#vardr

[aetla]

 ❖ ‘ you know — ’

 ❖  ‘ — i just don’t think this is going to work. ’

[praesidioest]

❝ hey! give me a kiss! ❞ of course, he'll lean over and tap his own cheek where he wants it like the cheeky bastard he is.

[ @vardr. ] SABRINA I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

He’s a little too susceptible to those baby blues, and the scintillate smile that’s his quotidian undoing. Gladio’s pulling a lopsided smile when he plants a loud, smacking kiss to the peak of Zack’s cheek, to the exact spot that he’s directed him to. But he lands another to the corner of his mouth, and another to the pout of his lips, though the latter are for his own personal indulgence. 

“Anything else?” he asks, letting his fingers trail down the heel of his hand, dandle within the curl of his fingers. “Royalty doesn’t boss me like you do, you know.” And neither do they hold the sway upon his heart.

[valkyrjja-blog]

gives a smooch on the cheek, ' thanks for hearing me out. '

      fingers brush the spot where lips had touched , and she feels the touch of embarrassment that is often induced by 9S.  she is grateful the visor continues to hide her eyes as silver crown shifts , averting gaze.  he is grateful for her time , but she is the one who has found value in his story and his time.  perhaps one day he would tell the part of the story he left out , thinking she could not decode that missing pieces existed.      “    your thanks are not necessary.    ”

[praesidioest]

things you said when you missed me

[ send me a ship and one of these and i’ll write a mini fic ]

@vardr  ║  not accepting !

that AU where they’re long distance for a bit ;)

“And I miss your hands ….. I miss your smile ….. Definitely miss your butt. But do I separate that into two categories? Like left butt and right butt? Do they deserve their own distinction? I think I’m gonna do that. It’s fair. I miss each of your butt cheeks. I miss …. Oh! I miss the way your hair spikes jams into my face sometimes when you don’t wash your god-awful hair gel before bed, and they’re still like …. Sonic the Hedgehog meets Ron Jeremy for the most perfect nightmare with which to savage my face first thing in the morning—”

“Easy on the hair gel,” Zack warned, his voice coming tinny from Gladio’s phone speaker.

“I could say the same to you.”

“Wiseass.” But Zack was laughing on the other end, looking more handsome than he had any right to over a video call, and half a world away. “So you basically listed me in parts and said you loved every one. If I was Mr Potato Head, I could just mail me back to you, piecemeal. Problem solved.”

“What’s the purpose in that?” Gladio asked, his brows furrowing hard as he frowned at the screen where Zack’s face, bleary with sleep, showed half obscured in the dark of his room. “That sounds morbid.”

“You’re the one reducing me to the sum of my parts, here,” Zack returned, the retort softened by his own drowsiness.

“Yeah, but like… a synecdoche,” Gladio explained, making vague gestures with his hands out of range of the camera, but Zack knew he was making them all the same. “A cute one.”

Zack yawned. “I don’t know what you said. I don’t even know why you said it.” 

Gladio laughed, stretching as he settled back into his bed. “It’s like when you talk about a part of something but it represents the whole. Like when you talk about a sail on the horizon, but you actually mean a whole boat. Or when you count heads but you mean a whole person. Or when you talk about missing Zack Fair’s ass, but you mean you miss Zack Fair.” 

He let it sink in before he continued. “It means received together,” he went on, his voice muffled now by the lethargy of sleep slowly overtaking him. “Or understood together. I love every part of you because it makes up your whole. But that also means you have to come back in one piece. Or else.” And he jammed the phone between his cheek and his pillow, settling against it. 

“I can’t see you when you do that, you know,” Zack informed him, and Gladio could hear his soft laugh, breathy with amusement. 

“It’s the closest I can get to putting my face on you,” Gladio mumbled.

“I also can’t hear you,” Zack mumbled right back. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Gladio assured him, sniffing uselessly against the night chill. “Everything I say is basically a permutation of ‘I love you,’ ‘I miss you,’ ‘you have a killer ass,’ so you’re not missing much.”

Zack made a sound like a contemplative hum. “I like your permutations.”

“I really wish I could spin that into something sexy, but I can’t,” Gladio laughed, pushing his cheek stubbornly against the screen. Like he was nuzzling it. 

“Don’t.” Warning was buried somewhere within that sonorous laugh. “Go to sleep.”

Gladio wrinkled his nose in the dark. “I can’t. I’m too busy missing you.”

Zack groaned, the sound half muffled by Gladio’s on cheek. “You’ve used that line on me like …a hundred times already.” 

“Did it work this time?”

“Nope.”

“Then come home,” Gladio coaxed gently. “So I don’t have to keep missing you.”

He could hear Zack let out a laugh through his nose. “I’ll do my best.” A beat. “I miss you, too.” 

“Of course you do,” Gladio said airily, his eyes shut against the dark. “Because we’re understood together. Someday we’ll be like some fucked up synecdoche. They’ll talk about you and mean the pair of us. Or use our names interchangeably. Or just learn to assume one’s not understood without the other. Some shit like that.”

“Oh yeah?” Zack asked, humoring him. “When’s that?”

Gladio shrugged. “Dunno. When you marry me, maybe.” 

“That’s how you’re asking me?” Zack laughed, teasing. 

“No, what I’m doing right now is putting out feelers for when I do,” Gladio explained, equally teasing. “You know. So I don’t look like a complete tool if I ask for real.”

“If?”

“When.”

“Mm,” Zack hummed. 

“I’m gonna ask you,” Gladio informed him. “Up to you if you say yes. But I’ll mean it, either way.” 

“As long as you ask again in person,” Zack insisted.

“You’re gonna have to come home for that,” Gladio reasoned.

“Tomorrow,” Zack promised. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Then I’m gonna sleep,” Gladio decided. “So I don’t have to miss you for very long anymore.” He yawned, genuinely. “Good night. I love you.”

Zack caught the yawn. “Good night. I love you more.”

“Impossible,” Gladio retorted quickly, but Zack’s only response was the evened breathing and the light, snore like the purr of a small asthmatic kitten. And it was to this that Gladio fell asleep, as he did most nights, whenever he missed Zack far beyond reason.

[praesidioest]

then comes the tug of war

The waiting was the worst part.

The captain’s pocket watch ticked madly with a metronomic precision that echoed within the the metal of his helmet, the hollow of his skull. Gladio blinked, rifle poised under his arm, pressed to his ribs, ready instinctively for the signal to begin the walking assault. The siege would begin at 0600, with the attack commencing upon the eastern face of the fortified schloss. Heavy artillery on that side was due to draw the attention of the castle’s defenses, their efforts to be drawn in concert there, leaving their back exposed to a second, supplementary attack.

Lucis Company was positioned to the south, where Gladio and his fellow soldiers waited within the thick of the encroaching trees. Alpha Unit was installed along the high ground to provide cover for the western penetration, their legendary snipers were already laid prone along the austral edges of the forest, masked by the wild bramble that sprouted in the bosque. Their captain gave a low whistle for the one minute mark, wherein a small eternity ensued before the first, stentorian blast sounded, preceding a spectacular spray of stone and mortar.

The captain’s hand was raised, their signal to hold. And so they did, sweat already beading their brows in the low summer heat, waiting like monoliths in the obscurity of the flora. A sniper took his shot, the bullet whizzing over Gladio’s head, and connecting expertly with the target who stood imprudently between the crenellated slats of the battlements.

“As good a time as any,” Gladio heard his captain mumble, before giving the signal to advance.

The sortie started out as smoothly as anyone could have hoped for, his unit slipping within the the castle through a wooden door rotted with age, made aware to them by previous reconnaissance to the grounds. There was only one standing guard, ostensibly due to the rest of their forces concentrated at the bleed. Some reedy blond kid not even worth an enlisted cap, looking like he was fresh-picked and wet behind the ears, and far from equipped to handle the . Gladio was first in, rifle raised to his shoulder as he took out the guard with a clean shot to the chest. He fell away without a word, silent as death itself. Gladio lowered his weapon, signing himself with the cross and kissing his own dogtags in reverence to the too-young life he’d claimed. He's been just as much victim of this war as any of them were, though he wondered if he were the only of his company who thought so. It was a question he forgot as his unit regrouped, and they moved past the boy that was body without any further regard.

His heart was already racing. An even, metered pace that he’d learned to keep at bay from the forefront of his thoughts, a pedal point to the steady breaths that sounded sharp as shards in his own ears. Gladio would rather have been at the forefront of the fray, instead of skulking in the back like a thief. But these were his orders, and he would execute them to the smallest detail: neutralize and secure the basement laboratory. Wait for backup. Touch nothing.

They descended the eastern stairwell to the bowels of the fortress, where Gladio took the forward position for the breach of the laboratory. But they were only a handful of defenseless scientist guarding their journals of clandestine medicine, and they succumbed quickly and quietly to the sharp shouts of Gladio in his men, to get down! and hands where I can see them! and whatever other protocol they were obligated to shout. Gladio doubted the scientists understood the nuance of his words, but it war was one of those universal languages. It didn’t take much to know they’d been beat, or what it took to surrender peacefully to save their lives.

While his men screened their new captures, Gladio had taken it upon himself to do exactly what he was ordered not to: look around. Command could forgive him his cat’s curiosity as he surveyed the walls lined neatly with laboratorial glassware, with various organic material suspended in formaldehyde: small animals, genetic anomalies, organs of various mammals, and a number of other oddities that looked as though they belonged to the confines of a circus sideshow and not a scientific edifice.

A small door lead to the surgical room and the adjoining observational chamber, and beside that, the infirmary, where a passel of subjects lay on dilapidated cots, so preternaturally still in their unearthly weakness that for a moment Gladio had wondered if he’d stumbled upon their morgue.

They stirred as much as they were able, invigorated to what small extent their bodies would allow, at the sight of Gladio passing warily through the cramped aisle between the skewed beds.

A shock of blue struck him before the nuances of fine, familiar features materialized in the haze of his surprise. Blue like the jewel-hued shallows of the most paradisiac ocean. Blue like the sky when the sun’s set a little and allows for a little depth. Blue like hope.

Gladio would know those eyes as if they were his own, the memory, the remarkable hue of them as unmistakable as it was unforgettable.

Zack Fair.

It had been months since Iris had written to him about Zack. Best she knew, he’d run off to join up, same as Gladio had. The hubristic curse of every boy of their generation. Sometimes she’d send him tidbits of information: family said he landed safely in Italy, said he sends letters so often they’re not even sure he’s at war. That was it. No mention of those letters stopping. No mention of concern. Nothing that might have prepared him for the impossibility of seeing his childhood best friend laying as good as dead in some kraut castle.

But nothing could have prepared him for that. Nothing at all. What was the probability that of all the missions he’d find himself on, in all the fucking castles in all of Europe would he find himself facing the half-dead form of one of the few faces he’d vowed to return home to.

Change of plans. They were going to return home together, now.

Gladio’s hands slid beneath his frame, the points of Zack’s bones digging into his thewy forearms as he cradled him to his chest and lifted him from the bed.

“Sir, our orders were not to touch anything,” one of his men informed him with that waver of cowardice in his voice. “We’re not to disturb anything, not until backup arrives, and—”

“I know my orders,” Gladio interrupted, his voice unintentionally gruff, though the intent was unmistakable. “And you can shove them right up your ass if you think I’m leaving him behind.” 

But help did not arrive for at least another hour during which time, Gladio had stubbornly held Zack to his chest, periodically inclining his head to his just to feel the uneven fluttering of his breath on his cheek. He was alive. He was warm, and he was breathing, and he was safe with him. And that was all that mattered.

@vardr

[praesidioest]

kiss + 5 & 15.

SEND ‘KISS’ + A NUMBER TO KISS MY MUSE…

…before going to sleep.

…because you missed them.

@vardr  ║  accepting !  [ and not to be continued!]

World War 2 AU, BECAUSE REASONS

The nurse lays a hand on his shoulder, feather-light, like she’s trying not to be obtrusive. The fact is, he’s the one impinging upon their space, resting like a wraith in the corner of the infirmary, where Zack lays in some sempiternal slumber from which Gladio waits for him to wake.

Gladio hadn’t left his side since he’d found him in the basement of that castle, half dead with whatever ungodly experimentation they’d done on him. He could still remember the dullness in those eyes that had been nearly incandescent in his memory of his best friend, how hollow they looked as they blinked up at him when he lifted his body from that worn cot. 

Did he recognize him then? Does he recognize him now? Zack had yet to speak a word to affirm. It was enough that he woke for the few hours a day that he did, long enough to sallow down some tasteless gruel and a paper cup of vitamins Gladio was sure was doing fuckall. Not that he’d been doing much better. 

Gladio stares helplessly at the half-parted lips that he can still remember whispering his name, that last time he’d dropped Zack off on his stoop, stealing a kiss he knew would be his last (and only), before he snuck off like a thief to do his part with the war effort. He’d turned away, then, too scared to see the sure rejection illuminated by moonlight, and left without a proper goodbye.

That same terror seizes him now, even as Zack lay sleeping in his bed, hands at his side above the perfect arrangement of his thin covers. He wishes he had the gall, but he doesn’t. Not to take something twice that never belonged to him. No matter how desperately he wants to. 

Gladio entwines his callous fingers within his, staring at the constellation of scars that adorn his knuckles. They’re more obvious at certain angles against the firelight, when the amber glow illuminates every ridge and hollow, and Gladio counts with compulsive disconcert each errant wound by pressing his lips fervently to them. He curses every weapon, every man that had a hand in marring the beauty of those hands, who he can remember from more halcyon days, when they were as soft and smooth from the luxury of disuse, when the worst hardship they’d known was the grip of a pen to crawl out arithmetic homework. 

He kisses each scar in a methodical ecliptic, until his lips taste of his skin and salt and an indescribable, palliative scent that has the curious effect of slowly recovering the rift in his riven heart.

It’s a bittersweet farewell, one he repeats like a tortured samsara every night before he leaves him for his own bed. A ritual that grants him less conciliation than it should, for how deeply it wounds him. But still he does it, believing in its influence. Because it’s the only hope he has left. Because all he needs is for Zack to return to him. 

[praesidioest]

dabs on ya boi

@vardr

There’s a tense moment, before Gladio can discern exactly what this ardent gesture means. His brow furrows first in contemplation that coalesces into determination. In one fluid motion, his head snaps down, his thewy arms fling themselves skyward (sort of, iono what the degree of that angle is) in sharp formation. The sheer force of his overly-muscled appendages is enough to sonic boom some fucking pigeons out of the sky, and hurls Zack back with enough velocity that his extra-ass hair is transmogrified without explanation into something that might actually be passable for his legendarily rakish tendencies. 

“You’re welcome,” Gladio tells him with an indulgent sort of benevolence, as though he’d done his friend a service, and not just fucked up the flight patterns of columbidae on the Eastern Seaboard.

[lightnull]

@vardr

               ❝ —— She’s not here, ❞ unfair, perhaps, making an assumption as to why he has come here, but there are only so many options, aren’t there? For all intents and purposes, there is one woman who resides here. She is a haunting ghost; a hanger on. ❝ I think she’ll be back soon, though. ❞