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ellebeebee · 7 years

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♡: Accidentally falling asleep together- For the Arcana, if you're up for that :)

Haha, this sort of grew beyond the bounds of the prompt??? Oh, whatever. Thank you so much for the prompt~~ :D

Asra plans a Completely Platonic date to starwatch with Xan, and they succumb to a Completely Platonic falling asleep together situation which is Completely Platonic.

2357 words, Asra/Apprentice (Completely Platonic tho!!!), teen by AO3

In a cold country many leagues away, where the air bites with the scent of pines and the homes huddle together against the abuse of icy winds– a woman makes clocks. Her workshop spans wide, and dozens of apprentices bustle through the sawdust and the copper shavings. On the exterior, the woman’s creations gleam with gilding. But on the interior cogs and wheels and delicate arms and counterweights reveal themselves like the labyrinth that is the human anatomy.

The inner workings of these clocks are so fussy and convoluted, that if just one miniscule part goes amiss then the whole thing could fail. He had seen several of the clockmaker’s apprentices told off for letting the workshop grow cold; the chill saps the energy of those mechanisms like blight.

Asra wondered just what mysterious little inner part of him had gone so astray as to leave him to do the things he did.

The restaurant owner sneezed again. “Those damn things in the cellar are gonna kill me.”

“I’ll be sure to give you a poignant eulogy,” Asra smiled. “All about what a saint you were, helping a dear customer.”

The man snorted. “A customer that sits on a tab and lets his apprentice pay for it.”

“Hmm,” Asra hummed. “As enlightened as you are, I’d have thought you beyond materialism.”

The man made a disgusted noise and turned away. He snuffled.

“I swear. Pollen’ll be the death of me one of these days.”

As the restaurant owner turned his attention to a handkerchief, Asra topped off his tea with the warm pot sitting on his table. He cradled the delicate porcelain of the cup and gazed back out the open arches into the square. The sun sat heavy in the sky, and the bleached blue of day took on the peaches and tangerines of an encroaching evening. The stall hawkers set up in the square and the cafe owners lining it had returned some hours ago from the midday siesta the whole city took everyday when the heat became truly unbearable.

Now, even the lazy late business hours would come to a close and the taverns would light their lanterns, inviting them all in to forget the sweat of the day.

Asra watched the half-hearted work of the stall owners. He watched the strolling passerby laden with packages or empty-handed and merely looking for social calls. He sipped his tea. It flowered on his tongue, and made him think of a bundle of blooming amaranth and jasmine tea he had sitting on the shelf at home.

He saw her and he straightened in his seat, leaning back into the restaurant’s shade.

Xan emerged from a side street. In a flutter of sheer dusk-colored silks, she circled around the plaza with steps that always reminded him of the eternally smooth ebb and flow of the ocean. And she could always catch you, hold you and your gaze hostage, even from leagues away with her brilliantly red lip-paint. Or at least it seemed that way to him.

Asra’s hand rotated his teacup by rote memory of idle behavior as his eyes followed Xan. She stopped at their favorite vegetable peddler. If you were just another city dweller, you’d have to get up in time for the best of the day’s wares, but the shopkeeps in their area tended to stick together. This peddler always saved good pickings from her stock for Xan to pick up when she had time at the end of the day.

As Xan chatted away, the sun slipped low, hovering above the horizon with a glory of gold spilling into the world.

This, honestly, had been what he’d sat at this table for hours for. The reason he’d skulked around town and avoided all the more talkative gossips. The reason he’d returned to Vesuvia and hadn’t instantly turned his feet toward home.

He watched light paint her soft and rich. It made gilding of her dark hair, and glitter of her amber skin.

The restaurant owner plopped a fresh tea pot on his table and Asra jumped. The man gave him a look.

“This your last pot?” he asked.

Asra smiled and made a show of considering this. “Most likely.”

The man huffed and muttered something along the lines of ‘Why does she put up with him.’ Asra nursed his tea again and waited until Xan finished her shopping. She left the square in the direction of her shop. He put down his cup and gave the restaurant owner a new order. The sun was properly setting by the time he left, and dark blue threatened the wisps of gold and pink in the sky.

“Ready to go home, Faust?” Asra asked.

Over his shoulder, he hefted a large cloth-covered bundle emitting delicious spiced steam, and on his hip he clutched an enormous bouquet of roses, blush and many-petaled and decidedly chilled from the restaurant’s cellar. Faust uncurled from around his collar. She poked her head into the roses, and wiggled off his shoulder into them.

“She’ll like that,” he laughed softly.

He trailed pink petals and mouth-watering scents through alleys and lanes all the way home.

Slipping around the side of the building, he had to set down the flowers on the step by the backdoor as he dug out his key. He always half-expected (half-dreaded) for things to be different when he came back. Occasionally new silks went up in the windows, or a container of tea would disappear, but the smell of incense and herbs and lemon balm was always the same. A canvas bag of vegetables and bread sat on the wobbly kitchen table (the one she was always threatening to turn into kindling), and a fire had been lit in the brick oven.

Attracted by the sound of the door and his clatter in putting down the food, Xan appeared in the doorway.

She blinked at him, brandishing a bottle of wine and a dagger.

His chest tightening, Asra raised a brow. “I guess I’m relieved to know it’s not just Faust protecting this place.”

Silent, she studied his face. Her eyes dropped to her hands and the dagger; she laughed.

A line of tension in his back loosened. Truly, he still did expect that one of these days he would return and the locks would all be changed and she would no longer give him a laugh and a smile like that. In fact, the partings were growing harder. Her face stony and her words clipped and ironic, she wouldn’t look at him as he said goodbye.

But even so, she always met his return with a smile.

As evidence of his cruelty, of the single faulty cog destroying his mechanism, he sometimes wanted to leave just to have that smile turned towards him again.

Xan put the bottle and dagger down. “I couldn’t find the corkscrew.”

She held out her hands and fluttered her fingers, her lips curled with self-satisfaction. Asra’s stomach flipped. He stepped closer and placed the enormous bouquet into her waiting arms.

With the warm light of candles casting a reflection of the roses’ pink color up onto her face, Xan hummed as she stuck her nose into the petals and their perfume. Faust burst from the flowers, and Xan jumped.

She laughed and pet the top of her little head with a single finger. “Well, hello to you, too, cutie.”

“Shouldn’t you greet Faust, too?” Asra asked.

Xan glanced at him. She rolled her eyes.

“Yes,” she said, staring him down. “It’s good to see you, too. You’re also terribly cute– Faust.”

She punctuated this by leaning forward to peck him on the cheek. As she bustled around him, he did his best to squash his rising blush. Xan put down the bouquet, and Faust slithered off to find a warm spot.

“What’s all this?” Xan asked, untying the cloth bundle he’d brought in. She opened the tins of food. “This is from Maro’s– did you put all this on tabs?”

Asra bent to the oven, flicking a little spell out to dampen the wood fire.

“And the flowers, too–”

Crouching, Asra looked up at her with a soft smile. “I thought we could make a picnic of watching the meteor shower.”

Her emotions clearly battled one another as she gazed at him. She relented with a reluctantly amused sigh.

“I really thought you weren’t going to make it,” she said.

“It’s only once every few decades,” he said. “Who knows where we’ll be the next time?”

Something passed through her eyes. “Hmm. Hopefully not too far.”

Asra just smiled. He plucked a rose from the bouquet and snapped off the long stem. With light fingers, he tucked it into the hair piled on her head. His hands fell, and lingered on her shoulders. Xan was just a bit taller than him, and the problem with being similar heights was that it made a flush and a charged expression all the more evident. Much closer and harder to escape.

He stepped back.

They busied themselves with taking the food, the flowers, the wine, and a blanket up to the rooftop terrace. Another trip for every cushion and pillow in the house, and they sat together in the encroaching darkness, laughing when they mixed up the dishes and played a dangerous game of who could get the wine open without properly seeing it. And then an even more dangerous game because they’d forgotten the glasses and passed the bottle between them, tasting the lingering heat of each other’s lips.

Juvenile, but he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it. He was glad of the dark and the quickly emptying bottle of wine and the quickly opened second bottle. He was glad of these screens against her gaze, which he knew would so easily discern that faulty cog within him. All the faulty cogs that broke his mechanism and froze him in eternal suspension, never ticking ahead.

He feared her seeing him for who he really was one day: petty and cruel and heartless.

Undeserving.

Surely, surely she must already know. But if she did, then how could she smile every time he returned, how could she lay there on the roof with him, their arms burning where they touched, and laughing as he spun some elaborate, exaggerated tale from far away for her?

Even so, he wanted her to continue laughing like that, mouth wide and lip-paint smudged and tears leaking from her eyes. He wanted her to come closer like that and let her legs tangle with his. He wanted her to spill to him the secrets of her heart, all her insecurities. He wanted all of it without reciprocity. He wanted all of her beautiful defects without revealing his own.

Those were the lengths his selfishness would go.

“Xan,” he whispered. “Xan.”

She breathed deep against his shoulder. Her hand rested on his chest where his vest parted, below his sternum. The warmth of her palm against his bare skin hurt.

“Xanthioppe,” he said.

She’d long banned him from using her full name; that was for great-aunts and lovers, she’d said. Asra reached up to lightly touch the flower he’d put in her hair. She breathed deep.

For a while, he just watched the slow turn of the dark heavens and the blue stars with the heavy scent of roses pulling his heart tight. The wine in his head wore down, and the awareness of her body against his made him want to squirm. He froze, trying to steady his breath.

One brilliant spark shot across the sky, and then another. And another and another until his heart pounded and trembled in his chest. A great flock of rampant lights fled over the black dome above. Asra’s breath caught. The heavens and the earth moved, the whip-lash leaving him paralyzed and breathless.

He should wake her. He should let her see this and he should watch the dance of starlight mirror in her eyes.

But he couldn’t bring himself to disturb her. It would mean she’d move from him and take away her closeness and heat. It would break the spell the night and the wine and the flowers had cast over them.

Xan opened her eyes to an expanse of azure, green, and gold above, dotted with wispy clouds. She shifted, aware of Asra beside her and a stiffness in her limbs. She sat up with a small sigh. The rose has fallen out of her hair and gotten crushed at some point, its petals littering the blanket and sticking to her skin. The city rooftops sprawled around them and the small sounds of the populace stirring drifted up.

“I missed it,” she said.

Soft movements led her eye down. Asra had a forearm lifted to shield his eyes, and a small frown sat on his lips. He never was much of a morning person.

Mindful of the little plates and open tins around them, Xan stood and padded to the steps down into the house. She returned as the blue and green of first light had warmed, juggling a covered cup of hot tea in one hand and a hooded falcon on the gauntlet of the other. She laid the tea beside Asra’s head where he could smell the jasmine.

Straightening, she smoothed down the speckled plumage of Pazu’s breast. He made an inquisitive chirp.

At the edge of the terrace, Xan pulled his hood away. His black eyes considered her before she held her arm aloft and let him fly free. He promised to bring her back a rabbit; much better than the magician’s ill-smelling offerings.

She laughed under her breath and watched Pazu go.

Her gaze drew back to Asra. He gazed back. Her laughter died. He’d seen something she hadn’t, and he made it difficult to meet his eyes, as prickled and thorned and caught all over her as they were.

She padded to the blanket and sat back down beside him. He straightened, sipping his tea, and they watched as the sun rose in a furor of orange.

She slipped her hand around his, and squeezed.

#the arcana #asra #fanfiction #fan apprentice #my writing #xanthioppe #when will the update return from war #w h e n

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