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skepticalfrogcat · 25 days

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WOOOOO new fic! Get ready everyone who wants to see Finch interact with some other people, because this one is all about friendship. No need to read any of my other fics to understand this one, feel free to dive right in!

( @choicesficwriterscreations )

Relationship: Finch Parnassus (MC) & Tyril Starfury (Platonic)

Warnings: Some light swearing and a little violence, but not in an angsty way I SWEAR.

Word Count: 2,537 words

Summary: Finch and Tyril fight with swords, and have a great time doing it.

“And I think that I would not like to be blamed for killing the Savior of Morella.”

~~~

“I'm telling you, I really do think I could do it.”

Finch and Tyril had been debating a particular issue for a few days at that point. It wasn't particularly rare that the two of them would spar; particularly with swords, although occasionally it was hand to hand, and they had used magic once or twice. Finch had always suspected that they both did it for different reasons, though. While Tyril most likely fought with him purely for practice, with the intent to improve both of their skills, that was only part of Finch's motivation. He also just did it for the thrill. It was fun, and he'd never been one to deny himself something exciting.

“You wouldn't kill me, the whole point is that I don't think you'd touch me at all,” Finch pointed out. “I wouldn't even get hurt.”

What he was specifically trying to do, as he had been trying to do for weeks, was make a bet. He'd improved a lot with his sword since he'd first started using it. So much so that he was fairly confident he'd be able to best Tyril in battle - without even being grazed once. That was what he was willing to bet on.

It wasn't so much that he was positive he could do it. He just thought it was possible, and he really wanted to test his own limits. So now, as he and Tyril walked down a cobblestone street in Whitetower, he was once again trying to convince him to take a chance.

“Come on, we do stuff like this all the time,” he lightly backhanded Tyril's shoulder. “I know you think you're all responsible and everything, but I can tell you secretly like making a game out of this shit as much as I do.”

“It is difficult enough for me to adapt to your… unorthodox style of swordsmanship,” Tyril explained. Finch could admit that that was reasonable. Even though he'd been practicing with Tyril, he'd never been classically trained in quite the same way. His style of sword fighting was about as scrappy as his upbringing. “I wouldn't want to risk causing an accident due to your unpredictable behavior.”

“Wow, Starfury, tell me how you really feel.” Finch mimed being stabbed in the heart and pretended to die, his tongue falling out of his mouth. He dropped out of the charade, waving his hand dismissively. “It would be fine. The worst that would happen is I'd get a little knick, and even then, we can just slap a bandage on it.”

Tyril sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Alright,” he conceded. “Tell me what exactly you're anticipating I do, and I will consider entertaining the idea.”

“Okay, I want you to act like you're trying to kill me.”

Tyril's brow furrowed. “I feel as though you don't understand what my reservations are about this activity.”

“Let me finish, let me finish,” Finch gestured with his hand in Tyril's direction with the intention of getting him to stop talking. “I'm just saying, come at me with all you've got. Not like we're practicing, like it's the real thing. While you do that, I'll both be trying to disarm you, and dodge all of your attacks. If you hit me, or even just touch me with your sword at all, you win. But, if I can successfully get your sword out of your hand in a meaningful way before you can do that, then I win.”

“And what would we be playing for?” Tyril glanced down at Finch, who wasn't as much shorter than him as Mal was, but still didn't stand quite as tall. “I can't imagine either of us have anything we're eager to give up.”

“I was thinking I’d just do it for the bragging rights, and if you win I guess you'd get the honor of having proven me wrong. We could always put money on it if we wanted to, but I know that's not really your thing,” Finch shrugged.

Tyril pondered on it for a moment, clearly deep in thought in a way that made Finch feel like he'd done quite well at selling his points. “And I suppose that, in the event that there was an accident, we are both capable of administering preliminary healing while we move to a safer location.”

“Right,” Finch nodded along, attempting to encourage Tyril.

“I suppose it may not be too dangerous, then. You are quite good at defending yourself, as well.” He thought about it for a few seconds more. “I'll participate,” he decided. “But if you're injured, we will stop immediately to tend to the wounds. And this will be the only time we do this.”

“That's fine, honestly the fact that you agreed to do it at all is enough for me,” Finch grinned. “How about tomorrow? I promised Kade I'd help him organize some new journals that were brought in, and after that I'm probably going out with Imtura and Mal.”

“I will be available at any time tomorrow, yes,” Tyril confirmed. “Simply come and find me when you're ready to be beaten.”

“You've learned a lot about trash talk lately,” Finch laughed, bumping his shoulder against Tyril's. “Could still stand to get a little better though. Maybe ask Mal, I'm sure even just hearing that question would make him give you a few examples.”

“And I am sure they would be helpful, even indirectly.”

“Great optimism.” Finch gave Tyril one last firm clap on the shoulder as they passed through the palace gates and began parting ways, Finch on his way to the library and Tyril heading towards the main doors. “Keep that mood for tomorrow!” he called after him. “You're going to need it!”

Tyril shook his head with what may have seemed like disapproval to an untrained eye, but Finch could still see the unmistakable smile on his face, no matter how small it was. Finch turned away from him then, trying to focus on his new task. He'd have to find some time to come up with a strategy for the fight; maybe he'd talk to Imtura or Mal about it. They'd have a laugh about the whole thing, he was sure. They'd probably enjoy it as much as Finch knew he himself would.

~~~

The next day, Finch and Tyril met in a dirt arena with bright white brick walls within the boundaries of the castle, where some members of the royal army occasionally trained. Tyril had only brought one of his two swords, and was dressed in the set of armor he wore with as much frequency as if it were casual wear. Finch, despite owning multiple full sets of magically enhanced armor, had opted for a simple set of leather armor. Contrasting that, though, his weapon of choice was the Blade of Sol. Not necessarily to show off, although it wouldn't have been uncharacteristic, but because he knew that it was the only sword he had that would be able to put up a good fight against Tyril's. The other ones would probably be too flimsy, and it wouldn't be a fair fight if his sword snapped in half.

“You don't seem… particularly well protected,” Tyril noted from across the small battlefield.

“Yeah, I figured it'd be a lot harder to make this a fair game if there isn't any solid way to prove you've hit me,” Finch explained.

“Would I not be able to feel it if my sword came into contact with metal armor?”

“It's more fun this way,” Finch dismissed him. “You're lucky I didn't choose not to wear armor at all, if anything I did this to appease you.” He adjusted the leather pauldron on his shoulder. There were certainly many parts of his arms and legs that had been left exposed, as well as spots on his sides, but he wasn't concerned. “Mal and Imtura have money on this, by the way. I told them what we were doing. I don't know which one of them got to bet on me, but whoever it was is about to get a little richer.”

“You have become much more confident since I first met you,” Tyril chuckled, unsheathing one of his swords.

“Oh, I was always this confident,” Finch countered. He took hold of his own sword, giving it a mildly unnecessary flourish and spinning the heavy blade in an arc in his hand. “I just have the skills to back it up now.”

“Alright, then let's begin.”

Without any more warning, Tyril slashed out with his sword. Finch was only able to dodge it on pure instinct, dropping low enough to the ground that the attack went over his head. Unfortunately, this also put him in a vulnerable position. He had quick reflexes, but they weren't always smart ones. Tyril swung his sword down at him, and he just barely avoided it by rolling out of the way. He got up again as quickly as he could.

They circled each other for a brief moment. Then Tyril lunged again. Finch used his own weapon to knock the attack off course. Still, the motion of it continued and they collided. Finch took a few steps back to regain his balance. By the time Tyril was firmly standing again, Finch was behind him. Quick reflexes did pay off sometimes. He planted his hand on Tyril's back and pushed him over. Before he had time to register it, though, he was falling too. Tyril had turned around to grab his wrist as he fell, and now they were both on the ground.

“You're fighting dirty, Starfury,” Finch laughed as he stood.

“I've learned it from you,” Tyril reminded him as he too got back up.

He didn't waste any more time before attacking again, jabbing his sword out towards Finch. Ironically, Finch did utilize a similar move. He dodged to the side as the attack got close, then took hold of Tyril's arm and used his momentum to send the tip of his blade directly into the ground. Finch then used the bit of time that bought him to get further away. Honestly, he was pretty proud of that.

Still, it didn't take long for Tyril to recover. Finch had known that wouldn't count as disarming him; it had mostly been to delay his next attack. He held his weapon more securely in both hands. He watched closely as Tyril pulled his sword from the dirt. Then, in the space of a blink, Tyril was running towards him again. In a flash, Finch raised his sword, and metal clashed against metal as he blocked Tyril's attack.

Tyril swung his sword around in an attempt to hit him from the side. Finch jumped backwards, and he heard the whoosh of the blade through the air as it missed him by a fraction of an inch. Within seconds, Tyril unleashed a barrage of blows, which Finch struggled to deflect. It was almost as if he had to have his blade in two places at once in order to properly defend himself.

As Tyril's sword came in for another attempted hit, Finch took a leap of faith. He didn't block with his own weapon, or dodge backwards as he normally might; instead he avoided the attack by ducking beneath the blade, which incidentally placed him closer to Tyril. Now in the space between Tyril's body and his sword, he grabbed Tyril's wrist and in a fraction of a second he'd slid his hand over Tyril's and used all of the force he had to yank the blade from his grip and fling it across the arena. He didn't grab it, he simply let it go recklessly flying as far as he could get it to go.

Finch could tell Tyril was diving for it immediately with the way he pushed past him. Now it was up to reaction time. Or… maybe it wasn't. What Finch did next was more instinct than anything, his body going non-corporeal before he could even really think about it much. In as much time as it would've taken to blink, Finch had phased out of existence and then directly back into it, right beside where Tyril's fallen sword laid on the ground. His hand shot out, and he grabbed it.

Tyril stopped in his tracks. “You've gotten it,” he noted, breathing heavily. There was a look of bewilderment on his face “You've truly done it.”

It took another moment for Finch's accomplishment to catch up to him. In one hand, he held his own sword. In the other hand, he now had Tyril's. And he hadn't been hit. A quiet, shocked laugh came from him. Then he crowed triumphantly, raising both swords over his head. “Ha! I told you I could!” he gloated, pointing over at Tyril with one of the blades. “I'm not overconfident, I'm proportionately confident.”

“Yes, yes, I understand that now,” Tyril chuckled, smoothing his hair back. “But perhaps next time, we should ban the use of your Realmwalking. That would be a true challenge.”

Finch's brows shot up. “Next time?” he sheathed his own sword, and offered Tyril's back to him. “Whatever happened to “this will be the only time”, hm?” he joked, using his free hand to lightly push Tyril's shoulder.

“It was… more entertaining than I anticipated it to be,” Tyril admitted.

“I had a feeling it would be,” Finch shot him a wink. “It's good training, too. Really valuable. We can keep raising the stakes, and it'll keep making us both better,” he shrugged as they started back towards the castle.

“Classical training is equally valuable, though,” Tyril reminded him.

“I know, you've made sure I know,” Finch laughed, bumping their shoulders together. “Now, what do you say we go find Imtura and tell her Mal owes her some money?”

“You mean to say Mal placed his wager on me?”

“Well, he does believe in you, but we both know he also makes a lot of his decisions based on what the funniest choice is in the moment. And at the time, the three of us were all a few drinks deep, and I was the one around to be offended when he didn't bet on me.”

“That is an excellent point,” Tyril nodded. “I suppose this will be an educational opportunity for him, then.”

“It better be, or else he's going to be losing a lot more money when we do this again,” Finch agreed.

Overall, Finch found that it had been a very successful day. Not only had he convinced Tyril to have some fun, but he also felt like he'd learned a lot. He'd have to train with Tyril more often; he could tell that it benefitted both of them. Besides, he just enjoyed spending time with his friend. There was probably nothing that made him happier than being with the people he loved, even if they were actively pretending to kill each other. He had a feeling that no matter how long he knew his friends, he wouldn't ever get tired of them. It would simply never happen.

#this comment plus your tags make us best friends now. sorry i don't make the rules

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skepticalfrogcat · 2 months