#but io was not thinking about sleeping with him at this point akdsja

[coldshrugs]

🖤

For Io/Estinien??? 😊 Thanks!! I love them so much, hehe

HI HELLO this is so delayed and i'm barely fitting this into the prompt but i will let you be the judge of how well it works 😂 thank you so much for sending the prompt :>

pang

🖤: desperation rating/content: M; language, mention of spicy thoughts. no payoff. pairing: io laithe / estinien varlineau word count: 1.6k note: for a kiss prompt, there is no kissing in this. it's 100% estinien pining and thinking about it tho. endwalker spoilers. [divider credit] [read on ao3]

Old Sharlayan's wind bites in the familiar way.

If he would but close his eyes, Estinien might think himself in Ishgard, leaving the Congregation for a late evening stroll to clear his head; perhaps he’d recall Aymeric’s hounding steps to catch up to him, and he might even feel the old pain, or an echo of it. But he does not close his eyes. Icy flurries plummet between the pale-gray buildings, swirling under his shirt and clinging to his skin as indiscriminately as the stone around him. He pays the snow little mind, besides blinking a few flakes from his eyelashes as he stares up at the open window three floors above him.

Soft lantern light spills down to the bare alley where he stands, tempting him, and he can still see a shadow moving across the sill. It would be so simple to leap back into the room. She deserves ‘simple.’

The light goes out, and the snow does not sting as much as his indecision.

Estinien moves through the darkness at a furious pace, heading nowhere in particular. Just… away. The island doesn’t offer a wealth of options for escape, but anywhere he can have a moment alone to think is an improvement over the twins sparring about snacks in his quarters, or his mouth running away from him in Io’s doorway. The chilly night air pulls at his partially open shirt as he leaps across a narrow ravine, and he is almost grateful for his years spent enduring the cold.

The other side of the gap holds a path lined with warm lights and untrimmed shrubs. He follows it to the stone pavilions in front of the Studium. On the way, he tries not to think of Io.

Students pass him in a huddled pack, chattering and giggling, their red cheeks apparent even in the dim light. He slows his stride to avoid drawing their attention, not that many in this place have shown an interest in him. He prefers it this way and has learned not to push his luck. He goes ignored, but more night owls litter the grass and gather under the pavilions. Is solitude truly so godsdamned difficult to find in this city? He groans and continues to the strangely tent-shaped building he thinks is called Noumenon. Nowhere to go but up.

He wanders the library’s perimeter, searching for the most inconspicuous place to access the roof. Even with this task in mind, his thoughts are half a mile away: Io in her nightclothes, her temple leaned against her open door, patiently watching him with sleep-heavy eyes while he all but laid himself bare. ‘You and Alphinaud have my lance. Now and always.’

Rambling imbecile. But…

“Estinien? Please… come in.”

He tries to forget how her voice cracked around the invitation before he poured his words at her feet, and tries harder to forget fleeing out of her window when the weight of those words caught up to him. She gave him no reason to run. She was smiling as he promised himself to her cause–to her. But there was a weight in that too. Some… deviation in his understanding of their bond he’s blissfully repressed since their return to Azys Lla some months ago. Try as he might, it is becoming impossible to ignore.

Estinien rounds the far corner of Noumenon and, ah, the northwestern side of the building is free of onlookers. From here, he can make his move skyward and set about sorting his thoughts. ...And his feelings.

The raging gust swells under his skin before he leaps, before he becomes part of it. Less than half a second of sensation. Aether, they tell him, but he has never spared it more than a passing thought. It’s as natural as taking his next breath–whether the exhale is a sigh or a squall matters little. He vaults to the roof and gingerly lands on the jutting white stone.

He cranes his head around the corner to observe the nighttime lurkers below, but they haven’t noticed him, thank the Fury. Old Sharlayan stretches beyond them, its jagged tiers dense with evergreens and immaculate domed structures slope towards the sea. Pinpricks of light dot the buildings. Not one of them is the light he wants to stand in.

It’s just him on this secluded ledge. He bends to wipe the freshly fallen powder from a fulm or two near the edge, then sits with his legs hanging over the side. The stone is freezing, even colder than the air, but he grips the edge hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

“I don’t understand it,” he says aloud. Sees his confusion appear in front of him, a hazy white cloud of breath carried into the night by the breeze.

It’s true, in a way.

He knows–has known–what he wants, but he doesn’t know how to achieve it. This kind of need is… new, and his usual impulses feel inadequate. She spins in his mind almost constantly, no matter how he tries to direct his thoughts. Io, ready for bed and beautiful in the frame of her doorway – Io, smiling earnestly at his every arrival – Io in a Garlean snowdrift, curled in on herself and sobbing, having just been returned to her body – Io dissolving in a shimmer of aether before his eyes as she chases apocalyptic danger to the fucking moon–

“Do not hesitate to send me against your enemies. I’ll make them rue the day they met me.”

The only vow he knows how to make.

A thick snowflake lands on his cheek. He sighs and lets go of Garlemald. Holds on to her smile instead. Her voice pitched low and sweet as she asked him to come inside. His heart thumps hard against his ribs.

Estinien has never been in love.

Io, the ache growing in the space between his lungs, sharp and saccharine. In the cavity of his life, there is nowhere she doesn’t touch, and some part of him still wants for more of her. That is how he knows.

“Please… come in.”

He said no.

He said yes too late. He ran, as casually as he could.

His fingers are numb, but he isn’t ready to come down. What if it had gone differently?

He imagines a night when he accepts her invitation. A night where he closes the door behind them both and no one leaves. Perhaps they would have a drink and talk through the night, and that would be nothing unusual. Or perhaps she would draw him close and put her hands on him…

He exhales, uncertain of indulging in this line of thought. His leg shakes against the ledge as he pictures her how he shouldn’t, tender and open. No… not quite open, but opening. Still unfurling at his touch, his hands exploring her skin attentively as she watches him with those wide, awe-struck eyes (in his mind, Io can watch him, because she wants him, too).

She might want him in a more real sense, but that is one conclusion to which Estinien is not ready to jump, no matter how strong the proceeding surge of wind in his veins. 

No, it is easier to imagine the curve of her spine or the part of her lips as he figures her out. He makes the mental corrections. No, not that, I can be more gentle, if it’s her. Or hm, I’ve felt her hold her breath at a passing touch there, aye. He knows her, knows how she moves, but there is more to learn. What would she feel like, pressed into him like that? Close enough to taste. So close that each quiet sound would move through him like thunder. He wavers on the specifics of where this happens, their location and positioning, but that part matters less in this fantasy.

Fucking hells. Has he fantasized before? Maybe a decade ago, before he had lived experience in the matter.

What is lived experience next to this dream? Who is anyone on this star next to Io?

His stomach tosses, and he admits something to himself for the first time: he wants to kiss her. Something he hasn’t done often, rare even in his most eager of dalliances. She was looking at him in the way she often does, like he could tell her anything and she would not flinch, and maybe that’s the problem. He can think about more than a kiss without losing his head. It is the straightforwardness of the intimacy he desires that sends him reeling, and already she affords him something close. So he ran.

The urge has been growing for some time. They catch their breath after a battle, and she’s bruised and radiant, and he shoves it down. They carry out some mundane task and Io pulls her hair back from her face, and Estinien endures a calamity. How often has he busied his hands to keep them from the simple act of tugging her to him and embarrassing himself?

“Please…”

He should’ve stayed. But he sits here in the cold and dark, feeling the throb of his heartbeat in his throat instead of Io’s warmth in whatever form she offers. 

Snow has settled on his legs and shoulders. His hands are stiff as he dusts himself off and drops to the ground in a rush of frigid air.

I love her, he thinks on the way down. Maybe she could love him too, more than the love of friends and comrades.

As he walks back to the Baldesion Annex, he cannot shake the feeling that things will only get worse before they get better. Something terrible is coming, and they have work to do. This is not the time to disrupt their focus with fanciful confessions and selfish longing.

No. If this is his lot, he’ll settle for the maybe.