night and day
dragon quest builders 2 -- sunny/luna (male builder/singer npc)
(1,834 words)
ao3 version
“We match!” she grins, squeezing his hands tight enough for Sunny to be sure he’d lose his fingers.
“Uhm, I guess?”
The structures that Sunny came across on the shores are always, something.
Sometimes, kind faces would greet him, offering him warm food and their best bed for his time there. Others, he’d come across absolutely inspiring builds, taking notes on new ways to use and place materials as he explores every inch, oohing and awing at all the detail. At the worst of times, he came across imposing metal structures with fire breathing statues threatening to singe his core, cells stacked with tortured plushies and people who very much did not want to be there.
A ‘gate to the underworld’ is, well, not his favorite, but the ladies of the shore made their home there anyway, hidden under the steps like rats. He sees no beds, no bonfires or cookware, no storage or decor. Just the burning metal and aggravated singers.
Mostly aggravated.
Luna, she introduces herself as, is practically bouncing in her excitement to meet the gunk-covered, poison-dripping visitor the moment he steps in. Her hands find his the second he introduces himself in return.
“We match!” she grins, squeezing his hands tight enough for Sunny to be sure he’d lose his fingers.
“Uhm, I guess?”
“Which meeeeaaaans! I’m coming with you!” He blinks dumbly at her as she continues. “This obviously means something! Destined to meet, for you to take me away from here, to see something other than grey!” Luna’s smile practically drips with innocence, which of itself is suspicious, but he knows they don’t have a singer on the Isle, and Luna’s pretty. Maybe Kyla would like her.
“S-sure.” His hands are released immediately, and instead of Luna hopping away to celebrate like he expects (hopes), she throws herself at him, somehow managing to get enough height to get her little body to hang off his shoulders.
“Thank you thank you thank you! I promise I’ll be helpful! I know how to sweep!” He furrows a brow in confusion at the statement, but doesn’t comment as Luna drops herself, landing gracefully on her heels.
The other singers seem none-too-bothered by him letting her come along, and he suspects maybe they’re happy to have her gone, if her energy runs this rampant all the time.
----
“You actually brought someone back?”
Sunny rolls his eyes at Anhi’s teasing, tossing him a slight smile as he helps Luna over the gap between the ship and the dock. She’s lucky Anhi had started their newest project here, because no way would she be able to stay upright in those shoes on the previous dock.
“You’re builders?” Luna asks as she takes her hand back, excitement written all over her face. Anhi glances between the two of them, questioning, and Sunny manages to read the look well enough, waving a dismissive hand in the other builder’s direction.
“Yeah,” Sunny answers for him. Luna’s attention moves from Anhi to Sunny, making her laugh as she quickly punches his arm. He genuinely recoils a bit from the force, hand coming up to guard the spot she hit.
“You coulda said something, you know!” She grins at him, then pats his arm twice and steps away from him to inspect Anhi’s work. “You’re really talented!” she beams, heels clicking on the rocks. “This looks great already!”
Anhi smiles at her and ducks his head a tad, laughter sprouting from her again at the movement. She’s cute, Sunny decides.
“So!” Luna smiles, again turning her attention to him. “Where am I staying?”
“The Gardens are nice?” Anhi provides, and Sunny has half a mind to escort her to the Steppe instead. Though, yeah, they are nice.
----
Luna’s adjusted well enough to the constant work Sunny has the Gardens running on. She doesn’t really do anything too practical, like weed or water or, you know, sweep, but she likes watching them.
“Mostly you,” Rosie helpfully corrects when he asks about it, a sly smile spreading across her face. “I think she likes you the best.”
Maybe she does, he thinks as Luna leans over the fencing to chatter on about the newest ‘songs’ Haydin has been torturing her with whenever she visits the Steppe. He’s not interested in the topic, not really, but he can’t stop listening anyway. Her voice has a specific… something to it he likes, and her smile when he asks a question about whatever it is she’s talking about— it lights up her whole face, making her shine brighter than she already does.
Maybe he likes her the best too.
----
“Let me help.”
Sunny pulls his head from its careful spot between the leaves of the corn stalks, immediately suffering a leaf to the face for his insolence. The corn has decided to play rough once again. He will never win.
“What?” Sunny asks as he steps away from the crops, waving away the leaves trying to hold onto his hair. Luna huffs at his question, lifting the straw basket she has in her hands into the air like Sunny can’t see it already.
“Let me help!” she repeats as she tosses the gate open, playing up her annoyance. “You know I can’t understand a word Finn says, and he was the only one who wasn’t busy and willing to look for this with me!” She gestures to the basket as she approaches, and Sunny takes note of her attire.
She’s long switched out her original heels for flats instead, but still hasn’t swapped out her dress for something more practical for their work. He’s pretty sure she’s the only adult on this side of the island that wears a skirt, much less offers to do physical labor in a full dress, but. If she wants to help, Sunny won’t stop her.
“Okay.” He turns back to the corn with that, continuing the process of stripping the stalks of dead leaves. Luna, in the meantime, helps herself to the building pile around Sunny’s legs, tossing them into the basket.
“When will the corn be ready?” she asks after a moment of comfortable silence. Sunny doesn’t talk much and she knows it, so she doesn’t think it awkward anymore.
“Next week, hopefully. The pumpkins too.”
“Ooo!” Sunny pulls back from the crops enough to glance down at his company, catching Luna smiling to herself as she continues her task. “Do you guys carve pumpkins around here?” She lifts her head then, catching Sunny’s eye and pulling on an even bigger smile. “It’s almost that time of year, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he answers to both questions, suddenly distracted by her. She stands, slyly noticing he’s stopped working to stare at her instead.
“What about dressing up?” She brushes her dress off while maintaining eye contact, her smile turning coy as she steps towards him.
“Y-yeah.”
Luna giggles as she enters his personal space, amused by his focus on her. “Why don’t we dress up together? We can keep matching that way.”
He was just going to be a scarecrow again this year. “Okay,” he answers with instead.
Luna laughs fully this time around, kneeling down behind him as she reaches for some dead leaves she couldn’t reach from her previous position. “Aren’t you supposed to be shucking, corn boy?”
Sunny blinks, acting like he just now realized he wasn’t working anymore, which, really, he did. “Oh.” His face colors a tad as he returns his attention to the crops, embarrassed.
Luna just smiles up at him again and returns to her basket with her conquest of dead leaves, dumping them unceremoniously with the rest.
Sunny’s always fun to hang around, so she really doesn’t mind the dirt sticking to the ends of her dress. She’ll probably have to take it over to Babs though, and have to explain to her why she decided it was a good idea to wear a completely white dress while tending to the crops. Let her play her game without judgement, okay? Not everyone is a cottontail.
Luna swats away her mind’s version of Babs and continues collecting the dead leaves Sunny’s dropped in her daydreaming, though with one wrong step, her foot slips down into the channel of water running through the field. In her panic to save herself, she grabs onto Sunny’s belt, but he isn’t ready to be her support, so all she manages to do with that is pull him down with her, forcing them both into the water.
They tumble in with a splash, Sunny a little dazed and confused by it all, but down in the ditch anyway. Alarm quickly replaces that when he hears what sounds like sobbing, making him rush to right himself just to instead see Luna doing her absolute damnedest to keep the giggles in.
Sunny’s urgency cracks whatever restraint she had though, and Luna loses it, practically howling in laughter at the two of them, and how Babs is absolutely gonna lay into her now. The laughter spreads to Sunny, and he starts chuckling right along with her, relieved she doesn’t seem bothered by any of this.
“Oops,” she tries once she’s calmed down some, her watery eyes clear enough to see the smile on her company’s face finally. The softness of it catches her off guard though, enough that when Sunny stands and offers her a hand, all she can do for a moment is stare.
She takes it though, and lets Sunny haul her up rather effortlessly.
“Maybe we can go as drowned rats,” Sunny jokes, that soft, soft smile still sitting on his face.
She manages to laugh anyway, playfully shoving the farmboy before stepping out of the ditch and back onto the dirt. “That’s princess drowned rat to you.”
He laughs, a touch louder than what’s normal for him. The sound makes her feel warm. “Oh,” he grins, stepping out after her. “Sorry, your majesty.”
She tosses a bit of laughter over her shoulder at him as she heads for the gate, Sunny quickly gathering the forgotten basket before following. She holds it open for him like the true lady she is, and Sunny nods gratefully at her, happy to play along.
“Babs isn’t gonna be happy,” Sunny comments as they step onto the path, referencing the muddy state of Luna’s dress.
“Oh, I know.” Rip to her whole next few days. She’ll be waiting on Babs hand and foot as payment for her dress’s cleaning.
Sunny seems to be able to read her mind though, because he smiles warmly at her, sunnily, she dares. “I can run it over there. I need to deliver our last batch of coffee beans anyway.”
Ooo, coffee. “Can I get some?”
“Yeah,” Sunny answers without hesitation, countering her obvious surprise with another smile. “For today. I don’t want to turn you off of farming forever.”
Luna laughs again, her heart fluttering happily in her chest. “It’s gonna take a lot more than a bit of water to turn me away from here.”
From you, goes unspoken, but the way Sunny colors in response, she thinks he heard it anyway.
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