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gaiuswrites · 3 years

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King of Cups || Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Five of Pentacles

Archive: ao3 | masterlist | one

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader

Summary: Still reeling from the attack on Jortho, you begin your journey to scower the systems for galactic aid. The Mandalorian takes you aboard his ship temporarily, agreeing to shuttle you to your next destination. You both figure your tenure on the Razor Crest will be short lived... But you've been wrong before.

Word count: 3.8k~

Rating: Mature

Warnings: blood/gore, minor character death (mentioning), mature themes/language, vomiting

Notes: Hi friends. Here we go. Chapter 2... The last paragraph is marked with ///|||///, denoting a change to Mando's POV— his pov will be cropping up now and again, and I have a tendency to play with the timeline/tenses when it does. Enjoy x

You have to think about it. Genuinely.

It takes longer than you’d like to admit, with the Mandalorian looking down at you expectantly, a gloved hand slotted against his belt—postured and waiting.

‘Do you have a way off this skug hole?’

You open your mouth, but no words come out. It snaps closed. You swallow, but the action provides no relief. Your tongue feels too big for the small space it’s trapped in; too swollen, too dust logged— like you could choke on it, if you really tried. Finally, a single syllable frees itself, the weight of it plummeting through your ribs, ricocheting off the bones until it lands in your stomach with a dull, sinking splash.

“No.”

He doesn’t move.

“Do you need to get anything?”

You shake your head, small at first, phantom movements, before stringing together a sentence. “N-No. It’s all gone. Everything I had- it all went up on the shuttle-“

Oh gods, the shuttles.

Your heart seizes, a cold hand like a vice, gripping the bloody organ. You feel green; sickly chartreuse slithering it’s way up your esophagus, poisoning your soft palate. There were pilots on board when the ships blew. Two on each one. That’s four— four people. You knew their names. Knew their home planets. Knew about their families. One had a kid. Fuck. That’s four dead, and you didn’t even think of them— Maker, how could you not have thought about them?— No, fuck, fuck fuck-

It didn’t before but it’s hitting you now, stabbing you right between the eyes, the image of their bodies disintegrating in the blast wave, charring up like coal and carbon. You breathed them in, you realize. Their corpses coat your lungs.

The thought is all it takes.

Your feet move on instinct, scrambling to the side of his gunship where you vomit, bracing yourself against the riveted siding as you hack and sputter, wretching bile and what little broth you’d had for supper to splatter onto the cracked earth. Mercifully you’re hidden enough around the corner that you don’t think the bounty hunter sees, and if he does, he has the curtesy not to say anything.

What a gentleman, you think dryly, wiping your mouth with your sleeve.

You pant, body beyond spent, chest heaving as you press your scratched palm into the durasteel, the cool metal soothing it’s sting. Moments stretch like this— you doubled over, catching your breath— before you stumble back into view, graceless and encumbered, as if you didn’t just casually throw up down the front of yourself. You stand below him at the bottom of the ramp. He’s still there, a fixed point. Steel boots welded into the steel ramp.

“Uhm, are you-“

You cough, and it’s an ugly, hoarse sound; your throat burns, roughened and raw around the edges, and your nerves are too strung out for polite colloquialisms. You don’t have the energy to play coy and tip toe around the question. You’re fucking tired.

You try again.

“Are you offering me a ride?”

And now it’s his turn to hesitate, almost like he didn’t fully think the proposition through— as if it’s all just dawning on him now.

The Mandalorian didn’t strike you as someone who familiarized himself with answering to anyone— or picking up hitchhikers, for that matter— even if the offer was his to begin with... That was what he was doing, wasn’t it? Those words in that order? He meant to give you transport off planet? He wasn’t just… making conversation? Did Mandalorians even do that? Maker, if you’ve read this whole situation wrong, no small thanks to a laser-brain full of mush, you reckon you’d die from embarrassment on the spot where you stood, splotched with soot and puke and blood.

You think he’s going to tell you to shove off— you see his hand balling into a fist at his side— and close the ramp right then and there. Be rid of you. Sluffed, like a flea from a dog.

But he doesn’t. He surprises you both.

“Yes.”

Oh. Oh. Kriff, okay. Think think think-

Your mind reels and you’re rambling now, words ending and beginning in the same breath— steamrolling over yourself.

“Okay, I-I need to go back in to town, just for a—I cant let them think I’m just leaving them like this... Is that okay? I’m sorry, I won’t take long, I promise, I just— they need to know I’m getting help. Is that- uhm, can you wait? Can you wait for me?”

There’s another unreadable pause that makes you want to bury your head in the cold, fallow soil.

The man is looking at you like you’ve grown another kriffing leg, but eventually he grumbles out a noise that sounds like an affirmative, turning on his heel, and disappears into the belly of the ship— leaving you there alone.

Alone.

Pin pricks needle at the nape of your neck and the hair down your arm stands on end.

Alone.

You’re alone for the first time since the attack and suddenly you feel half your size and shrinking smaller still, like atoms collapsing and folding in on themselves until they dematerialize completely—and you along with them. You tell yourself to breath. To fight the bubbles of panic as they burst and pop, dimpling you from the inside out. Breath. Focus, he said. Focus.

You shift your weight from foot to foot, gnawing at the inside of your cheek.

The Mandalorian never reemerges.

Well… you guess that was your cue.

///

Staggering back into Jortho is like sleepwalking through a nightmare.

The smoke from the bombing has completely engulfed the lower atmosphere, doming the town in a thick canopy; the sky is blackened, starless, and the moons hover noncommittally like mere suggestions in the dark canvas.

Half the town had been decimated to rubble, and the other half was covered in the shockwave of it’s explosion— caked in grime, windows knocked out, doors splintered open. You almost expected the pieces to have reversed themselves back up, like you’ve seen in holovid special effects—homes rebuilding, fires dousing themselves, air purifying itself from the smog… but they don’t. They remain in shambles.

Time has granted you the unforgiving gift of clarity, and it’s one you’d rather not have been given. You don’t want to see the aftermath without the saccharine filter of shock to cushion you. The town is just as you left it, but somehow worse— worse because you can hear the crying, now. The wailing. You didn’t before with the blood pumping in your ears, deafening you, but you do now. The woeful noises that reverberate over the crackling embers still smoldering, the muffled sobs being choked down behind fractured walls.

Tripping over stray debris, you find Hareem close to where you’d left her, her fuse short hair grey with ash. The blood you smeared from her cheek still clouds her skin there, staining it as it does your fingers that wiped it. She wobbles to her feet and meets you in the middle of the road.

Neither of you speak, not at first. You hold onto her shoulders, and like a pillar of salt, you quake.

You try explaining to her that the communication’s system on your transport freighter had been blown up alongside the town, that you’ve accepted a ride from the bounty hunter and that you’re getting off world to contact the RRM headquarters, that you’d stay if you could but you can’t and you need to call for assistance, for help. You try to tell her that you’d do anything— travel through dimensions, if you could, to undo all of this chaos— if the laws of time allowed it.

You want to go back and pretend today never happened. To unlearn the tremor in your hands as they grip her frame. To unlearn all of this. To unknow. But,

you can’t.

All you can do is move forward. Do the next right thing. Take the next right step.

You’ve explained yourself in circles but it still doesn’t feel like enough. The words feel shallow, like slapping some bacta on a severed limb, and guilt rips through you— your voice torn with it.

“But how can I leave now?” you ask helplessly, eyes skittering around you. “After all- all of this?”

Hareem finds your hands, her spindled fingers encasing your own. A crease engraves her forehead, little lines clustering around her eyes. “You’ve done enough, hm? You go now. Go with that Mandalorian. You can’t shoulder this alone.”

“Har-“

She doesn’t let you say it. The older woman soothes a thumb into the web between your knuckles.

“Make contact. Comm for aid. It will come, but it won’t if you stay here.”

Your shoulders release with a defeated sigh. You know the Balosar’s right— you’re the one who’s told her as much. That’s RRM protocol. In case of emergency, you were to comm in and reconvene with the closest branch to your system to send additional supplies and volunteers to the camp. You know this better than anyone here, and yet this woman, this refugee, was the one aping your mission back to you.

She’s firm. Kind. “You’re just one person.”

Briefly, you wonder if she’s a parent. You think her child would be lucky to have her as their mother-- all of her somber strength. You think you would have been lucky, too.

Maybe things would be different—maybe you’d be different.

You gather yourself, piece by piece, and give her knobby hand a squeeze. You bore into her, determined and unwavering. You need her to understand. “I’m not abandoning you—any of you. I need you to know that, okay? I’m not leaving you alone in this.”

She smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I know, my friend,” Hareem says plainly, a sad sort of resolve quieting her tone. She has no fight left, nothing left to give— as empty as her pockets, lint lined and turned out. Barren. “I know.”

///

You weave your way back to the ship, feet padding across the arid landscape. You don’t blink, not even once, eyes crusted open and gaping. You barely remember the trek but somehow you’ve managed it, treading up the ramp, the thuds sounding hollow and foreign to your ear.

“I’m not a taxi service.”

You nearly jump out of your skin.

“Maker almighty,” you gasp, hand coming up to clutch your canary heart, beating fast and frantic. He’s just standing there, waiting, the dimmed lights of the hull glinting off his beskar. It’d only been a few hours, but you had already somehow forgotten how kriffing imposing he was, how ominous. A vacuum in space.

“O-Okay,” you stutter, a twitch in your brow.

“I’ll get you as far as you need to go, but on my terms. I’m not making a special trip— can’t promise you when.”

You nod. You’re not sure what to say. Lamed, all you can do is repeat yourself.

“… Okay.”

“What sector?”

“Bajic,” you start, fiddling with a loose thread poking from your sleeve. “We- uhm, the RRM, we have a branch there, but then—” your throat bobs as you swallow your words, and he gives you an exacting look, tilting his helm subtly. There was no getting around it.

You’re pinned.

“Coruscant. I’ll need to get to Coruscant,” you finish quietly.

Did you just hear him ‘tsk’ under that metal bucket?

“It’ll take a while to get to the Core. Longer than you’d like.”

And here you go, babbling again before you can stop yourself, throwing up defenses, excuses— back pedaling. You’re earnest, and it’s dripping from you. “Listen, if this is too much, I get it. You don’t owe me anything. Really— you don’t have to take me anywhere you don’t want. I-I, honestly, I’m just grateful you even considered it.”

Silence. An endless sea of silence.

No current, no breeze. It feels like you’re stranded in dead water, drowning in it. Again, you hang there on bated breath, just waiting for the man to chuck you from his ship. Not worth the effort. Not worth the fuel.

And again, he surprises you.

He tips his chin, gesturing to the side. “Fresher’s that way. We’ll be up in five.”

You exhale, visibly relieved, and mumble a thank you before shuffling off in the direction he motioned towards. You get one foot through the door before you hear him.

“Dala,”

Your attention snaps to the Mandalorian. There’s that word again—you think he’s called you that before—but there’s something different in his voice now, a lilt you’d not yet heard from him. What is that? Nerves?

“There is… one more thing.”

You cock your head just as a gargled coo comes from somewhere behind him.

///

You look like bantha shit.

Which, considering the events of your evening, should probably go without saying— and yet, the woman staring back at you in the small refresher mirror still manages to startle you.

You’re covered in dirt and cinders and contusions you hadn’t had the luxury to notice before. With the adrenaline retreated from your veins, you finally feel the full scope of your injuries and Maker do they hurt. Your tunic is torn at the collar and the fabric is discolored, pants and boots scuffed and ashen. Your bottom lip is swollen, a split running down the side of it, the seam of which is cracked with dry blood. Your palms are scratched— knuckles, too. There are narrow licks from shrapnel bites nicking your forearm. Twisting your body, you discover a dark bruise already blooming on your shoulder from the initial impact of the blast. You’re stiff and achy all over, and you can practically hear your bones creak and groan with each strained movement.

You turn on the faucet and begin to bend forward before you wince, a sharp pain gripping your skull. Ginger fingers come up to touch the back of your head, patting around tentatively until you find a raised bump and something viscous wetting the strands of your hair. You pull your hand back, inspecting it— more blood, glistening black under the low light.

Your eyes flit back up to your reflection.

You should be scared at this point, you guess. Worried, at the very least, by all of this—by the gore of it, the cuts and marks. But it’s your eyes that frighten you most— they’re hard. Devoid. You don’t recognize them. You’re a stranger.

You blink. She blinks back.

Rust red water eddies in the basin of the sink as you scrub yourself clean. You let out a hiss as the cold stream hits your skin. You count your breaths.

///

Being anywhere on board his ship without the Mandalorian feels wrong. Unnatural. Like you’re a tourist, out of place.

Unsure of where else to go, you find yourself in the cockpit with the bounty hunter, sitting in the seat beside him. Glancing over the knobs and dials and pulsing displays, your focus drifts in and out, posture slumping, lids growing heavy, darkening around the edges of your vision, blurring—

“Try to stay awake.”

With a sharp inhale, your eyes snap open, blinking wildly, and you scoot your hips up higher into the seat. You shoot the back of his helmet an inquisitive look you’re not sure he sees, but he responds to it all the same.

“Could have a concussion.”

“Didn’t know you were a doctor,” you reply, tone low and rolling. Maker above, apparently the final stage of shock was sarcasm. The fact that you thought it wise to damn near sass a Mandalorian on his own ship after he saved your kriffing life...

Stars, maybe it really was a concussion. Brain damage. Had to be.

He doesn’t acknowledge the quip, which you can’t readily blame him for. A quiet beat, red buttons flickering against the dark of the cockpit, and then—

“There’s bacta in the medpack. Might not be much left.”

You’re wide awake now.

Your rebuttal is immediate, bristled even, words escaping before you have a chance to even consider his suggestion. “No— no, thank you, but I’m not taking the last of your supplies. I’ll be fine, you’re- you’re doing enough for me already.” He graces you with another of his grunts, a hush following closely behind it.

Your gaze wanders—it wanders onto him, and you watch him.

Watch as the stars dance across his armor, incandescent and shimmering. Hypnotic, even. Something you hadn’t noticed before catches your eye, and you have to crane your neck to get a good look at it. It’s hard to make out, but you think there’s a symbol on the pauldron adorning his shoulder. You can’t imagine it’s completely cosmetic, seeing as the hem of his cape is frayed and worn (and the fact that being a lethal hunter didn’t really scream ‘needless decoration’), but maybe, if you work up the courage somewhere between here and Coruscant, you’ll ask him about it.

His posture is carved out of stone and he sits like a statue, spine rigid under all that beskar. Fleetingly, you wonder if it’s heavy, if it’s uncomfortable—to carry it with him wherever he goes. But you suppose he’s grown accustom to the weight, wearing it like a second skin.

He’s broad too, you note. Of course he is, you recognized that straight off, but inside the confines of the ship, without the towering Lothal sky as his backdrop, it truly strikes you just how large the Mandalorian is. He engulfs the space around him. Devours it.

You stay like this, entranced, studying the man properly for the first time, allowing the muscles behind your tired eyes to relax on him— until his visor notches up quickly and meets your line of sight in the mirrored pane of the window, catching you in the act.

Kriff.

You avert your eyes, an embarrassed warmth crawling up your neck, suddenly finding a particular panel soldered to the wall incredibly interesting— looking anywhere else but at the faceless stranger you’re saddled with.

The kid gurgles, interrupting the awkwardness, and you’ve never been more grateful for a three pronged toddler in your life.

He’s sitting in the copilot’s seat opposite you, as if the tiny thing is navigating for the Mandalorian, and he’s completely dwarfed by the massive chair. Everything about him juxtaposes the other man. He’s all brown robes and wispy peach fuzz, and he looks almost comically out of place against the interior of the gunship. He’s playing with a shiny metal ball in his lap, and with one small arm, he extends it to you like a gift.

Out of the two of them, the child was a one man welcoming party.

“Is this for me?”

He gives a soft patuu, and your heart nearly bursts. You take it from him gently, and the little guy coos through a babbling grin, cheeks round and impish. “Thank you,” you tell him, all serious-like, and you have to actively suppress the squeal that threatens to break free from you. He glances to the Mandalorian with such a look in those big eyes; its hard to make out, but you think its something close to pride or satisfaction, maybe: Look dad, I shared my toy.

Kriff, this kid is cute. Like, dangerously cute.

You both take each other in like this; your micro expressions, his pruned little forehead, your fleshy form, all soft lines and angles. You’re sure you look just as strange to him and he does to you, especially given the only other lifeform on board he has as reference is coated from head to toe in metal. The child’s gaze snags on a lock of your hair, little teeth peeking through his mouth, eyes glued to it like a metronome as it dangles. You give your head a little shake, strands waving, and he giggles. You skip the ball over the hills of your knuckles, dazzling him momentarily.

“Does he have a name?” You ask, his eyes like black saucers peering curiously at you, and you give him back his toy— an offer he eagerly accepts.

“No.”

“So what do you call him then?”

“Just ‘kid’.”

A beat. “... Do you have a name?”

“Mando.”

“Just ‘Mando’?”

“This is the Way.”

You nod, worrying your cheek absentmindedly as you stare out the transparisteel. This is the Way. You’re not entirely sure what the phrase meant, but you know respect when you hear it— how reverent it sits on his vocal chords— and by the manner of which the man, this Mando, spoke, you can tell there’s more to those words than you know.

And you can appreciate his desire for anonymity; it doesn’t bother you much—you figure you won't be around long enough for it to matter anyways. You don’t know a lot about the Mandalorian people, but you have heard rumors. Everyone had. That’s all they were anymore: rumors and stories. Legends. Just seeing one was rare, and talking to one even rarer. But flying with one and his adorable, green baby? It was… definitely unique, to say the least.

You share more dulled quiet. And although the silence isn’t entirely uncomfortable now—you’re settling in to it— it’s not exactly desirable either, but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t last.

Mando clears his throat, breaking the white noise that’s blanketed the three of them. He doesn’t turn his helmet. He keeps his focus straight ahead. You watch his reflection in the ship’s window and you can’t know for certain, but you think you feel your eyes brush against his, if only for a moment. A unintelligible noise filters through his modulator.

“Do you?”

You grin, a slow smile tugging at your lips.

“Last I checked.”

It’s the first smile he draws from you. The first of many.

///

Despite Mando’s warnings and better judgement, sleeping is exactly what you end up doing. You pass out, hard, stirring only once when an errant beep sounds through the cockpit. You’d fallen asleep right there in the chair, chin tucked into your chest, hair fanned across your cheek, arms wrapped around your waist in a measly attempt to trap your body heat to you. You’ve woken to find the cockpit empty— the ship must be on autopilot, you think— and by the illuminating glow of hyperspace, you spot his medkit, sitting open on the seat across from you and in it, nestled among old wrappings and gauze, a single patch of bacta.

///|||///

That smile.

Din remembers this moment, much later, holding it like a photo in a locket. Private. Secret. He keeps you there, gold plated on a chain, to loop around his memory.

Encircling him. Strangling him.

#din djarin x reader #mando x reader #din djarin x fem!reader #mando x fem!reader #King of Cups #ngl i got kinda emotional writing some bits #idk why but the hareem scenes kill me #din djarin fic #mando x you #din djarin x you #no y/n #pedro pascal #mando x female oc #din djarin x female oc #ofc

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curiosity-killed · 3 years

Text

sunbeam flaring

hair...healing...thoughts...?? They’re Dumbasses, Ur Honor

(title stolen from Love Sonnet XI by Neruda bc I had litcherally no idea what to call it)

word count: 2354

He notices it on a perfectly ordinary afternoon two weeks before Callebero’s twenty-second birthday. Inasmuch as the captain of the imperial cavalry has such a thing, it’s Sirion’s day off; he sleeps in, waking only briefly when Callebero extricates himself and presses a kiss to his cheek and then dozing until the sun is two fingers above the horizon. His morning is slow and indulgent; breakfast with Regent Aquios, who insists he call her by her first name despite the way he shies from such familiarity, followed by a few hours catching up on the paperwork and correspondence that has piled up in his office lately. Now, he pauses in the middle of running forms with Mikolan as Callebero crosses the gardens. He’s dressed formally today, in those heavy layers he hates and which always draw Sirion’s eyes to his narrow waist and the broad strength of his shoulders. An older retainer walks at his side, mirroring his frown, but it’s not their conversation that catches Sirion’s attention.

Callebero’s hair has been pulled back from the front, the long tail tucked into a neat bun that’s secured by a gold band. A spider’s-silk thread of jewels drips in a loop below it. Beneath it, the rest of his hair forms a short curtain falling just below his ear. The end of a staff taps him on the top of his head. “Stop gawking. We already know you and the imperator have turned the palace to your love nest, but you don’t have to be so obvious,” Mikolan scolds. “That is not—” Sirion starts to sign before huffing out a breath and giving up. Once she recovered from the initial shock of Valyn’s treachery and Callebero’s return, Mikolan had thrown herself gleefully into teasing him about their relationship. So far, she is still too mindful of place to say anything to Callebero, but she has taken full credit for them meeting and has not missed a single opportunity to remind Sirion of his early impressions of Callebero. There’s no point fighting such a losing battle, so he turns back to their practice and stows that startled notice away for later contemplation. It’s not like he’s unaware of it. He’d noticed Callebero scratching the back of his head with the end of a reed pen when his hair was little more than rabbit-fur fuzz, and Sirion has combed his fingers through both the long tail of his crown and the shorter locks just growing out. It’s just—he hasn’t thought about it. That night, curled close around each other with their legs tangled, Sirion skates his fingers through Callebero’s hair and tries to order his own thoughts. There’s a sharp division between the thick, downy underlayer and the longer half, sleek and silken. A fiercely selfish part of Sirion is grateful he never saw Callebero’s hair hacked short. He thinks he might have killed whoever held the blade. “I know, it’s ridiculous,” Callebero mumbles from where his face is smashed partially into the pillow and partially into Sirion’s left arm. Canting his head, Sirion shakes his fingers gently out of his hair and taps Callebero’s shoulder twice in the negative. Callebero shifts so that half his face is unburied and squints blearily up at Sirion. He’s not sure what all happened today, but Jisel had been clearly nursing a headache throughout dinner and Callebero had collapsed face first onto their bed before removing his crown or hairpieces. He’d muttered something about doing away with all laws and ceding absolute power to Jisel, to which Sirion had reasonably pointed out that she would kill him herself if he did such a thing. Groaning, Callebero had smashed his face into the pillow and muttered a string of curses that made even Sirion’s brows lift. “It is nice,” Sirion signs now. “I liked how you had it today.” Callebero squints at him, brow wrinkling as if in complete bafflement. “You may be a once-in-a-generation commander,” he says finally, “but your taste in men remains questionable.” Rolling his eyes, Sirion flicks his shoulder. “Say it again, and I’ll bite you,” he warns. For a moment, Callebero stares at him in open confusion, his lips parted around words that don’t escape beyond a faint squeak. Then, he breaks into laughter and reaches up to drag Sirion down and kiss him. “So much for my protector,” he teases. Sirion arches his eyebrows. “Jisel would say the same,” he retorts. “I can assure you Jisel would never bite me,” Callebero rejoins with a laugh. Rolling them over so that he can drape himself across Callebero’s chest and free his left arm, Sirion shakes his head. Callebero allows the shift comfortably, curling his arm around Sirion’s side to trace slow strokes up and down his back. Despite his earlier exhaustion, he’s bright-eyed now and smiles up at Sirion. “Only because she would be better prepared,” Sirion replies. At that, Callebero only breathes out a soft laugh and tilts his head to one side in apparent concession. “Very well, Commander,” he teases. “I solemnly swear not to doubt your taste in romantic partners ever again.” He leans in when Sirion presses a kiss to his lips and hums in pleasure when Sirion nips his bottom lip. “I don’t know how anyone thinks you’re such a solemn and decorous leader,” Sirion gripes. Callebero yawns and wiggles his shoulders in a mix of a shrug and an effort to nestle down into the mattress. Easing off him, Sirion settles back at his side with his arm draped over Callebero’s waist. His sleeping robes are warm and creased from being pressed so close between them, and Sirion can feel his own body slipping closer to sleep. “Mm,” Callebero hums. “It helps that I mostly keep my mouth shut.” Sirion can’t help breathing out a laugh at that, shaking his head. Like many, his first impression of Callebero had been a silent one—and at the time, Sirion had read that as cool haughtiness much as many visitors did. Laying such an image over the Callebero he now knows seems laughable, but he knows he’s one of only a few who can claim such familiarity. Under his arm, Callebero’s belly tenses with a quiet laugh. He prods Sirion in the ribs. “It worked on you, after all,” he teases. Mikolan’s incessant teasing rises to Sirion’s mind, and he shakes his head. Callebero grins. “You thought I was a brat,” he says, unreasonably gleeful. “I”—Sirion starts and then stops short, because that is true—“changed my mind.” Callebero snorts, graceless, and wriggles out from Sirion just enough to smother the candle on the side table. With only the moonlight left spilling blue through the cracks in the shutters, the room is ink-dark and it takes a few moments for his eyes to adjust. “It took me kicking your ass to change your mind,” Callebero retorts. “It was a draw,” Sirion signs. “I laid you out, love.” There’s laughter in Callebero’s voice as he speaks, and Sirion finds amusement battling down the old wound to his pride. He can still picture the staff end hovering right before his nose, Callebero’s careless, bright grin on the other end. He hadn’t fallen in love in that moment, but it had been a shift—a sudden, bracing change like dunking into cold water on a summer day. “You had the element of surprise,” he still insists. “Mm,” Callebero hums doubtfully. “I could still take you.” Narrowing his eyes, Sirion squints at him in the darkness. It’s absurd. They’re both grown men with more accolades than most families have in three generations. They’ve each emerged from three wars and a coup with honors and scars to prove their valor. There is no reason to quibble over an old sparring match. “Could not,” he signs anyway. Callebero’s laughter is more of a hot brush of air against Sirion’s skin than a sound, and he squeezes him once. “I suppose we’re due for a rematch then,” he says, the words briefly warped around a yawn. “Ah maybe next week?” Sirion hums and drops his head to Callebero’s shoulder, hooking his ankle around his calf. “For your birthday,” he signs, and Callebero laughs. Jisel catches on quickly, of course. On the third day of Regent Batu’s visit, they duck away with a pot of tea in the far corner of the library where only Callebero ever thinks to look. If anyone asks, they aren’t hiding. It’s simply a convenient location to get some work done while the visiting gentry fill the palace with gossip and traveling parties and more gifts than any single person has ever needed. For the most part, Sirion looks on all the pomp and frivolity with amusement. All these rich nobles falling over themselves to litter Callebero with gilt and gems as if they could win his favor with enough gold. And, selfishly, part of Sirion likes that none of their piled gifts will never match what Callebero actually wants. A toothed satisfaction runs through him at the futility of their sycophancy. “If Jemma catches you gawking at his hair one more time, I think she might combust,” Jisel remarks. Rolling his eyes, Sirion glances up from the report he’s been reading to shoot her a glare. Over the last year and a half, it has become apparent that Jemma doesn’t quite know how to handle he and Callebero being partners and seems stuck vacillating between threatening Sirion should he ever hurt Callebero and lecturing Callebero on valuing Sirion enough. Hayalen has spent most of it laughing at both her wife and the two of them. “I do not gawk,” Sirion retorts now. Jisel raises her eyebrows, hiding her smile behind her teacup, and he can feel heat suffusing his cheeks. Huffing out a breath, he leans back in his chair. “It’s not”—he stops, pressing his lips into a seam in frustration before sighing—“I’m just not used to it.” Humming faintly, Jisel lowers her cup to cradle between her hands and runs a fingertip back and forth over the lip. “I did the same when Kieran came back from Jimar,” she admits. “It took a while, and I hardly noticed at first but then…” She pauses, looking away. A pang squeezes Sirion’s heart. He doesn’t know exactly how she and the younger Aquios’ relationship fell apart, and they’ve seemed to be on polite enough terms now—but it still feels shocking and somehow wrong that they should have ended at all. “It’s comforting,” she says finally, turning back to him with a little smile, “to know that he’s not planning to rush headlong into danger again.” Oh. Sirion blinks, startled by that analysis. He’s hardly thought of it in such serious terms; when he’s pondered his sudden fixation on Callebero’s hair it’s been more in curiosity and bafflement. Footsteps sound behind them, and Sirion twists around. Callebero’s eyebrows arch up as he nears, unimpressed, and Sirion grins back at him. “Traitors,” Callebero announces. “We only wanted to give our imperator princep space to celebrate with his courtiers,” Jisel replies, sweet as honey. Huffing out a breath, Callebero drops down into the chair beside Sirion. “Your imperator princep would rather shovel out all the horse stalls in the capital,” he retorts. He kicks lightly at Sirion’s ankle, glancing over to grin at Sirion as if Sirion weren’t already looking at him. Shaking his head, Sirion reaches over to pull him in for a brief kiss. He comes willingly, smiling against his lips, and across the table, Jisel snorts. “Shameless,” she singsongs. Callebero laughs, a warm breath of air against Sirion’s lips, and then he pulls back to grin at her. He’s still leaned close enough that Sirion could run a hand through his hair if it weren’t so neatly pinned up. “I remember someone telling me that Aeridians are all too repressed and that’s why we spend so much time polishing our swords,” he says. Pausing, Jisel narrows her eyes and searches his face like she can’t tell if he’s joking or not. After a moment, she scowls and leans back. “You can’t use the things I’ve said while drunk against me,” she says. “And I stand by it anyway.” Shaking his head, Callebero snorts out a laugh. The motion makes his earrings jingle, ringing together like little chimes. When they turn in for the evening, he’ll grumble about all the layers and seriously contemplate going to bed with each of the dangling piercings still in, and Sirion will nudge him into sitting still long enough to let him take them out and loosen his hair from its severe styling. He can nearly feel the memory of it, the body-warm metal and the cool brush of hair, already lingering in his fingertips. “Since neither of you drink properly, it’s only fair,” Jisel says with a careless shrug. “That is for the sake of the nation’s dignity,” Callebero rejoins. Sirion snorts. “Where would we be if everyone knew the fearsome Black Prince fell asleep after one cup?” he teases. That earns him a short glare and a flick in his shoulder, but he captures Callebero’s hand to tangle their fingers together, which earns him a smile and a net win. Sitting back in his chair, Callebero rolls his shoulders and finally starts to relax. “Jar,” Callebero corrects loftily, and Jisel snorts. “Half,” Jisel rejoins. Stifling a grin, Sirion settles in to let them bicker it out. He’s never seen Callebero drunk, only warm and loose with wine and contentment. His only part in the quibbling is to tease both of them wherever possible. A few strands of Callebero’s hair have slipped loose from the braids and bun, sliding down in a loose loop. Humming softly, Sirion reaches out to tuck them behind his ear. His hand lingers, brushing gently through his hair. Callebero turns slightly, just enough for Sirion to catch the smile on his lips. It softens, warms, and Sirion finds himself mirroring him, helpless. Across the table, Jisel snorts at both of them, and Sirion’s smile broadens into a grin.

#my writing #story: tcp #calsir #ch: callebero #ch: jisel #ch: sirion #Thots™ happening...?? Perhaps????#idk this is from a while ago and i just wanted to wrap it up

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