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modernmisadventures · 2 years ago

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Chapter 2: Reactions

It took three locks to get into Cirdan and Varrus’s apartment. This was on top of the secured access, the doorman-cum-guard dog in the lobby, and the keycard required to take the elevator all the way up to their floor. For Cirdan, it was just another day - for Varrus, it was something of another matter. He wondered if he’d ever get used to it.

But tonight, his head was too full of questions - and a pair of large, brown eyes - for him to do more than feel a momentary anxiousness at the procedure. As soon as the door swung shut at their backs and they entered the well-appointed sitting room of their apartment, he pounced. “So, that girl. Who was she?”

Cirdan didn’t answer immediately, making his way through the seating towards the kitchen. He slipped inside and moments later Varrus could hear the refrigerator open. “Come in here while I see if there’s anything to eat,” called the Au Ra.

"You just downed two drinks and an entire plate of nachos and you're still hungry?" Varrus couldn't help but shake his head with a snort - gods knew that man had a bottomless appetite, for more than just food. All the same, he settled himself onto a stool at the island, but refused to let his friend off so easily.

"You can talk and forage at the same time. So, what's the deal?"

“Ugh.” Cirdan bent down and stuck his head in the fridge, wondering for the thousandth time why he didn’t just get a side-by-side. “There’s shit all in here. I’m going to order in some Doman food. The usual?” Without waiting for the Elezen to respond, he slid his tomephone from his pocket and placed the order.

Varrus was almost certain he was stalling on purpose, and waited in impatient silence.

Finally, Cirdan tucked his phone in his pocket and sighed. “You heard her. Her name is Ciprys.” More silence, and he cursed. “We kind of grew up together. Her parents moved into our neighborhood when her mother was still pregnant, and I was about two. I don’t remember much, except my mother wasn’t very thrilled to have academic-types in her domain.” The Au Ra hardly had to explain more; though Varrus had never met his mother, he’d been treated to plenty of diatribes about her high-class - and high-maintenence - ways.

“Anyway,” he continued, slipping out of the kitchen and collapsing onto one of the overstuffed chairs, which creaked ominously beneath the weight of his plus-seven-feet frame, “her parents were also quite close to the Satrap of Radz-at-Han, so father couldn’t do anything about it without making more waves than he was willing to at the time. So they stayed, and mostly they stayed out of our way.”

He stared up the ceiling, lost in his own thoughts until Varrus pointedly cleared his throat. “I probably actually met her for the first time when she was six and I was eight. One of my father’s men was dressing me down; I’ve forgotten why, now.” He smiled. “It wasn’t important. It was summer, and hot, and I didn’t want to stand there on the sidewalk in front of her house getting chewed out because I’d done something any eight-year old would do. All of a sudden, she comes tearing out of the house, yelling at the man to stop being ‘such a bully’. You know how auri women are so tiny compared to the men?”

Varrus nodded.

“Well, they’re always that tiny. She’s six years old, all of three fulms nothing, and she comes tearing across her yard and plants herself right between me and… gods, I don’t even remember his name.” Cirdan’s smile is surprisingly tender, given his usually fierce demeanor. “And she proceeded to let him know how it’s not right to yell at a kid, and you shouldn’t pick on people smaller than you, and didn’t his mother raise him right to not throw a tantrum in public?

“The guy… Jaiko, I think - yeah. Jerky Jaiko. He drew himself up, affronted. I think he might have struck her, but I reached out and pulled her back, and if he’d hit her, he might have hit me. My father’s men, they could yell at me, especially if I was being stupid, but my father would have had their horns if they’d laid a hand on me.” Varrus wasn’t entirely certain that was simply a figure of speech. Cirdan had never exactly told him what he and his father did - but Varrus wasn’t entirely dense.

He just liked having plausible deniability.

Cirdan inhaled deeply. “Her mother comes streaking out of the house, pale with fear. I held up a hand to her - it was a gesture my father used all the time - and she stopped dead in her tracks. I very carefully told Jaiko that the little girl was right, that he was being rude, and that I expected to hear no more on this matter. It was the first time I’d ever stood up to one of my father’s men when they were picking on me. And damned if he didn’t turn as pale as Ciprys and draw himself up. ‘Yes, Master Cirdan’ he said - just as he often said to my father - and he turned and walked away.

“As he left, Ciprys pulled out of my hands,” Cirdan continued, his smile positively sloppy at this point, “turned around, and informed me that she was not ‘a little girl’. ‘I’m Ciprys Dreamweaver’, she said to me, very regally, ‘and you may thank me now.’. Gods,” he sighed. “She hasn’t changed a damn bit. Anyway. I thanked her, and she smiled and very politely told me I was welcome, then went to her mother, took her mother’s hand, and led her back into the house. We were fairly inseparable after that, for a very long time. Her parents hated it. My parents hated it. They learned very early on we didn’t give a damn and if they tried to keep us apart, we’d simply sneak out and meet up anyway. Then I had to go to Doma for a few years to serve in the Master’s household, and while I was gone, she went off to college. I figured that was the end of that. But she’s here,” he whispered. “And damned if I didn’t miss her.”

“So… Did you ever…?” Varrus let the word hang, his intent clear - it was evident just how much the woman meant to his friend. So much so that he couldn’t help if their reunion had been entirely coincidental. Cir had never spoken such words about any of his partners - and Varrus had had the misfortune of meeting a few in the early mornings after his buddy’s escapades, but they were always in and out, never the same each night; hells, he’d never even known any of their names, the rare occasions he did meet them.

So to hear Cir speak so happily, candidly about this Ciprys woman… Well, it was clear she was special. Beyond special.

Cirdan was quiet for a moment, mulling over the question. “No. No, we didn’t. She was sixteen when I left for Doma - and maybe she was willing, but I wasn’t. Not with her. I didn’t want - she wasn’t…” He trailed off, frowning, and this may have been the first time Varrus had ever seen him so uncertain. “I wasn’t going to do that to her - not when I was leaving and no idea when I’d be back, or what her life would be. So no. We never.” Then he smiled, slow and lazy. “But there’s always tomorrow, now that I know where she is.”

“You, with the same person, more than a single night? I’ll believe it when I see it,” Varrus snorted - though it was a bit of false bravado; there was little that would bring him more joy than seeing his best friend truly, truly happy with another.

Though he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the sounds that would be coming from the shared wall between their bedrooms.

“Well, come on, loverboy.” He plopped down onto the seat opposite the Au Ra. “Food’s gonna be here soon; what say we get a few rounds in? Winner gets the third egg roll.” With a smirk, he tossed the second controller to Cir, knowing he’d absolutely just lost himself a bet - a shame, really. He loved those egg rolls.

Unfortunately for him, so did Cir. And Cir had one advantage.

He cheats.

Ciprys didn’t quite slam the door shut behind her - but it was a near thing. Her mother’s voice was still ringing against her horns, but she blocked it out with the ease of long practice. It was all piss and wind; her mother had never had the fortitude to follow through on any of her threats. Not that Ciprys particularly tested that - she loved her mother and father, and she recognized that their overbearing nature came from anxiety about raising her so far away from kith and kin.

But she was twenty-one years old, by the gods, and she deserved to have her own damn life.

“I need a job,” she said to the air. “I need to stop racking up degrees and just get a damn job with them.”

Her parents would be surprised to find out that rather than being a dilettante who had been in school for nearly four years now with nothing to show for it that she’d actually managed to scrape up two degrees and was on the verge of a third. Refusing to walk or be announced by the school had simply been one more way of taking control of her own life. And since her grades had been exceptional - as expected - the U had been more than willing to indulge her, even against two of their more valuable professors.

But she didn’t want a job. Not one that had her tied to a desk, or a bar, or a building. She wanted to travel, she wanted to see places she’d only heard of, meet people she’d never known existed. She wanted to experience the world first-hand… and she wanted to capture it, she mused as her roaming eye fell upon the camera tucked on her dresser, through a lens, then share it with the rest of the world.

And her parents would never go for it. Without a means of support, that dream was just a dream - she’d known that the moment she’d fallen in love with photography and made it her second degree. They’d never let her out of the city - and if they knew how far away she wanted to go, they’d never let her out of the house. And without a job, she’d never have the means to break those gilded chains.

It all circled back. And why, she wondered, was she thinking of this now?

Jess. Something had changed between the moment she’d walked into the bar tonight, and the moment she’d walked out. She’d already started growing fond of the bartender - and a bit envious of her freedom, her freedom to work, to live away from her parents, to have a life that hadn’t been decided before she was born.

And now there was that other woman - the other Au Ra. The teacher. Someone living the life her parents had imagined for her and happy with it. More than anything, that had made it all hit home: she didn’t want that. She didn’t want the same thing, day after day. She didn’t want the papers, the students, the responsibility.

She wanted to spread her wings.

And if she could just find a degree of independence, it wouldn’t matter what her parents thought of Cir-

No.

Five years. Why hadn’t he told her he was back? How long had he been back? He’d never said anything in the texts, the emails, the little gifts he’d sent anonymously.

Why?

With a grunt, she flung herself on her bed and brooded at the moon rising outside her window. And did her best not to dream a dream of turquoise eyes and wide, spreading wings.

“Can I walk you home?”

“The answer is still no,” Kal’istae replied evenly, ignoring Thancred’s soft sound of disappointment. “I appreciate the invite to the bar, though. I enjoyed meeting your sister.”

Doing his best not to sulk - and how was that even a thing? - Thancred strode along at her side, his hands shoved in his pockets. “Scamp? She’s one of a kind. Minfilia’s more reserved, and Ryne’s more like a daughter, but Jess is exactly the kind of younger sister I wanted growing up.” The affection in his voice was real and rich, and Kal’istae had no doubt in her mind that he meant every word.

Kal’istae let her eyes drift up towards the stars above them, nearly drowned out from the lights of the city. “Is that why you do it?”

“One reason, perhaps,” Thancred replied, only half of his mind on the conversation. “There’s a lot more to it than just filling in the gaps, of course, and it’s mostly for their sakes, not mine - but I’d be lying if I said I got nothing out of it.”

Kal’istae tried to ignore the prick of her conscience, the whisper of her unconscious that suggested that perhaps saying yes, just this once, wouldn’t hurt. She was not interested in leading him on. She liked their relationship exactly where it was - non-existent with a side of friendship.

So why did you go to the bar with him?

Gritting her teeth, she shoved the errant thought away. “Here is where we part ways,” she said instead, indicating the entrance to the underground. “I’ll see you around, Thancred.”

If by around you mean next Wednesday when he inevitably swings by your classroom during his weekly visit to the school.

Well, of course. If he didn’t, she’d probably be very disappointed. Worried, even. Except when he’d had to go out of town, he’d come by every Wednesday like clockwork…

As the thought trailed off, she stared at him as he waited, gazing at her with a puzzled expression.

Oh hells.

“Good night, Thancred,” she said, just a bit faintly. “I’ll see you… I’ll see you.”

His smile was slow, and just a little smug. “Good night, Kali,” he replied, backing away. “I’ll see you Wednesday.”

Yes. Yes he would. And she would be waiting.

Oh. Hells.

#ffxiv #au: misadventures in modern eorzea #oc: varrus varlineau #oc: cirdan takeshi #oc: ciprys dreamweaver #oc: kal'istae miurani #npc: thancred waters #non-canon au #no sundering au #rp fanfiction #multiple authors #author: sasslett #author: ainyan

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