An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: SPY x FAMILY (Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Henry Henderson/Martha Marriott, Loid Forger | Twilight/Yor Briar Forger | Thorn Princess, Anya Forger & Yor Briar Forger | Thorn Princess, Anya Forger & Loid Forger | Twilight, Becky Blackbell & Anya Forger, Damian Desmond/Anya Forger, Becky Blackbell & Martha Marriott
Characters: Henry Henderson, Loid Forger | Twilight, Yor Briar Forger | Thorn Princess, Martha Marriott, Becky Blackbell, Damian Desmond
Additional Tags: Reckless switching between addressing our favorite spy as Loid and Twilight, alternating povs, Anya cares about this romance only when there’s nothing else going on, Becky is FLABBERGASTED, Twilight is amused, Yor is yor, Yor is a sweetheart, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Author’s typical excessive use of italics and em dashes, Canon-typical violent thoughts from yor, Along with war thoughts/mentions and weaponry, But overall total fluff
Summary:
Henry, Martha, getting (back?) together, and everyone who notices and has something to say
With Spy x Family anime started to air, the fandom gain more people!! I’m so happy!!
For those want to read fics, we do have lots of awesome fanfics that you can find at AO3.
As for my own works, if you adore TwiYor (LoiYor or Loid x Yor) as much as I do, and want to read them you can go to my AO3 profile.
Please beware of Manga spoilers if you’re only watching the Anime.
Here are some of my own favorites:
Steps of Spending The Rest of My Life With You (series)
Tales of Mr. and Mrs. Forger (drabble collections)
Daily Shenanigans of 128 Park Avenue's Resident (Slice of Life collections)
A Flower Without Scent that Attracts The Birds (Jealous Loid!! love the trope!)
The Greatest Things Happened in My life (An AU where Yor was the one who adopted Anya first)
EDIT: whoah, never expected this post to gain this much attention. Anyway, I put several links to my all time sxf TwiYor favorite fics from my favorite authors (so I will not sound like someone who boast her own writing and have no shame, though I am 😛)
Everything written by Lacrow are amazing. These are my favorites though:
Papa's ex Girlfriend (Loid had to deal with the sudden reapearance of Karen from chp./ep. one, and keep the Forger family intact)
Forged in Fire (Medieval RPG AU)
Under Your Spell (Witch Yor and Anya, with Knight Loid and Damian AU)
Forger's first Halloween (series)
Mission Files: Family Forger (one shots collection)
The Wicked Tale of the Thorn Princess (a Fairy Tale AU) by JaMills
Your Sweet lips on My lips (8 kisses to fall in love) by Peachygirlie
Mission Complete (what happen at the end of Operation Strix) by Arthurthegatekeeper
Words, Scars, and Choices (Soulmate AU) by Arthurthegatekeeper
A Little Less Than Superhuman (Loid was sick, and Yor took care of him) by Cellwright
Chance Encounter (Eden AU) by smallestsenpai
May I (Loid and Yor dancing) by smallestsenpai
If Your heart was a House You'd be home (LoiYor hurt comfort) by calmthestorm
Mending what's Broken (Identity reveal) by LittlestFallenAngel
Of Glass and Smoke (LoiYor hurt comfort/nightmare) by Pokegeek151
Keeping secrets just to keep you (Identity reveal AU) by dancingpineaples
Scared of Loosing something that I finally found (Loid saving his family) by cloesh_scribbles
I want to lean on you in drunkness (drunk Yor, Loid took care of her) by coloredice
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Okay, I’ve read tons more of fic, and this is where you can find my next fic rec
Hello, thanks for the ask! Took a while but I finally got to it lol. Was fun to write, hope you enjoy it!!!
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He feels nothing for her.
Nothing lovers usually feel for each other, at least. Of course, he respects her. Her insight has been crucial to the smooth operation of the Forger family, pulling him back from irrational spirals more than once.
And he admires her. How could he not? The way she cares lingers in Anya’s grins and cheery shouts for her mama, in the warmth that welcomes him home in the evenings, in cups of caffeine-free coffee and gentle smiles that linger in his mind. It throws him sometimes, how much kindness she pours into this little family formed on pretenses.
But over time, he’s come to expect the unexpected from her. None of his pages of analysis can pin down her entirety, no manipulation or carefully planned flowchart can fully bend her to its will. Just when he thinks he’s understood her she blindsides him, throwing all his well laid plans into disarray. It’s intriguing in ways he can’t afford to delve into, as much as he finds he wants to.
Because he feels nothing for her - nothing that should make him want her to trust him with the intricacies of what makes her who she is, at least. He isn’t really her husband, after all. And one day, when Loid Forger has served his purpose and all this is over, she'll find someone out there who will love her truthfully and openly. Someone she can love back and happily share her life with. The thought should not feel like ice in his chest.
Because she doesn’t feel for him either, not in any of the ways a wife should feel for her husband, not in the way he sometimes wishes someone would when the thought of spending the rest of his life in an endless cycle of discarded identities weighs on him a little too much. Solitude is an inevitability. He tells himself he’s fine with that.
She doesn’t know him, anyway. Not him as he really is, beneath the facades that make up his legend, beneath the false emotions and the vulnerability that he’s not sure is quite so false anymore.
It shouldn’t matter, since he feels nothing for her. But this nothing sets a rhythm going in his chest when they’re close, and dusts his cheeks with colour when she stops to fix his tie after adjusting Anya’s uniform at the door.
He’s forced to confront that ‘nothing’ when one evening takes them too close to the edge. His smiles are too soft, and the look in her eyes is too tender, and he struggles to confine all the feelings he shouldn’t feel in the container of nothing where he needs them to stay.
And then she kisses him, and his mind goes terribly blank, devoid of all the reasoning that would - should - give him the strength to pull away. There’s no pretense to the way he reaches out to cup her face, shifting to better kiss her back.
She sighs against him, and he really should stop, and save them both the hurt this will inevitably bring. There's nothing left of himself to give her, barely a shadow of a man hiding behind layers and layers of lies.
Restraint prevails, and he manages to pull away, averting his eyes so as not to see whatever her reaction is. She goes still in front of him, face turned towards him.
He forces himself to meet her gaze. She's looking up at him like she's seeing him for the first time. It's an oddly understanding look, a gleam in her eyes that holds him captive and makes him forget to put up any of the facades that are supposed to govern their relationship.
She moves slowly, leaning up to press a gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth, and the nothing shatters its casing to reveal something bubbling up like a spring in his heart. Her face is serious but gentle, and restraint cannot suppress the urge to hold her close. She lets him, tucking her head against his neck. For some reason there's a lump in his throat.
The spring trickles on, a small but constant presence.
Time makes it into a stream, stronger with every touch and every glance, with every quiet evening and every inch that the facades drop.
“And you definitely don’t feel anything for her?” Handler asks, in the middle of the Yor section of one of his weekly reports on the family.
“Nothing,” Twilight replies. If he listens hard enough, he can almost hear the sound of a river roaring.
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Hope this was a good read!!!!! Twilight feeling things is one of my favourite things to write lol. But yea there's a few more prompts left to write, I will write all of them eventually!
loid forger/yor briar, anya forger & yor briar | T
mutual pining, romantic tension, date night, character study, femininity
A girl in waiting finally in motion.
Chapter 1/2 | AO3 | Next Chapter
Yor was seventeen when she bought her first tube of red lipstick.
It was an import from Hugaria—something she knew that she must have as a girl on the cusp of woman. The lipstick was a sleek black tube accented with a gold thorny pattern at the clasp. When you opened it, twisted the bottom, it sprouted just like the roses that twined around the iron fences of her family’s cottage. It smelled sweet like crushed childhood and slid like magnets across lips.
It was made for her.
The first time she laid eyes on it was on the cover of a fashion magazine that sold sex tips in bright yellow serif. A model, hair coiffed and blonde and perfect, posed on a leather tufted chaise, teasing hints of her sharp collarbones in her black mermaid dress. She leaned on a satin-gloved arm and weaned off of a pipe, clouds wrapping around her like a fluffy mink stole. Everything about her seemed to be dusted in pink and sparkle. Admiration or envy—Yor wasn't sure.
What initially caught Yor’s eye wasn’t the sugar-wisps of her hair, the lights of her eyes, or the scandal of her ivory-white skin. It was the bold maraschino pout of her lips shaped almost like a heart. To Yor, whose mind had—at that point—been filled only with ribbons and shrapnel and nursery rhymes, this introduced a fascinating new world within her reach. Suddenly, the thought of pointed manicures and high heels, fancy perfume bottles and diamond clutches entered her mind. She thought of the model: someone so far removed from her double-life, someone she ought to learn. She thought of her mother: someone she ought to become.
The rest comes in snapshots. Yor tucked the magazine under her arm as stood up from the settee she was sitting on. Carefully she traipsed around the maze of felled bodies at the tips of her toes, mumbling meek apologies whenever she accidentally stepped on brand-named watch faces or ruby-suffocated knuckles. She made her way to the gold-finished mirror by the exit and smiled to herself. With a finger, she swiped the blood off of her cheek and applied it to her chapped lips, popping her mouth once, twice. She held her blade between her pointer and middle fingers and took an imaginary puff, imitating that dream in charmeuse.
Sighing disappointedly, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The shade was much too deep for her liking.
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Yor had become what she sought out to be. She had all that seventeen-going-on-eighteen wanted: Yuri’s safety and education; glossy boots with red bottoms; her tailored dress; glitzy golds. The luxe weight dangling from her ears, the cool swish of silken fabric, the expensive clack of her heels—This was enough.
But times have changed. Just when Yor she had covergirl culture down to a tee, another dimension opened to her. Femininity took on motherhood, matrimony.
Yor liked to think that motherhood was something that came naturally to her. She had been a sister, best friend, a parent to Yuri. There wouldn’t be any surprises when it came with Anya— shocking surprises, at least. Raising a girl, after all, is a bit different from raising a boy. Instead of thick almanacs from secondhand stores and expensive stationery, it was toy pistols and plastic tiaras. No longer did she have to quiz herself on the insect facts presented to her at the wake of dawn. Spending time with a child now meant window shopping and living-room sparring matches, plush-toy tea parties and impromptu spy missions.
While she taught Anya uppercuts and tried-and-true platitudes, Anya taught her new graces, old normals. Whenever she had a day off, they’d skip down the city plaza hand-in-hand in matching attire with Bond in tow, following footprints of mommy-daughter dates she had long ago: sunny brunches on cobblestoned-cafés; the tangy smell of brightly colored nail lacquer; boutique windows and their opulent ensembles. They’d catch their reflection in the outline of mannequins, imaginations short-lived at the mere glance of a four-digit price tag. Days like these would always end with shopping bags filled with accessories and toys at her elbows, Anya and Bond sound asleep in her arms. Later, when they’re all gathered at the dining table, Loid would ask about their adventures and they’d just glance at each other and laugh— a secret between girls. As if a boy would understand!
Parenting, she had come to learn, was a beating, breathing legacy. A child is a culmination of your best and worst traits, the clipped wings of old hopes and dreams, and premonitions of a better future. Within the walls of the Forger household, a girl materialized through jelly makeup kits with too much glitter, refrigerator frescos held up with dental appointment magnets, Bondman paraphernalia, and peanut shells. When Yor looks at Anya’s doorframe and the marker tick-marks made there every so-and-so months, she feels a displaced pride swell within her.
Yor knows that this happiness is fleeting. Once Anya finds her red tube of lipstick, comfort will turn to ache—a yearning that even time won’t go away. Yor will have fulfilled her purpose. Anya will fondly look back on their time together like a photo album framed with pressed pansies when all has been said and done. The shadows will fully embrace Yor, remind her who she is.
In the end, she will always be those bits and pieces. She will be those bodies—fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters—she had taken from this world. She will be those web of lies. She will be the one to suffer, always her.
To be a woman was to be a martyr. It was only a matter of sin catching up; a matter of accepting them.
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Loid had asked her out again. Like the many times before, it was in the quiet violet-stained gaps of night between bedroom doors and veiled longings, guises hung and racked. Like the many times before, Yor still found a way to be flustered.
“They opened a new restaurant down on Sixth Street.” His voice, hushed and deep, tickled like clematis tendrils at her ears. They wound around neck, around the shell of her ear, in her hair, cradling her face gently. She tried to make her stare less obvious. “We should go. Just the two of us.”
The words poured down around her ankles and caught the frill hem of her nightgown. Shyly, she watched them rise—let the warmth pool up at her waist until she was wading in the silvery smooth of Loid’s rapt voice. Yor held her breath as the tides got higher; she pressed her back against her door, nails scratching against wood, holding on for dear life. Something undid within her and she closed her eyes, waiting for the frayed ends to tug and reveal itself. They never did.
Just the two of us.
Two of us, Yor and Yuri.
Two of us, Thorn Princess and Yor Briar.
Two of us, Briar and Forger—husband and wife, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish.
“Yor?” He drew in close, moving those prickly brambles out of his way to meet her again. Loid was so close that she could feel the ghosts of his hands reaching out to touch her, pull her to safety. Ready, able, Yor held onto her courage and looked at him. Milk moonlight carved his body sharp, settled in the ridges of his collarbones, the subtle dip of his lip, down the slope of his nose. His eyes came alive at twilight, cold and reptile, spiraling her into hypnosis. When they met Yor’s, electricity.
Her, painter of blood. Him, a rush. The routes in which it traveled, those spindly roads and branched forks that mapped all over her body, incandesced with such a deep, glowing red that it felt near-death, near-hell— heaven. Every fiber thrummed and caught flame and all she could do was endure like a witch at the pyre, letting it consume her. For him, she burned. She repented.
A keen silence overtook them, halved by a shaky sigh. Loid’s fingertips brushed against her wrist, faint as a tap from a Painted Lady’s wing. Almost immediately, he pulled back, putting the hand behind his neck like a thorn had stabbed it, like her fire licked his skin.
“That was abrupt of me,” he whispered.
It sounded almost like regret. Yor could have cried; there was a part of her that craved Loid’s concern, a shared madness. Instead, she bit her lip and nursed his lingering touch, pressing it down until it was as permanent as a scar.
“No need to give me an answer at this hour. We don’t even have to go tomorrow night if you’re not feeling up for it.” Loid tucked his nose into his shoulder, stepping back into the confines of his body. “It’s just been a few weeks since the last time—not that I’m counting! Long enough to raise suspicion, that’s all.”
“Then it’s settled. I’ll come home early tomorrow to get ready,” she said. Even she was surprised by her own composure. “Anya picked out the loveliest dress out for me the other day.”
Yor wasn’t quite sure why she had brought that up. It took her a moment to process and dissect her own mindset. Once she had examined it under scopes and centrifuged it in test tubes, it was clear. A sudden wildness possessed her. Her throat hung on a single vowel despite the many things racing through her mind. By the look on his face, she was sure that he had picked up on the implication as soon as it left her mouth. Nothing could stop the embarrassed tears from gathering at her waterline.
“I’m looking forward to seeing it.” When he smiled, he shone. One was all it took to starve the entire room of its crepuscular shadows. She wanted so much to bathe in that light, to forget her own insecurities. How generous of a man he was, Yor mused, to turn misspoken words to compliments. “It’s a date, then.”
“Date.” It tasted sweet on her tongue. She supped the word of all its nectar. “A date.”
Loid nodded. “Right.”
Yor, amusingly serious, pumped her fists. “R-Right!”
Chuckling, Loid bade her goodnight: “Sweet dreams, Yor.” It was one of those rare laughs that was pushed out with a single breath—one imbued with so much life , the kind that kissed the swells of your cheek. She sang a similar tune.
The particles in the air collided and bursted like supernovae, stardust falling on all of his edges. As he turned away to his quarters, they trailed behind him, tails of comets shooting down at her feet. Yor clasped her hands together and made three wishes: one for Yuri, one for Anya, one for Loid. All for happiness. One for true love.
With the closing click of Loid’s door, Yor slunk down against her’s and gasped for air. The twinkles, winking stars, his smile would not leave her. She slept amidst birthing planets.
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The dress that hung on her wardrobe glistened like a jewel. It was an emerald cocktail gown, a shiny viscose cool to the touch. Off-shoulder trim. Waist cinched with a neat bow. A neckline that plunged to dangerous levels—levels flesh was meant to pour into.
In short, it was gorgeous: an ambition that needed fulfillment, fulfillment that Yor convinced herself she could never achieve.
“How about this one instead?” Yor asked, presenting a comic-reading, lolly-sucking Anya with a safer option: a houndstooth skirt suit set. It blanketed inadequacies, hugged curves with mindfulness and familiarity.
Anya, lounging in front of the TV, looked up from her copy of Spy Wars to inspect Yor with narrowed eyes. Within a second, she rolled back onto her belly and began kicking her legs as she was doing before without a care in the world, a care for her own mother.
“W-Well?” Yor twirled around slowly, hands pointed out.
Anya grunted and chomped hard on her sucker. “S’alright, I guess.” Even the sugar rush could not animate her. What was it about kids and breaking their parents’ hearts so nonchalantly?
“You don’t like it.”
“Anya likes the green one!”
“I know you do. It’s just that Mama’s… Mama’s a little…”
It was never a problem before. The seemingly meaningless details about herself, the lines and bends, nicks and cuts, never crossed her mind. Yet, whenever she’s with Loid, they’re all she ever thinks about. Didn’t her chest jut out a little too much in that dress? Aren’t her muscles a bit too hard and toned? Her shoulders too squared? And her palms, so coarse and calloused… There was not a soft thing about her. She was all rough, marred, imperfected—nothing like the girls in the papers or films. Yor glanced down at herself and met only disappointment.
“Mama’s the prettiest girl in the whole entire oo-nee-verse!”
The patter of her small feet like drums of summer rain. The innocent tug on her skirt. Her gleaming, all-knowing eyes—bright, flickering—reflecting the depths of her soul, crystal. Yor saw facets of herself—girls she once was, girls she dreamt of becoming. They all stacked up on each other, afterimages superimposed to create Ego. She is an ethereal being, God and woman at once, living inside her, inside Anya. She called out Yor’s name, casted a spell. It made Yor believe, if even for a moment, that Anya’s words were true.
Kneeling down, she held Anya’s face in her palms, caressing her cheek with a thumb. “You, sweetling. You’re the prettiest.”
Anya grinned around the pulpy stick of her lollipop. “You’re second prettiest then!” Excitedly, she threw her arms around Yor, stood on tippy-toes, and whispered loudly in her ear: “Papa thinks so too.”
Yor flared red. “Does he now?”
“Yee-up!”
She hummed and gathered Anya into her arms, nurturing both girl and goddess.
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“My earliest memories are of my mother’s vanity. I’d watch her put on makeup or just sit, listening, just like you are now. Sometimes, it’d be stories from long ago that she’d speak into committed memory—stories about when she was young or in love. Other times, it would be things outside the door of her boudoir: fancy parties with laughter and jazz music and long glasses clinking, drinks fizzy with bubbles; sighs after a long day of work; silence.
“The silent days were always the best days, I think. That meant my mother was not home and I could play with all of her cosmetics. She had fancy bottles of perfume all lined up against her mirror from fullest to emptiest, and black tubes of lipstick arranged in the color of the rainbow.”
Yor’s vanity is curiously sparse compared to the scenes from girlhood. There laid her Hugarian crimson, inconspicuous against a smattering of fountain pens, loose change, and balled-up receipts. Having her own daughter there with her made it feel like a sacred ritual between past and present had been broken. Devoid of any character, any personality, and presence, it was as if no one sat there in the morning to brush knots out their hair or in the evening to powder themselves before midnight trysts. She left no mark of existence.
“My favorite thing to do was take the caps off the tubes and hold them in my fist, smelling each of them like flowers of a bouquet. I loved red best. Naturally, it was the one I’d always try on.”
Anya stared at Yor— May I?— in the mirror, somehow finding her one defining trait— a needle in a haystack. Yor nods, handing her her beloved lipstick. Anya eagerly pulled the top off, floral fragrance and possibility shooting up like a plume in her face.
“Ah! A rose! A rose!” exclaimed Anya, standing on the vanity stool to level with Yor’s face. Yor angled her head down and pouted her lips, letting Anya paint it for her. She popped her mouth, once, twice, inspecting the wobbly red circle in the mirror. Yor colored within the lines with a finger and rouged the apples of her cheeks with the excess, rouged Anya’s cheeks, her lips.
She didn’t wince at her reflection; instead, she had sought out traces of her mother’s features with faint longing. Fleetingly, she wondered if her mother had looked her best when she died. Did she care to prime her face that day? Curl her hair into rollers the night before? Surely, she had looked the beautiful woman Yor had always remembered to be. Death couldn't take the woman out of her. Yor wouldn't allow it to.
“My mother never let me wear makeup. It was always look, never touch. ‘A woman’s blade is not meant for a child,’ she’d say. ‘Beauty is for battle. It’s all we girls have in this world.’ And so I’ve lived my whole life with the idea that beauty was a weapon not to be pointed at others.” Anya’s hair was soft, so translucent that when sunlight seeped through it, it seemed to glow. Absently, Yor let it cascade into the spaces of her fingers. “But I learned something, Anya.”
“Huh?”
“Beauty can be sharp and tough, sure, but it can also be soft.”
“Soft as Bond’s fur?”
“Soft as Bond’s fur.” Both girls giggled, looking down at the snoring moat of white snuggling at their toes.
“I look at you in the morning, in your pajamas or in your uniform; at night cozied up with Bond as you murmur in your sleep, and it makes me smile. I look at your Papa; I look at his hands and the burns there as he’s dicing vegetables; I look at him and the wrinkles between his brows as he counts coupons or folds laundry, and my heart flutters. I look at you two together and it makes me glad… Glad that I could be a part of it. That I could truly understand what it means to be beautiful.”
Anya is still growing, muddying her soles in the garden of youth. She will have her whole life to freely navigate the meaning of womanhood through its love and its losses. It is a comfort to know she will have all of that time, those experiences that Yor never got to have because youth had always meant carnage and rigor mortis.
The zig-zagged lace connecting spies, whistleblowers, sympathizers, and benefactors tied and knotted the suffocating corset that shaped Thorn Princess—the phantom femme fatale with an apathetic sense of justice. Murder for world peace. How ironic.
Often, she pondered who she would have been if her parents hadn't passed so suddenly, so tragically. What would femininity mean then? What righteous path would she have walked? The wildest possibilities ran with blushed heels in her mind, kicking up grass blades and soil. Whatever she does in those universes and realities, she hopes that she is as content as she is now. She prayed that those paths, no matter how difficult, no matter how meandering and obfuscating, always lead to Anya and Loid.
To kindness. Always kindness.
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“I’m home!”
Yor had mentally prepared to hear those two words for the better part of an hour before his arrival. Now that Loid was finally here, the palpitations she had tried to keep under control since last night returned tenfold. Her chest pounded with the force of split atoms. She was sure he could feel it reverb from her chambers all the way to the living room.
“Mama! Mama! He’s home! He’s home!” repeated Anya elatedly, jumping up and down on Yor’s bed. Having played dress-up right before Loid’s arrival, Anya was in high spirits. In a plastic tiara and tulle dress of her own, Anya did what all five-year-olds did best and boasted. Anya boasted loud, she boasted proud. She scrambled to her dear father, bouncy and utterly pink, leaving golden shimmer in her wake. Bond followed her trail with a wagging tail, feet skittering like typekeys against the floor. “Look Papa! Me an’ Bond’re fairies! I yank tooths at night. Bond’s got wings!”
“Wow! Did you make them?”
“Yup! Like it?” She could see Loid bending down to touch the jagged construction paper wings stuck onto Bond’s back with tape and Anya swatting his hand away. It eased her nerves.
“That’s very clever of you, Anya. I do.” Yor took one last glance at herself in the mirror, tucking an errant strand of hair away from her face. She had let her hair down. It’d be easy to hide behind a curtain of black if she took any wrong turns tonight. “You look so charming in your costume. I reckon Yor helped you with it?” A pause, and then: “Say, is she ready to go?”
“Mama’s zipper’s stuck.”
Yor audibly shrieked, sensing an empty betrayal. It wasn't that she told Anya not to tell Loid; she just didn’t think it would be a possible point of conversation. The plan was that she’d cover her back with a shawl since Anya could not fully zip the gown up. With the not-so-secret secret out, Yor felt a self-conscious void begin to suck her back in.
No. She would not have it. Not tonight.
Acting accordingly, she snatched her purse and satin wrap from her bed and stepped out of her room, anxiety melting to resolve. She stepped out, sheer stockings sliding as she clumsily slipped into black pumps.
“Welcome home, Loid!” Yor hopped on one foot, fitting the backing with little success. “Sorry for the wait,” she huffed, soon regretting her choice of distraction. She was sure she looked like some strange one-woman balancing act as she stood on a leg, pivoting slightly toward the right as she struggled to fit into the sole.
Somewhere along the way, her torso lurched forward before her feet could land. All the oxygen in her had pushed out, enveloping her entire body as a cushion for the inevitable crash. Yor positioned her hands in front of her face, preparing for impact.
Jonquil stems rattled in their vase. Petals flitted. Negative spaces pieced together, clicked into place. What once was apart overlaid: man and woman, reality and dream.
Everything went white. She resented the way her chest heaved against his, cursed the way they shared the same tempo. It was as if their wavelengths had finally caught up to each other and allowed them this one transient slip. It felt like destiny.
This moment will never come again, she realized. Yor wanted so badly to cultivate that warmth, there, fastened on her waist and splayed out between the undone zip teeth of her gown. Selfishness is measured in seconds. Yor had a handful. She used her time wisely: memorized the spiral patterns of his fingertips over her bare skin, let the sinews unwind and stitch into her flesh until they were seamed into one fabric. Strains of sandalwood wrapped around their ankles and shoulders, built a home out of twisted torsos, latched limbs—a home where she could grow old, spend the rest of her days in. Yor didn’t dare look up at him, as looking would break the rune they were so fortunately afforded.
She didn’t want it to end. Not so soon, at least.
And so she waited for nature to run its course. Anya will reverse the charm with a quip. Loid will untangle from her, make ruin out of daydreams. Yor will act as the flustered maiden despite being ice cold from the loss of Loid on her body. This was routine.
She waited and waited while Loid hissed and smoldered. Any minute now . Static crackled. The radiator whistled. Princess Honey, rescued—tune in next week! Fingers slid. Laughter tunneled up and down the hall. Lips sighed. Steam pipes clunked. Doors slammed. Hearts thump-thumped, thump-thumped. Hands ticked, they held. Yor prayed: Any minute now.
“Yor.” She screwed her eyes shut and gripped the lapels of his suit jacket tight. Yor would be good. She resisted that primal urge to jerk her arm, kick her leg. “Yor?” She would be good.
Yor craned her head upward and peered through a kaleidoscope. One Loid, three Loids, five—every single one of them peering into her, beyond her. Her lips parted as she traced the movement of Loid’s hand on her back, brazenly turning skin into gilt down the bend of her spine. She tried her very hardest not to gasp.
“It’d be best if you turned around,” he started, cool as ever, “so I can zip your dress up.”
The rose pigment was awashed with the frigid splash of reality. The fabric she had been clutching with her claws had crumpled. She smoothed away the creases and apologized, drawing dreaded, familiar distance. She twisted her heel and faced the opposite of Loid, both to compose herself and prepare for it to happen all over again. Her head was ducked down as though she had done something that warranted remorse. Perhaps it was hoping for too much. Expecting.
He swept the raven cape over her shoulder, exposing the rigid and taut muscles that she wanted so desperately to hide. Yor inspected the ceramic flower pot in front of her and followed its patterns away from the apartment, from Loid, from herself.
“I’m afraid your cooking is beginning to show on me,” she whispered, stating any flaws before he could get the chance to. “It’s too delicious.”
The glazed figure shook with mirth. “You flatter me,” said Loid, retracing his path down her backside. A friendly gesture, nothing more. Fronds, butterflies, paisleys. “Even if that were true, I’d still like you just the same.”
The dress closed. Her chest split open, exploded with astrals, bon bons, rainbows, and doily. She inhaled, waited fifteen pulses, exhaled.
Yor found it funny. Here she was—here they were—enacting trifles known to every married couple. This was less than kisses, hugs, laced hands, tangled sheets. And yet, this was the very thing that did Yor in.
Something in the air shifted. A church bell went off in the amphitheater of her mind and Yor knew that there was no coming back. Not after this.
She mourned her mother. If only she had paid better attention. Maybe then she’d know what to do about the dull ache in her chest and the unspoken confessions that plagued her, echoing like hymns in an empty cathedral. Her heart trilled suites of unfettered emotion, ballads of confession, odes to forever.
The doorbell rang. “Ah. Looks like Frankie’s here.”
She looked for prophecies in stained glass and listened carefully to its lull.
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The moon appliquéd on the velvet of the night sky, sequins dotting along its expanse. Townhouse lights dwindled as mothers kissed their cherub-cheeked darlings goodnight, soon replaced with orange lamppost glow. For each shop sign that overturned, a bar door opened and tankards clanged jovially to celebrate another day gone.
After hours were for gin and tonics, for rest. Yor and Loid strolled by these vignettes in the evening chill, peering through glass with twinkling eyes at these warm displays of civilization: scraggly cats stretched over faded welcome mats; fresh-faced university students scrawling in leatherbound notebook, cups of tea gone cold; secretaries cooing at sweating beer bottles; an elderly man dipping madeleines in espresso.
Conversation had long past them, but they had each other. Silence cropped verbenas and bellflowers, populating their world of two with wonder and fancy. Loid tucked them behind her ear and made her feel gorgeous in the night.
The first time, Loid gazed at her and she played it off as if something in her direction held his attention. The second time wasn’t so sneaky. Yor had been playing this game too. She’d steal glances and admire the understated makings of Loid in secrecy: the fine white wisp of his eyelashes that flitted the angel kisses dusting his cheekbones; the effortless exhaustion that haloed blue eyes; the fuzz on his upper lip that reminded Yor of the juiciest peach. Parched, she swallowed hard. Loid had caught her, or perhaps she had caught him. They caught each other; lost to captivation.
“Anya… That cheeky girl,” mumbled Loid under his breath, following the pointed tips of his shoes now with furrowed brows. “So that was why.”
“Why what?” she asked, focusing on matching her stride with Loid’s. Left, right. Left, right.
“She kept pestering me about trivial things. Limes. Ferns. Cucumbers. Kiwis.”
“I don’t really follow.”
Cirruses wreathed their heads as the stillness broke. “Green is my favorite color.”
Yor, never knowing when to quit, had the last laugh. A blush stained all of his handsome features and bled onto her. “Believe me when I say I had no idea.” She strayed further and farther away from the garden they tended with accidental brushes and palpable tension. A storm descended in the space between them. A crack of thunder. A split of lightning. Torn leaves twisted in the wind. Raindrops embellished her skin—a cuirass of roped diamonds that shielded the fragile cage of her rattling heart.
“It’s a stunning dress, Yor.” Loid parted the gray clouds and pulled back into the honeyed dregs of a late-summer sun. Yor’s defenses melted under its familiar grasp. “Forgive me. I can’t seem to take my eyes off of you.”
It registered after twenty counts. Then, she flowered with dizzying rapture.
Yor racked her mind to find the right things to say to him—she knew she ought to say something—but the sentences would not form. When she’d open her mouth, bubbles would come ballooning out instead, swallowing her whole. She floated on fortuity, on chance, and tried not to burst either one.
“Thank you.” Yor fisted the skirt of her dress as she lifted higher and higher into the stratosphere. She didn’t mean to be so curt—there were many happy emotions she wanted to express, but she wasn’t as cunning as Loid. Wasn’t as articulate. Affection was conveyed through hands weaving through spun hair, arms wrapped around another, lips on eyelids; was reserved for younger brothers and dear daughters. To do such things with a man seemed almost unfathomable to Yor, but right now, she wanted nothing more than to touch and be touched.
When the stars aligned on the downbeat of their hearts, when their shoulders brushed and when the arc of their arms swung down at a point of convergence, when she heard those bells chime once more, Yor seized the moment. She hooked her pinky to his.
“Just for now. Please,” she whispered shakily with shut eyes. Loid didn’t recoil from her touch. “You can always let go.”
He was quiet; Yor half-expected him to justify the sudden skinship under the pretense of their fake marriage or to untie altogether. Instead, Loid moved to lace their fingers, intertwined. He squeezed. There was such a sincerity in that innocent act that made them gaze into the hazy horizon and hope that they would never reach their destination. It took the rivulets under his skin, the life pulsing in her palm to understand reciprocation—requitals left unsaid.
And so they clung to each other—vagabonds in search of lost girlhoods and abandoned homes.
I really hope that writer gets to see your AMAZING ART after I saw it I immediately went to the fic and OMGGGGG THE WAY I WANNA GUSH ABOUT IT IN DETAIL!!! Ugh you’re so right it’s much much more than a sick fic. The way you drew Anya’s happy but sleepy expression don’t me I’m just shaking, crying, convulsing over here. Bravo a blessing to my eyes thank you for sharing this story you found!!!
AJFHAIA THANK U and I'm glad u enjoyed the fic!! I love putting people on 😩😩😩 it is so GOOOOOD UGHHH
Ok so this is kinda late slkdsjlf but it's here!!! Im gonna write all of these prompts lol not even my degree can stop me
But yea it was a bit hard to come up with a narrative concept for this one, but I hope you enjoy it!!
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Twilight notices details. It's an important skill for a spy, and one that he’s spent years honing.
It's for that reason and that reason alone that he spends so much time studying Yor. She’s the person in closest proximity to him these days, it’s only natural that he’d make sure he knows her well enough to be able to play whatever character she would respond best to.
At first it’s really just that. Analysis, information gathering. But after a while Twilight finds himself lingering on things that have no bearing on Yor’s involvement with the mission. Like the gentle red of her eyes, or the dip of her exposed shoulders framed by that red sweater.
Or her hands, well manicured and slender. He knows what strength they hold, but you’d never be able to tell from just looking at the delicate planes of her fingers. Planes that are unexpectedly calloused and rough, an uneven topography relating a story Twilight has no idea how to read.
Sometimes he lets his eyes linger on her hands, following the shadow of a path he distantly wants to trace with his fingers.
The path sometimes focuses its route on her ring finger, empty despite their arrangement. He never got her a ring. It's oddly fitting - no rings for a couple who aren't really married. To the outsider, it could be seen as suspicious.
That's the only reason he lets himself dwell on the thought of buying Yor a ring. She'd never brought it up, but he's sure she'd be on board with the idea. For the aim of enhancing their appearance as an actual couple, of course. From a mission standpoint. Yor isn’t his real wife, there is no reason for him to find the concept of it being clear that he’s hers and she’s his appealing.
When he hears the neighbours whispering about their relationship again a few days later, he takes it as a sign to breach the topic with Yor. It'd be stupid to risk the mission over something that’s so easily fixable.
He brings it up that evening, as they sit in the living room together.
“Yor,” he starts, and Yor turns to look at him inquiringly. “How would you feel about getting rings?”
“Rings?” Yor echoes, seemingly pondering the idea. “Like wedding rings?” He nods.
“I wouldn’t mind,” she says, smiling. “But you already gave me a ring?”
It’s Twilight’s turn to look at her questioningly. Yor doesn’t answer his silent question, getting up and hurrying into her room. She returns a moment later with a small cloth bag. Reaching into it, she pulls out a small silver loop.
Twilight recognizes it instantly, a grenade pin. But why…?
“I know it isn’t actually a ring,” Yor says, holding the pin like it’s something precious. “But you proposed to me with it, so I felt it’d be a shame to just throw it out.”
Ah yes. That grenade pin. Twilight stares at her for a moment, dumbfounded. Half of him questions his reasoning for proposing with a grenade pin in the first place. The other half is oddly touched that Yor felt it was valuable enough to keep.
He fends off that half and gives Yor a gentle smile.
"I'm sorry about the circumstances of that proposal," he says wryly. "It wasn't ideal, and I should have at least gotten you a proper ring."
"There's no need to be sorry," Yor says earnestly. "It's my fault for asking you about marriage in a situation like that." She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, sheepish.
"Besides, it was a very memorable moment," she says, quietly. "And it marked the start of a new chapter in our lives, even though this isn't a real marriage."
Twilight recognizes distantly that the fondness that seeps into the smile he’s giving Yor is not intentional or scripted.
“I’m touched it meant that much to you,” he says, smiling. “It was certainly an explosive night.”
Yor laughs at that, and Twilight loves the sound.
“I still think I should get you a proper ring though,” he says, and Yor loops the grenade pin onto her finger.
“Perhaps,” she says, laughter lingering in her voice. “This one is a bit big.”
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Yor beats him to it. A few days later, she presents Twilight with a small velvet box, her eyes shining with excitement. When he opens it, there’s a simple gold ring inlaid with a few small red stones nestled in its cushioned interior. For a moment he’s at a loss for words, looking between the ring and Yor.
“Even though it’s not really a ring, you’ve already given me the pin,” Yor explains when he fails to organize anything to say after a few moments. “So I thought I’d get you something as well.”
She looks a little nervous, watching him for a reaction. Twilight knows which one he should give. Loid Forger should thank his wife, insist that she didn’t have to, and gratefully take the ring. Maybe hug her.
The small but pleased smile he gives her is not a facade.
“Thank you,” he says, and his voice is full of a warmth he didn’t choose to fill it with. “It’s a lovely ring.”
Yor’s eyes curve into happy crescents, and for a split second Twilight wishes he could freeze the moment in time.
He goes out the next day and buys Yor a matching ring, inlaid with blue stones.
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When Mr and Mrs Forger have a renewing of vows a few years later the beaming bride wears a grenade pin carefully hung from a necklace.
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The bit with Yor giving Loid the ring is inspired by this post. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!
