#those shirts!! with the billowy sleeves!! and tie at the chest!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

keelywolfe · 4 years

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FIC: The Rose and the Thorn: Chapter 13 (Mafia AU)

Summary: Rus fled after his argument with Blue, leaving his brother behind to try to pick up the pieces. Blue has already been forced to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, what other deal might he have to make?

Tags: Spicyhoney, Cherryberry, Mafia AU, Flower Shop AU, Violence, First Meetings

Warning: Warnings for implications of prostitution.

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Read Chapter 13 on AO3

Read it here!

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“Wait!” Blue cried. Too late, far too late, his little brother was already gone, stepped into one of those shortcuts of his that Blue usually appreciated, relieved that his brother could easily escape from any awful confrontations. He hadn’t used that particular skill against Blue since he’d been a frustrated child, chafing at the limits Blue put on his wandering in the Underground. He’d never needed to, until now, and Blue sank to sit again on the bathroom rug, burying his skull in his hands and struggling to breathe through the heavy, steamed air from the still running shower.

Stupid, Blue thought tiredly. Blaming Papy for his own idiocy, taking out the frustrations he didn’t dare let loose anywhere else on his undeserving little brother. Papy was so sweet and kind, still clinging to some of his naivety even in this unwelcoming Human world; how could Blue ever have expected him to handle someone like that Edge fellow? If Red made him deeply uncomfortable and fearful, then Edge was so much worse. Red at least he understood, he knew what that brother wanted of him, product and sex, in that order, and once he got it, Red would dismiss them out of hand, hopefully without leaving too many scars behind.

Edge held mysteries behind that polite demeanor of his and Blue rather wished either he was taller or Edge was a great deal shorter, because he would have liked a good look in the large skeleton’s eye lights, trying to read exactly what was hidden within them. If only he simply wanted sex from Papy, that at least would only break his brother’s heart. Blue was far more worried about the state of his soul.

And then he went and gave stabbing through it himself a good try, Blue thought glumly. The brief, bitter satisfaction of watching his words strike home was almost immediately swamped by horrified regret as his little brother’s expression crumpled, the first tears falling. Blue couldn’t know how much truth any of his accusations held, but even if they were, Papy didn’t deserve that. Not when Blue well knew how easy it was to make mistakes.

He really was just like their father, blaming others for his blunders—no.

No, it was this place. He needed to get them out of here, away from the Fells, any way that he could.

Blue dragged himself upright and to the shower, reaching inside to turn off the taps and barely wincing as steaming hot water soaked through his shirt. He felt brittle and exhausted, had since late this afternoon when the weight of cameras watching him grow golden flowers became too much to bear. An uncaring mechanical eye watching as he did the very thing he’d promised himself he wouldn’t by getting involved with this sort of people. It brought back too many memories of living in the Underground and doing whatever it took to support him and his brother after their father…well…after he was gone.

He’d sworn he wouldn’t do such things again, made a promise to himself when they came to the surface and knowing he was breaking it left him nauseous, sickened by his own deceit. In the end, Blue filled most of the planting boxes in that room until it became too much, claustrophobia swarming over him, dimming his vision even as his gorge rose. He’d nearly staggered out the door and begged the guard outside to take him for some fresh air.

The Dog, Dogamy, he later learned, did so with some haste, perhaps worried that Blue was about to vomit on his very nice shoes. Instead of bringing him downstairs or to a handy window, Dogamy led him up to the rooftop and both the fresh air and the small garden was a blessing. Something to take his mind off of what he was doing in that closed off little room and when he’d finally brought Papy back upstairs with him, Blue could almost pretend this was why they were here, tending to an overgrown garden for some wealthy benefactor and soon they’d go back to their own little house and plants, back to their simpler life of flowers and hard work.

Then he’d looked up to see his brother and Edge kissing, and his meager daydream shattered.

Blue felt far too old for his years as he shuffled back out into the bedroom, stripping off his sopping shirt and tossing it into the discreet hamper next to the closet. The closet itself held plenty of clothes, far too many for what was only supposed to be a short stay here, and a brief pang of worry tightened in his chest as he wondered about their closed shop slowly losing their regular customers, his garden overgrown and going to seed without his care.

He shook it away. It didn’t matter, they’d managed before and they could do it again. Nothing mattered but keeping his brother safe.

Blue chose one of the shirts in his size at random, forced to yank it down and leaving the hanger at an awkward angle. He shrugged into it, buttoning it up as he made his way to the loveseat to sit and wait.

And wait. Hours passed and his brother did not return while the heavy weight of worry and regret nesting in Blue’s soul hatching into something closer to panic. He’d been angry and even cruel, but surely Papy wouldn’t hold a grudge for the entire night…would he? Either he was too angry or hurt to return, or he’d gotten himself into trouble and Blue couldn’t bear to wait any long to see which it was. He only hoped he wasn’t making another reckless decision based on his worries.

Opening the door revealed one of the seemingly endless supply of the Fell brothers’ Dog guards. This one had large, floppy ears and a mottled patch of white around one of their soulful brown eyes. They looked at Blue curiously as he stepped out and said, firmly, “I need to see Red.”

He didn’t know what orders they’d been given but the Dogs who wouldn’t take him look for his brother yesterday readily took him to Red, leading him down the corridor with none of their ridiculous backtracking and fuss of before. Not that it ever fooled Blue, he prided himself as being something of an expert at puzzles, but it wouldn’t do to tip his hand about that. Let the Fells think him lost in their silly little maze, they could gape in astonishment if ever he needed to make a quick escape.

The room he was led to was the same one he’d first seen here, Red’s office. Only this time, that enormous desk was covered in scattered papers and Red sitting behind it looked harried for once. His jacket was gone, tossed over the back of one of the sofas, his tie raggedly loosened, and there was a teacup at his elbow that he loudly slurped from, not the whisky glass Blue was growing accustomed to seeing in his hand, and honestly, why did these people insist on dressing up so much in their own home?

A glance back at his current guard confirmed that the Dog was wearing a fine suit of its own, honestly, everyone here dressed like they’d gotten a clearance deal on leftover costumes from the set of ‘Goodfellas’. That was one of Papy’s favorite movies, scrounged from the dump years ago and it made it to the surface with them for occasional re-watching. Perhaps that should have been a clue for Blue from there, a premonition of the sort of trouble his brother would be wont to find.

Then again, Blue was acutely aware that the clothes he was wearing weren’t his own. None of the clothing in that large closet was any he’d’ve chosen on his own, but even he could reluctantly admit they were flattering. This one was almost too cutesy for his tastes with its billowy sleeves and pale, delicate floral pattern, but he had no doubt he wore it well.

Not that it helped in the slightest. Red only barely glanced up from his paperwork, the first Blue had seen in this place aside from his own contract, reluctantly signed even as he wondered precisely what sort of devil he’d made a deal with.

“whatcha want now?” Red asked brusquely, shuffling a clumsy stack of papers to the side, “wanna whine about our deal again? gonna have to wait until morning, i got other things to handle aside from you.”

“My brother is missing,” Blue said, bluntly. That was enough to at least get Red to look at him, brow bones raised. “We argued and he…left,” Blue finished, lamely. He hardly wanted to explain to Red what they’d argued about, “and I’m worried about him, I’m sure he didn’t leave the building but—” Left unspoken was that surely Papy didn't need to leave the club to find trouble.

Red’s sharky teeth curved into a sly grin. He slouched back in his chair and it creaked ominously under his shifting weight, "lost him, already, huh. how many times you expect me to play fetch with your boy?"

"Woof!" Blue snapped, too harried to care about irritating this…this…but Red’s grin only widened, his deep crimson eye lights gleaming.

"heh, cute.” His gaze shifted to the Dog. “doggerel, g'wan and check downstairs, kid snuck down yesterday to hang out with the morning shift.” Red’s expression soured as he added, “may as well tell edge, if you shitstains haven’t gone behind my back and done it already. he’ll pitch a fit if ya don’t.”

It was on the tip of Blue’s tongue to protest telling Edge anything, but instead he only sputtered out, “Downstairs! He was down there yesterday with all those horrible people??”

A sudden coldness abruptly dropped over Red’s face like a storm cloud. “might wanna watch what ya say about our downstairs personnel. they work fuckin’ hard, don’t need the likes of you judgin’ ‘em.”

“What?” Blue said, aghast, and shook his head, “I don’t mean the ladies, they’re perfectly lovely, do you know how often I’ve delivered flowers here? I mean the patrons!” He shivered helplessly. “I don’t even like to think what that sort would do to my brother, please, you need to—”

“calm your tits, it ain’t like he snuck out on the stage to shake his ass.” But some of the cold tension in his expression eased. Red jerked his chin at the dog, who nodded and went back out. Which left the two of them alone, again, and that was not something that ever seemed to end well, in Blue’s opinion.

“this wasn’t part of our deal, ya know,” Red pointed out lazily. “already found your bro once on my dime, now we’re gettin’ greedy.” He stood and came from behind the desk, sitting instead on the leather love seat. His bulk took up more than his fair share, but then, he didn’t invite Blue to sit next to him. Rather, he spread his knees wide in silent, obscene invitation, smoothing a hand along the inner seam of his trousers with his rings glimmering against the dark material. “whatcha gonna give me for this, baby blue?”

Blue took a deep breath, calming the thin tremor that quivered through his soul. He’d known this was a possibility from the start, braced for it before he’d ever left that borrowed bedroom. He lifted his chin and said, stoutly, “Whatever it takes to keep my brother safe.”

He stepped forward boldly without another word, dropping to his knees on the plush carpet and reached up to scrabbled roughly at Red’s belt as he tried to work up a little moisture in his suddenly dry mouth before there were complaints about his sandpapery tongue. He could do this, Blue told himself, it was to help his brother, he could do this, do anything for Papy, anything at all, and he never needed to know what Blue had done, never, even as his own hypocrisy burned acrid on the back of his tongue.

But before he could even manage the shiny buckle, hands took a rough hold of his wrists, stopping him.

Startled, Blue looked up, “What--?”

Red never seemed to lose that smirk of his, but now it was more lopsided, startlingly reminiscent of Edge, and never had he and Red looked so much like brothers. “stand up, baby blue. keepin’ little bros safe is free of charge.”

“I pay my debts,” Blue said, low, even as he wondered wildly why he was arguing in favor his own defilement. Red only gave him a withering look, reaching inside his vest pocket for a fat cigar. He popped a wooden match alight with the sharpened tip of his thumb and the pungent smell of smoke filled the air.

“i don’t need to barter for sex, honey,” Red said in a cloudy exhale. “you wanna pay me back, you just make sure you stick to our deal.” He leaned in suddenly, cigar held well away in one hand as his mouth barely brushed the side of Blue’s skull in a low murmur, “when ya finally get on your knees for me, ya gonna be beggin’ me to be there.”

“I’d love to see you try,” Blue said unthinkingly. It earned him a startled laugh even as he quailed inwardly.

“oh, sweetheart, ya never let me down.” Red drew back and offered him that wider grin. “gonna try, fer sure, that’s a bone-ified promise.” He set a hand in the middle of Blue’s chest and gave him a light shove, sending him toppling on his backside as Red stood and went back to the desk. “now get out, the dogs’ll bring your bro back to ya when they find ‘im.”

Blue wobbled to his feet, already heading for the door. He hesitated there, uncertainly, he should be grateful for what he’d gotten, he should flee with all due haste and yet, he could help a soft, heartfelt, “Thank you.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, the door closing softly behind him as he fled. There wasn’t a Dog in sight, hopefully they were all searching for his brother, and Blue headed back to their room alone. He was halfway there when he realized, a niggling, absent thought in the back of his skull suddenly coming clear. The teacup he’d been drinking from; when Red leaned in, beneath the layer of cigar smoke, he’d smelled like golden flower tea. Why would he be drinking his own profits? It made no sense, or none that Blue could make of it.

That didn’t matter, not right now, he could worry at that sore spot later. For now, all he wanted was his brother back with him, as safe as circumstances allowed. He hoped fervently it wouldn’t take long.

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tbc

#cherryberry #spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #mafia AU

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idealistsinc · 3 years

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better off

content warning: arguing, some nsfw dialogue, then tooth-rotting adorable

When it came to matters of presentation, reining in Rin Weise was as futile as laveering a schooner in a storm.

Rin had swathed the sofa in every last tunic and pair of trousers Vhox owned. Vhox languished in a nearby armchair as he watched Rin gnaw a hangnail, pacing from one rumpled, sun-bleached shirt to another with a brow so furrowed it looked like it was trying to migrate to his chin. He had only agreed to let Rin choose his outfit because Rin had already bitten his fingernails to the quick over this whole Maelstrom business; letting Rin expend his nervous energy on something productive tended to go far better than the alternative. Anyway, thought Vhox, draping himself over the arm of the chair, at least he had an excuse to lounge about shirtless without Rin accusing him of being deliberately provocative. If he could just get Rin to stop fretting for long enough to look at him…

Rin paused from wearing a hole in the rug to hand Vhox a sedate white shirt, miraculously unblemished by seawater, sweat, or other unmentionable substances. “Try this one.”

Vhox held it up for inspection with a suggestive flex of his bicep. “Y’know,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “I think this is th’ one I wore on that Lower Decks tavern crawl, when you dragged me off be’ind the dumpsters an’—”

“Thank you,” said Rin. “I recall. Please put on the shirt, Vhox.”

Sighing theatrically, Vhox navigated his arms through the sleeves. “Never thought I’d see the day where y’wanted me to put on more clothes.”

That didn’t elicit even the ghost of a smile. The moment Vhox had his head through, Rin attacked him with all the deadly focus of a predator, tugging out wrinkles, straightening sleeves, and tightening the collar so that it near strangled him (“You tryin’ t’kill me?” Vhox griped. Rin, rolling his eyes, graciously undid one more button than his sense of propriety demanded). Then, Rin stepped back and looked Vhox over with such a critical gaze that Vhox resisted a childish urge to squirm.

“The sleeves are rather billowy,” Rin remarked, finally. “A bit too high seas.”

“The Maelstrom’s an armada. High seas’s what they’re goin’ for.”

“Point taken.” Rin frowned, then reached to brush Vhox’s bangs out of his face, a gesture Vhox mistook for affectionate until he added, “We ought to do something with your hair.”

Vhox’s stomach wrenched like a rudder grinding against a rock. “Nothin’ wrong with it,” he said. He caught Rin’s wrist; Rin pulled out of his grip in a huff, his tail twitching.

“Perhaps not, if what you’re going for is ‘lawless rogue.’ I’m only going to tie it back—”

Yeah, thought Vhox, because that fuckin’ tattoo will go over so well. He could imagine the sight he would be, a beaten-down, washed-up wharf rat parading himself in front of a Maelstrom lieutenant with a godsdamned cult brand on his cheek. He moved out of Rin’s range, hurt sharpening his voice. “Hell no. It’s one thing to pick out somethin’ nice, but I ain’t gonna start puttin’ on airs.”

“It’s not about ‘putting on airs.’ It’s about getting your foot in the door,” Rin said, with the infuriating patience of a parent for a tantruming child. “The Maelstrom administers to eight other squadrons. You’re going to need to show more than your usual bureaucratic finesse; I expect their standards aren’t exactly lax.”

If before the rudder had merely scraped on a rock, now Vhox felt the jolt of the whole bloody ship beaching on the shore, splintering the hull like matchsticks and throwing half the crew in the bay to drown. He’d been standing there for all of five minutes. If Rin judged that he didn’t pass muster, what the hell was Vhox even doing, thinking he might have a shot at making something more of himself than a lawless rogue?

“You think I can’t get in.”

Rin, reading the change in Vhox’s face, stilled. “I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t need to.” Vhox swung an arm at the tangle of tunics and jackets sprawled on the sofa. A prickling heat burned beneath his collar. “That’s what all this is, ain’t it? You don’t think they’ll take me ‘less I’m somethin’ I’m not—”

“That isn’t what I—”

“—so I’ll save us both th’ godsdamned time. Why go?”

“Because they might pay you,” said Rin. His voice went pitchy in his attempt not to raise it, cracking like a prepubescent kid whose balls had just dropped. “I’m sorry you feel that’s encroaching on your bloody gods-given right to do whatever you want, but what do you want me to say? That appearances don’t matter? That nothing you do will make a difference so that you have an excuse not to try? Because they do matter, and it does make a difference. Here in the adult world, sometimes you have to play the part just long enough to get hired.”

“Yeah?” Vhox said, before he could think better of it. “How’s that workin’ out for you, Rin? Tell me all about how good you're doin' at your job."

Rin’s expression blanked. Just like that, like closing a window, and just like that the air was crushed from Vhox’s lungs in a horrible vice of regret.

A fortnight past, Vhox came home from hauling nets at the docks to find Rin frozen in the grips of a panic attack so severe he couldn’t catch his breath to tell him what was wrong. Vhox had held him for nearly an hour, feeling the pounding staccato of Rin’s heart against his sternum and his shallow gasps on his neck, before Rin calmed down enough to give a disjointed and dissociative explanation: Rin had made a calculation error on a shipment through Maelvann’s Gate. It was a minor error, but such a taxing and expensive fix that Rin’s boss had called Rin into her office to suffer a formal reprimand, which utterly convinced Rin he was as good as fired—without an income, Kallu couldn’t go to school, Luma would never forgive him, and Rin would lose the flat and everything in it—without the flat, Rin would have to move back in with Isha’a, they would argue because Rin had never learned how to keep his damnable mouth shut, and Vhox would be turned out on the streets and maybe starve, maybe wind up stabbed to death in the gutter—

There were other inevitabilities that whirled in Rin’s head, Vhox was sure, but Vhox didn’t get to hear about them. By the time he got to the part where Vhox would clearly die without him, Rin was sobbing too hard to finish.

That was the funny thing about Rin. When Rin believed he needed to play a part, he played it so well that not even Vhox had seen the burden on Rin’s shoulders until Rin had already collapsed beneath it. Vhox realized that day he had no idea when Rin had begun to take on Vhox’s well-being as his responsibility—and it was for that reason, and that reason alone, that Vhox had sought out employment with the Maelstrom, determined to relieve Rin at once of that weight.

In the present, Rin forged doggedly through the silence. “I am trying to help you.”

“An’ I didn’t ask for your help!” If taking that burden off Rin’s shoulders was Vhox’s aim, his failure was already writ in the stress-carved canyons on Rin’s forehead and the heavy bruises under his eyes. Rin was trying to help him, and how did Vhox repay him? By shouting at him. By pissing away the last twenty-odd years of his life, time from which Vhox might never be able to recover into the kind of person who could hold a steady job, the kind of person who might actually be deserving of— “I never asked for you to feed me or put a roof o’er my head. I ain’t a godsdamned charity case, some beggin’ starveling needin’ you to play benefactor—”

“No, you’re not.”

“Then maybe don’t act like you’re doin’ me such a favor, dolin’ out gil to stroke your own dick—”

“By the bloody fucking Twelve, Vhox!” said Rin, very loud. His frustration trembled in his legs; he strode up to Vhox and took him firmly by the shoulders, but...even upset as Rin was, his touch was gentle. “Is this what we’re doing now? Being vulgar for the sake of it, hoping I’ll storm out in disgust so you can tell yourself what a terrible person you are? Because you’re not, and I won’t. You can’t push me away—shockingly, I take care of you because I love you, you brainless twit—”

Vhox heard nothing else Rin said. It was as if the floor had pitched beneath him and dropped him to his knees, knocking the breath and the anger out of him in one fell swoop.

“What?” said Vhox.

Rin paused. Vhox saw him mentally backtrack through his tirade, saw the moment Rin realized what he’d said cross his face. All at once, the tension between them sagged like an empty sail. Rin’s fingers clenched in Vhox’s shirt, his chest deflating in a long, defeated sigh. “I love you,” he said again. “That’s—that’s not how I imagined I would say that, but…”

Vhox didn’t know what Rin meant to say next, and somehow, he didn’t care. An eddy of warmth had washed through him, a feeling like the heat in his stomach on the first sip of ale, like sun-warmed skin on a summer afternoon; and he noticed for the first time the flush in Rin’s cheekbones that made his markings pop, the curl of his hair over the rims of his glasses, those wide eyes behind them. Gods, but he really did have the prettiest fucking eyes Vhox ever saw. The color reminded him of the sky right at sunset, when the sun seemed to douse itself out in the sea in a final burst of violet—

Before Vhox could think about what he was doing in the slightest, he was already kissing Rin.

To be fair, Rin kissed him back. Then, as though Rin suddenly remembered he was supposed to be upset with Vhox, he pulled away, bewildered. “Wait. What are you…?”

“I’m a fuckin’ blockhead,” said Vhox. His hands settled in the familiar and well-tracked groove at the small of Rin’s back, and Vhox tugged him closer, enjoying the shiver that quailed up Rin’s spine. “Why would I wanna argue with you when there’s so many other things I can do wi’ my mouth—”

“Are you seriously—you’re flirting with me?” Rin barked a short, baffled laugh. “We were just in a row. I legitimately thought I was going to strangle you. Perhaps we should, I don’t know, talk about that?”

“Later. I wanna make it up to you.”

“And how, pray tell, are you going to do that?”

“I was thinkin’ I’d start with a blowjob,” Vhox said. He considered, then added, “The stranglin’ can be negotiated.”

Rin stared at Vhox long enough that Vhox almost let him go, suddenly anxious he had come on too strong after an argument the caliber of the one they’d just had. But then something in Rin’s face thawed, and Rin twined his arms about Vhox’s neck with the kind of laughter that always buoyed Vhox’s heart to hear—his real laugh, soft and somehow shy.

“Far be it from me to turn down such a compelling offer,” Rin said. Then, his smile turned suggestive, a promise that often led to future orgasms for Vhox—which was to say, if Vhox had at all been thinking before, he certainly wasn’t now. “With ever so much to make up for—well, you’d best get started.”

And Vhox, indeed, got started.

. . .

Some bells and several orgasms later, Vhox and Rin lay entwined beneath the sheets. The light ebbed through the window, leaving shadows in its wake as the sea leaves shells. Vhox fought against a sated, comfortable sleepiness by staring up at the ceiling and counting the cracks in the plaster. Over the years, he’d seen many ceilings, usually while a buxom woman rode his cock—smoke-yellowed ceilings, ceilings splotched with mold, cobwebbed and fissured and sometimes falling in. But Vhox already knew this ceiling. Rin led a furious crusade against the spider infestations with a broom for this ceiling, mopped the walls when the seaspray made the room too damp, and already talked about whitewashing over the lone crack—

Llymlaen’s tits, Vhox thought, catching himself. It’s just a godsdamned ceiling.

It wasn’t just a godsdamned ceiling, though. It was Rin’s ceiling. Vhox didn’t know why, but that seemed like an important distinction to make.

The problem was that the warm, steady weight of Rin’s head on his chest kept dredging up all manner of complicated and incoherent feelings. Vhox knew he would have to wade through them sometime, plumb down to the bottom of the muck where Rin’s confession rested like a small, glimmering gem and take it in his palm, see if its facets would cut. Maybe, though, for only a moment, he could just…

Rin moved away from Vhox to prop himself up on his elbows, his tail weaving in restless sweeps against the mattress. Vhox was a little disappointed, but not surprised; Rin’s post-nut clarity always came in the form of anxious tidying. “I should iron that shirt if you’re to wear it tomorrow,” Rin said, proving the point. “As I recall, it was rather unceremoniously discarded in the hallway.”

“Leave it,” said Vhox. “I’ll take care of it later.”

“Vhox, you’ve never ironed a shirt in your life.”

No, he hadn’t. But if it was important to Rin to iron that shirt, goddammit, Vhox would iron the bloody shirt. “It’s a metal bit an’ some heat. What could go wrong?”

“You could burn the flat down.” Rin sat up and shifted his legs over the side of the bed. “I won’t be very long. I’ll just—”

Vhox grabbed his hand. He hadn’t expected to do that, and so for a blank string of seconds he just limply held it, forgetting everything he might have wanted to say. “Rin,” he finally managed, his name soft in his mouth. “Stay here a while.”

Rin hesitated. Then, crossing his legs beneath him, he stayed.

Vhox didn’t believe in that gooey bullshite about two bodies fitting perfectly together. He had seen enough bodies to know that, whether they were lithe or bulky, gangling or lumbering, bodies were awkward. They shat, smelled, vomited, leaked out snot or tears, came too soon or not soon enough, fumbled, choked, and sometimes jabbed him way too hard in the side with those bony fucking elbows, Rin. But...as Vhox folded Rin into his arms, tracing the delicate skin that hardly clothed the cage of his ribs, Vhox found himself staggered beneath a surge of protectiveness for this particular body, a built-up flood with nowhere to go. It would be one thing if Vhox had to protect Rin from the pirates, bandits, and thieves that nested in the dark corners of Limsa Lominsa—Vhox could throw a punch like nobody’s business—but that wasn’t the threat Rin faced, day after day after day.

The most dangerous person in Rin’s life was, and had always been, Vhox himself.

“Sorry we fought,” said Vhox. “I didn’t mean that shite about the…I just…”

I, what?

But Rin spoke before Vhox could name that shipwrecked feeling. “No, you were right to be upset. I was much too critical,” he said, drawing idle lines between the freckles on Vhox’s forearms with a ragged fingernail, his ears folding back. In Rin’s words, Vhox heard the blistering echo of a man Rin tried so hard not to be—for that alone, Vhox would’ve decked Senan fucking Weise in the goddamned teeth. “It’s not that I think there’s something wrong with you, only that…people are judgmental. I—I wanted the Maelstrom to give you a chance.”

“You didn’t need me t’fix my hair or any o’that to give me a chance.”

Rin scoffed. “The way I remember it, you hardly gave me a choice in the matter. I couldn’t have avoided you even if I wanted to.”

Vhox remembered, too: Rin’s dull, stringy hair. The sharp, hollowed angles of his face. The preternatural stillness with which Rin had held himself, a living ghost of a person. Rin had bitched the whole walk to the Bismarck, of course, but what Vhox remembered best was how his eyes came alive at that first taste of Bianaq bream. Gods, how Vhox had craved him. How badly he’d wanted to see how he might come alive at the tang of a malty Limsan old ale, or the flavor of Vhox’s tongue in his mouth—

“Did y’want to avoid me?” Vhox asked.

“…No,” he said, as though it were some kind of confession. “But I wouldn’t have admitted it on pain of death—I suppose I had my biases, too.” Rin faltered, his voice falling. “You don’t have to wear that shirt tomorrow, you know. I didn’t intend to be quite so forceful about it—”

“It wasn’t about that. I was—” What was it Rin had said earlier? “I was bein’ vulgar for th’ sake of it. Pickin’ a fight.”

When Vhox didn’t continue, Rin prompted, “What for?”

“I dunno. ‘Cus...” Vhox drew an uncertain breath, something in him quavering like a loose sail in a hurricane. “‘Cus I’m scared, I guess.”

Rin turned his head as though to look at him. Vhox squeezed Rin tight to keep him still, already more exposed and vulnerable than he would have liked to be, and so was surprised when Rin nudged his face into the soft space under Vhox’s chin and, very faintly, began to purr—a gentle rumble against Vhox’s pulse that evoked not so much a memory as a primal bond, something that soothed even as it bound, something that growled, Mine. Vhox closed his eyes and let himself, for a moment, be comforted.

“I don’t have a handle on this ‘steady job’ thing,” said Vhox, when he was again capable of speech. “Even if the Maelstrom takes me…I don’t know what the hell I’m doin’. I’ve been runnin’ from th’ law my whole life, not bein’ its bloody arm. An’—th’ job’s dangerous.”

Even as Vhox said it, though, he knew that wasn’t what he meant. When he dug down to the rotting root of it, every fear was really one fear: What if I hurt someone?

It wouldn’t be hard. One stab, one shot, one punch too many and Vhox would slaughter someone he hadn’t meant to kill, waking up again with pooled ichor squelching beneath his nails, waking up again to the fear like drowning of not knowing whose blood it was. And Rin. Rin would come for him even if Vhox got thrown in gaol. Rin would come even if Vhox was hurt, even if Vhox was the kind of hurt that made him do worse—

Vhox had never harmed Rin so far, and by the good graces of the entire pantheon of the Twelve, even motherfucking Azeyma, Vhox prayed he never would. But that didn’t stop Vhox from thinking about the flintlock pistol he made Rin keep in the bedside drawer, ostensibly for security reasons but really for Vhox’s own peace of mind. That didn’t stop Vhox from trying and failing to scrape together the courage to tell Rin outright what he wanted him to do with that gun if Vhox ever went feral in Rin’s presence again.

That small, glimmering gem had a sharp edge, after all. Even if Vhox was killing him, Rin would refuse to shoot.

“I’m dangerous.” Vhox swallowed. Though Rin already knew, admitting it still felt like opening up bleeding wounds in his throat. “An’ I think sometimes you’d be be’er off with some Sharlayan milksop whose job doesn’t come wi’ a risk of killin’ him, somebody who ain’t got a chance in hell of layin’ a finger on you—”

“Vhox—” said Rin, twisting to face him.

“Hang on. I’m not finished talkin’ yet.”

Rin’s tail flicked uneasily against his thigh. Vhox's gaze dropped to the clean line of Rin’s collarbone, his narrow chest that rose and fell with each quiet breath—and then a soft hand cupped his jaw, a thumb gliding over that scarred tattoo Vhox always hid beneath his mop of reddish hair until, finally, Vhox lifted his eyes to Rin’s. He didn’t know how he felt about what he saw there except that it ached in an inarticulable way, like prodding fingers into a healing bruise. The lesson Vhox had learned in his twenty-odd years of life: the people in his life didn’t come back. The people in his life didn’t stay.

But Rin did.

“It’d be for the best if you left,” Vhox said, an echo of something he told Rin once in a cave in bumfuck nowhere, Gyr Abania, and something he still in his heart of hearts believed, “but I...I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want you to run off with some struttin’ prick from Sharlayan. I want you to be wi’ me—an’ that? That scares the everlovin’ shite out of me.”

Because Vhox had never felt like that before. Because Vhox had drifted unanchored through his life until that day Rin had gored a ravenous, insatiable hole inside of him as he left, ripping away that which Vhox hadn’t even known he had to lose. Because when Rin left, Vhox wouldn’t just lose Rin. Vhox would lose the screams of Rin’s violin as he practiced, a barrage of tuneless notes like a streetcat’s mating call that, when Vhox least expected it, resolved into a chord so full it raised the gooseflesh on his arms. Vhox would lose the sweet familiarity of tossing his jacket over the same chair every evening, falling into the same warm bed with freshly-laundered sheets, never worrying he might get shanked in his sleep, his money stolen halfway to Ul’dah before his corpse was even stiff. Vhox would lose that little hiccup in his chest he got every time he washed up into Bloodshore after dark and saw that Rin had hung a lantern for him, though Vhox hadn’t told him he would be coming by that night—or any night, because Vhox refused to take a key to the flat on the grounds that he couldn’t bear to love this place and then be forced to leave it.

But, somewhere in him, Vhox also knew that there wouldn’t be a when. There were words for that knowing, and they were...

Rin kissed him before he could speak, lips brushing just long enough to pull the air from Vhox’s lungs. “I am a strutting prick from Sharlayan,” he said softly. “So if that’s what you want, I’m not going anywhere.”

If that’s what you want. As though there might actually be a fucking time when Vhox didn’t want him. As though Vhox’s wanting Rin wasn’t built into the fabric of the universe like death, taxes, and people jacking off.

“I love you.”

Rin obviously hadn’t been expecting Vhox to say it. Neither had Vhox—but now that Vhox had said it, he felt that warm, gentle wash through his chest again, like the calm waters of a tidepool. Instead, it was Rin who seemed stripped of his armor, small and unsure in his arms. “Are you certain?”

“I’d swear it on my honor, if I had any o’that,” said Vhox. Rin’s face wavered, so that Vhox felt compelled to keep talking in the hopes he might stumble on something stupid enough to make him smile. “What else do people swear on? Fresh out of mothers' graves, uh. I’ve got my life, for whatever that’s worth, an’—”

“Vhox?”

“What?”

Rin did smile, then. He also made a strangled little coughing sound in the back of his throat, because Rin was, in fact, heroically trying not to cry. “Your life will do,” he said. “Now, for Thaliak’s sake, stop talking and kiss me.”

And who would Vhox be to say no?

vhox still somehow belongs to @mimiorzea maybe we share custody by now, who knows

#my writing #ffxiv rin weise #ffxiv vhox tia #the target audience for this is me #it's my blog and i do what i want

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