few sips of wine, Isaac had actually wanted their conscious company—and Monica has an appointment bright and early today at the Mage Association building that she can’t afford to be hungover for. So it had been a sober night, and they’d all gone to bed right on (Cyril’s) schedule.
The second, worse possibility is the more likely one. He’s caught a cold somewhere. He almost never gets sick, so of course it’s going to happen on a long-awaited holiday weekend where all three of them can be in the same place at the same time. With all the excitement, he guesses he must have missed the signs that his body was about to betray him.
He slips out of bed carefully, stifling the cough that threatens to come up the moment he’s vertical. There’s nothing for it, unfortunately—it’ll just have to be time for an emergency trip back to Erin.
He’s not going to inflict this on the other two, who are already weaker than him as is.
Relationship: Cyril Ashley/Monica Everett/Isaac Walker
Word Count: 6,423 words
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cyril Ashley Gets Targeted By Gluttonous Zoe, Spoilers For Gaiden (Secrets of the Silent Witch), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, it's zoefic y'all know what you're getting
A/N: Written for Day 7 of @polyshipweek! Based on this fanart/AU by @ni-ien!
~
A black rain falls on the streets of Sazandol just a day or so ahead of schedule.
Isaac is still resting after having the remnants of the Gluttonous Zoe’s spell peeled off by Monica. She feels a little bad about testing it on him before it’s been reviewed and approved by the other Sages, and she wants to make sure there’s no sudden complications, so she’s sitting by his bedside when the rain starts to fall. She goes very still as she watches it, grip tightening on Isaac’s blankets.
She can’t imagine how much mana that must have taken. She can’t imagine how many people might have been caught out in it. Her mind turns to Melissa, to Lana, to Nero… The prophecy from the Starseer Witch had called out a black dragon and a dragon disaster. Despite every reassurance, Monica feels as though she’s simply counting down the days until Nero turns on her, cursed and puppeted by the Gluttonous Zoe. She doesn’t know what she’ll do when it happens.
Relationship: Cyril Ashley/Monica Everett/Isaac Walker
Word Count: 2,013 words
Additional Tags: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, only a little bit of h/c though it's mostly fluff, Day At The Beach, Post-Canon, Established Relationship
A/N: Based on this piece by @ni-ien! For Day 4 of @polyshipweek!
Though Sazandol is a seaside town, it has little in the way of “beach” space. It’s situated on rocky, craggy cliffside, where little reaches the water other than the port itself. The tiny cove they’re visiting today is a surprise find, scouted by Thule and Pikeh and pointed out to Cyril later.
It makes for a good quiet spot for breakfast or lunch, brought in a picnic basket to sit and eat by the water. They’ve been down two or three times now, when Cyril has an excuse to be in town and they can all find the free time to go sit and be together.
Whether Cyril likes it or not, Monica lives in a town by the sea, and Isaac also spends the majority of his time there. Cyril can’t just keep averting his eyes from the glint of the water forever. Especially when Isaac’s magecraft practice is benefitted by being knee-deep in a body of water. Cyril’s own twitchiness or cowardice or whatever he wants to call it about being underwater (in the dark, dragged down, no way to reach the surface) is his own issue, and not one he’s willing to burden his partners with.
The little cove is a good compromise for Cyril to practice being exposed to the ocean without fear. They eat lunch, and then Cyril sits on the blanket on the shore and watches Monica and Isaac kick around in the shallows.
Relationship: Cyril Ashley/Monica Everett/Isaac Walker
Word Count: 1,960 words
Additional Tags: Sharing Clothes, Fluff, i really don't have much to say about this one it's just cutesy, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship
A/N: Written for Day 3 of @polyshipweek!
~
Thule is being unusually stubborn this morning.
It’s not like it’s hard for Cyril to tell what happened. He’d taken his cardigan off and left it folded on the bed in the guest room while he’d gone to do dishes—he’s just visiting Isaac and Monica for the week, and they’ve both insisted he rest and visit, but his mother raised him better than to not contribute when he’s imposing on someone else’s home, thank you—and by the time he’d finished, the cardigan was gone.
Isaac was upstairs and Monica had already left for an appointment with Lady Colette, so there were no witnesses, but Cyril’s familiars have a perfect track record of disappearing his things, and Pikeh has been out since last night with Monica’s dragon getting up to some sort of mischief that is both unavoidable and certainly going to give Cyril a migraine when it comes to fruition. So it must have been Thule.
And yet.
“I won’t be angry as long as you give it back,” Cyril says, looking Thule firmly in the eyes.
“You’re already angry!” Thule wails, squirming fruitlessly in Cyril’s grasp. “And I don’t even have it this time!”
relationships: cyril ashley/monica everett/isaac walker
word count: 1,908 words
summary: Cyril, Isaac, and Monica are forced to share a bed for the night after work leaves them stranded. Cyril handles this extraordinarily well. Written for Day 1 of @polyshipweek.
~
Monica opens her mouth.
“Absolutely not,” both Cyril and Isaac say in unison.
Monica closes her mouth again.
“One would think,” Cyril adds, tone so far beyond calm that it wraps back around to frightening again, “that between a Mage Count and the son of a Marquess, we would be able to scrounge up more than one bed to split between the three of us.”
Relationship: Cyril Ashley/Monica Everett/Isaac Walker
Word Count: 1,654 words
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Post-Canon, Past Child Abuse, Flashbacks
A/N: Written for Day 6 of @polyshipweek! I posted this one a couple days ago and forgot to make the tumblr post for it haha
Some days are harder than others, even now.
Some days she’s fine. She doesn’t think about it, even when she moves the wrong way and her shoulder twinges with pain, even when Ike passes her too closely in the kitchen and crowds her against the counter by accident. Nothing floats to mind at all, she’s not suddenly sad or frightened, and later when she realizes it she feels very proud of herself for finally letting things pass.
