#or whether i wanted to be shirayuki making this show work as it sort of grows beyond the two pony operation she had before

[sabraeal]

Hypewired Unsolved Drinking Game, Rule #2: Shirayuki Despairs Over Obi’s Life Choices

Rule #1

Written for @ruleofexception on the occasion of her BIRTH. I thought this would be more ghost hunting and less metrics, but I should have known I couldn’t resist a premise-building chapter.

[Shirayuki] Have you ever heard of the Gardner Museum Heist?

[Obi] Oohhh.

[Shirayuki] *laughs* What was that?

[Obi] Oh, nothing, nothing. It’s just... I love heists.

[Shirayuki] You love heists? *laughs* No, I take it back, that doesn’t surprise me at all.

[Obi] *laughs* Come on, who doesn’t love a good heist?

[Shirayuki] This one *is* known as the biggest art heist of its kind.

[Obi] Oh ho ho ho. You’re saying all the right things to me.

The thing about haunted houses-- the real kind, not the ones that hire teenagers to wear stage make up and hold fake chainsaws-- is that they’re hard to book.

“Oh, in my hometown, they hired ex-convicts,” Obi says in the same casual way he says anything vaguely terrifying about his childhood, “and they gave them real, working chainsaws.”

Her jaw drops, face still plastered to her phone’s screen. Soft jazz worms into her ear. “That can’t be true. That has to be a-- a rumor or something.”

“Nah, nah, the farm had a work program with the local prison. I think sometimes they did seasonal work too?” He shrugs. “I don’t know. But it definitely made the hayride more popular. Gave it a real element of danger, you know?”

Shirayuki stares. “And they gave them real chainsaws?”

“Well, they only revved them a little.” He twitches his shoulder, as much of a shrug as he ever gives. “One time a guy hopped on the cart and chopped the bale next to me, but I mean, I probably deserved that.”

She might be sitting down, but oh, she could really do to sit down again. Harder. Mentally. Emotionally. “And you’re sure these were ex-convicts?”

“Yeah, probably.” Not an endorsement ringing with confidence. “I mean, I’m sure they were in for non-violent crimes, at least.”

There are two wolves inside of her, and one of them is pleased to hear about a local business working to place disadvantaged community members, and the other-- well, the other thinks that maybe everyone should be a little more solid on the whole non-violent convictions than they are.

Before she has the chance to suggest it, the phone clicks, and a pleasant female voice says, “Hill House, Donna speaking, how may I help you?”

“Oh, hi, yes,” she fumbles, “I’m Shirayuki calling from Hypewire. We would like to talk about booking your location.”

“Hypewire?” Donna pauses, the good long kind that means she’s probably from a generation that prefers to read its news on paper, and not from a website that has an option to react with emojis. “Oh, did you want to do an article on the house?”

“Ah, something like that.” Obi arches a brow, lips twitching as he crams another Funyon between them. He’s far too distracting to have around while she needs to have thinky thoughts, especially if he’s going to make faces at her. “I’m the producer of Hyperwire Unsolved, and we were wondering if we could possibly do a, ah--” she coughs-- “an investigation? Of the house? For the show?”

“Oh, Hypewire Unsolved!” The woman laughs. “My nephew loves you guys. But don’t you do true crime?”

[Sender]: sales@winchesterhouse.com [Recipients]: s.lyon@hypewire.com [Subject]: Re: Episode Filming

Thank you for your interest in our venue for an episode. Some of our interns are big fans of your show! However, we have to admit some confusion, as we were under the impression you were a true crime show…

“How’d they get that impression?” Higata grunts, hunching further over his keyboard. His screen in the only light in the editing bay, castling a ghastly glow over his face. “The art department just sent me six different aliens to pick from for the Roswell episode, and now we’re Serial? Come on.”

Shirayuki sighs. “I know. But it seems our more popular episodes are the ones about collar bombers and serial murderers. At least by the metrics”

Higata might only be twenty-six, but he’d be right at home at the VA buffet with the way he grumbles. “You know His Highness over there was talking to me about making true crime and supernatural separate seasons. Something about...keeping views and organizational groups or something.”

“Huh.” She sits back, nibbling on her lip. “It would certainly give me more of a focus each season. What do you think?”

“I guess it’s fine. Two editing credits for my resume for one show’s work is a good deal.” He overlays a shadowy police sketch into the video, shoulders rounded and tense. “What do I know? I just sit in the dark and pick which ghostly visage I want to layer over your audio.”

She leans in with her sunniest smile, squeezing his arm right above the elbow. “And you’re so good at it!”

“I am.” He’s too much of a professional to look away from his work, shifting the same image three pixels over and then three pixels back, but his bicep relaxes beneath her grip. “I am a top tier spooky face picker. All the commenters say so.”

She blinks. “Oh? They do?”

Higata twists in his seat, gaze somehow even more incredulous in the lack of light. “No, Shirayuki, they don’t. But they should.” He gestures to the screen vaguely. “They mostly just talk about how much they want to fuck Obi.”

“OH.” There’s some information she really, really didn’t need. “That’s um, ah--”

“Your job, according to roughly half our fan base.” His mouth hooks into a grin she does not enjoy. “What do you say, Lyon? I think we could break the bank if you kissed him once on camera.”

“I-- I mean--” it’s a ridiculous request, clearly a joke, but her heart is pounding so loud in her ears she can’t hear her own thoughts-- “that’s not really w-what the show is about.”

Higata laughs. “That’s what you think.”

“What does who think?”

Shirayuki jumps straight out of her chair.

It’s not an exaggeration; there’s literal air between her butt and the seat, and when she lands again, the soft cushion makes the most obvious whoosh noise in existence, only worse, since it’s slow too. No obnoxious whoopee cushion womp, oh no, just an endless, air pump whoosssssshhhhhh that’s as blatant as a rattlesnake in the silence.

“Obi!” His lean shadow fills the doorway—wow, is he actually that tall?—and his head tilts, just enough so that his eyes shimmer gold. “I—nothing! We were, um, nothing?”

“We were talking about true crime,” Higata supplies, darting her a pitying look, “and how that’s what everyone thinks we are. Winchester House just emailed back.”

Obi grimaces, teeth flashing white in the dark. “Ah, great. Another one of those.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, deflating into a slouch. “I could talk about Big Foot until I’m blue in the face, but everyone thinks I have nuanced opinions about Jeffrey Dahmer.”

One narrow brow arches toward his hairline. “But you do have nuanced opinions about Jeffrey Dahmer.”

“I just think animal mutilation is probably a sign things aren’t going right in your life and someone should have noticed.” She waves her hands, at a loss. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to explore a supposedly haunted house.”

His lips twitch, right at one corner. “For a skeptic, you’re really into the idea you could see a ghost.”

“Stories are part of the human experience,” she explains primly. “We use them to understand what feels inexplicable. And ghosts are part of how we compartmentalize death.”

“Or they are the remnants of people who died too soon.” Obi pushes himself off the jamb, sauntering over to where they sit. “Or whatever bad juju is left by human misery—hey, that’s a sweet mugshot. Who’s it supposed to be?”

Higata squints. “I keep thinking it might be Shiira? But the cheeks are all wrong.”

“Huh.” Obi leans between the two of them, nose hovering mere inches away from the screen. His arm presses into her shoulder, too warm. “Brecker.”

“Brecker?” Higata tilts his head. “Oh yeah, I see it now. He’s not gonna like that.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Good thing he doesn’t watch joyless tripe like Unsolved then.”

“Yeah.” Higata snickers, raising the opacity. “Good thing.”

Obi settles back on his heels, hand gripping the back of her chair. She dares a glance up, and there he is, watching her with one of those looks she doesn’t know how to read. “Don’t worry, Lyon,” he says, thumb rubbing at the plastic back. “The season’s only just started. Give it some time.”

“I’d love to,” she mutters, tilting her head back, resting it on his wrist. “But try explaining that to Izana.”

[Obi] I’m just saying, there’s no sexier crime than a heist. ...Well, I mean, that doesn’t involve actual sex.

[Shirayuki] *wheeze*

[Obi] You know what I mean.

[Shirayuki] Do I? Am I finding out too much about you right now? Is this how you get seduced at parties? Girls just cornering you and telling you about high-profile robberies?

[Obi] *laughs* This is absolutely not how I get seduced at parties. Unless you’d like to try...?

[Shirayuki] . . .

[Obi] Besides, it’s not like this is just a regular robbery. Heists don’t happen to normal people. Just the rich ones.

[Shirayuki] Well, this *is* a museum. It’s for learning purposes.

[Obi] Oh, like all that stuff actually *belongs* to a museum anyway.

[Shirayuki] Actually...this time it does!

[Obi] Wow, now there’s a mystery I want to investigate.

“We want to capitalize on the energy from this season.”

Izana isn’t a man who lounges; his mesh office chair is relentlessly ergonomic, only a few aggressively rolled lumbar supports away from a torture device. But still, he gives off the energy of a cat lazing in a sunspot, already gotten into the cream.

“Unsolved has always had excellent metrics, but since the premier--” he glances pointedly at Obi-- “they’re unparalleled by any other digital media Wisteria has put out on any of its platforms.”

Obi sprawls in one of the wire-frame chairs Izana has out, far too big for its delicate frame, every inch of him as still as the grave. Except for his one, bouncing knee, practically vibrating as he asks, “That’s...good right?”

“Very good.” Shirayuki may not be a metrics person, but working with Zen gave her more than a passing acquaintance with what success sounds like. “I think he’s telling us...we’re his cash cow.”

Izana’s lips lift into a smirk. “Just so. You’re more popular than Stand the Heat, and that’s saying something.”

It is saying something-- Obi’s show consistently has the most hits and the highest likes-to-views ratio. It’s been the backbone of Hypewire’s digital media section since it premiered last year, and now-- now Unsolved has passed it. If the graph Izana’s laid out is right, they’ve passed it by...a lot.

Shirayuki sneaks a glance at Obi as he leans over, taking in the numbers. She can’t move, can’t even breathe as he stares, eyes rounding as he understands what’s happening.

He rips the paper off the desk, shaking it at her. “Do you see this?”

She blinks. “Y-yes?”

His mouth breaks into a grin, like a Labrador who has found a particularly giant stick. “We’re awesome.”

“Oh,” she breathes, and wow, this is really not the time to think about the-- the Abayan effect, even if that smile makes it extremely hard not to. “Okay.”

“We should have you on the show.” His knee bounces a mile a minute, words barely keeping pace. “See if that makes the ratings draw even.”

Shirayuki stares at him, but there’s no hint of sarcasm, no undertone of agitation. For all intents and purposes, it seems as if he’s just...inviting her on his highly rated cooking show.

That can’t be right.

“Not a bad thought, Abayan,” Izana hums, fingers tapping at the desk. “Turn that in to me with the rest of your proposals for next season.”

Obi grins. “No problem, boss.”

“Wait.” This is all happening too fast; it’s all too much. Three weeks ago she was scrambling for a new co-host, and now she’s sitting next to Hypewire’s media darling, talking about how she needs to be on his show for his ratings. “I don’t-- we shouldn’t--”

“Oh, can you not cook?” Obi smiles, and it’s-- entirely too much. “Don’t worry, Lyon, you’ll be on top when I’m done with you.”

“N-no!” she chokes. “I-- I’m the daughter of a bar! I mean, my grandparents--” ugh, four years to get a journalism degree, and she still can’t word good-- “they owned a pub.”

“Great.” His teeth flash, half-feral. “Then you’ll know how to follow my lead.”

“I think,” Izana says, tipping her a speculative look, “that Shirayuki is less worried about her prowess in the kitchen, and more about what these sort of numbers might mean to a show like Unsolved. Isn’t that right?”

“Ah, I mean...” It’s terrible how good he is at his job. “It’s all so...quick. We’re still editing this season, and already I’m working on the ideas for next one, and I have to not only write scripts but also scout locations, and Higata is already stretched thin--”

“We’ll get you another editor.”

Her jaw drops. “W-what?”

Izana folds his hands, so calm, and tells her, “We’ll get you another editor.”

Shirayuki stares, mouth utterly dry. It had been a struggle to get Higata last season; after Obi had roasted the idea during Pitch Fight, Hypewire’s higher-ups had been loath to put any actual support behind Unsolved. Only his dogged enthusiasm-- and flagrantly working on the project behind their backs-- had gotten him on board after the pilot took off. And now Izana Wisteria was just handing her someone else. Personally.

She reaches down and pinches herself. Yep, this is-- this is real life. Somehow.

“You want to-- you mean that--” she gulps-- “you want to give Unsolved a team?”

He nods, brusque and efficient. “I can get you another researcher as well. Or if the locations appear to be a problem, perhaps a personal assistant?” He lifts a hand, a Wisteria shrug. “Just let me know your needs, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Unless it’s time, right?” Obi asks wryly. “That’s straight out.”

Izana’s mouth stretches into the barest grin. “The internet is instant, I’m afraid. You have to strike while the iron’s hot. I hope--” he fixes her with a meaningful look-- “we are all able to make the best of this opportunity.”

kisskissfall4luv: does ne1 no f this guy is gonna b here 4 the hole sesson? i luv Zen but i lik the nu guy 2 hes so funny!

kayla0202: I hope he is! I never thought I’d like something as much as Stand the Heat, especially a show about aliens and weird crime, but Obi and Shirayuki make me tune in every week! How long are Unsolved’s seasons again??

unsolvedjunky42: There’s only one other season, and that was 12 eps, though a lot of those were 10 minutes long, and these ones are averaging 17-20min. It looks like Obi Abayan is credited as co-host for the rest of the season: [follow link] So glad he signed on, I thought Unsolved would be dead in the water without Zen but Obi brings a whole new dynamic I didn’t ever realize the show was missing.

zenluvr999: i no were only 3 eps in but i think im gonna need a new name lmao

“Ah, I understand, but we really are looking to--” Shirayuki clenches her stress artichoke, its plush petals ballooning out from between her fingers, and stifles a sigh. “Yeah, I see. Thank you.”

The call cuts off with a beep, too cheerful a sound for its finality. Another opportunity lost. Shirayuki spills over her keyboard, groan lost beneath the function keys.

“Going that well, huh?” Kihal barely spares her a glance, but she does pull aside a headphone; the way editors show they care. “Tell me again how much you love this job.”

“I do love it,” she insists, muffled by the cool metal of her desk. “It’s just...so much work.”

“You know, we could just get that personal assistant.” Higata drops his headphones around his neck, settling back in his chair. It creaks beneath him, protesting his slouch. “I still can’t believe you said no to that.”

“We don’t need another team member.” Shirayuki lifts her head, just barely, to give him a warning glance. “We already have Kihal. That’s more than enough.”

“Really? We still have half a season left to edit, you have another season to write, and you want to tell me we couldn’t use another set of hands?” His eyebrow twitches up toward his hairline. “You just love making all those phone calls, huh?”

“It’s not that.” She rolls back, lifting herself upright. Her spine reminds her sharply that it doesn’t like doing that, that it was having a fine time as she was, but if there’s one thing Shirayuki knows how to ignore by now, it’s a complainer. “Unsolved was my idea to begin with, and if we can’t do the proposal we submitted last week, it should be me who’s to blame for it, not some poor intern.”

“She’s so cute,” Kihal coos across the cluster. “She’s got morals and everything.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Higata deadpans. “Didn’t you unionize the Yuris office?”

Her teeth flash predator white between the crimson stain of her lips. “Why do you think I volunteered to work this gig?”

He sighs, long-suffering. “See, this is the problem: the both of you like working too much. It’s getting in the way of having someone fetch my coffee for me.”

Shirayuki levels her best glare at him, the one she’s honed from one too many long nights in the editing bay. “If we had a PA, their job would not be to get you coffee.”

“If we had a PA, their job would be to make these stupid phone calls so Shirayuki can get actual work done,” Kihal informs him with a playful superiority than makes his eyes roll. “Instead of spending all day in a fugue of sadness and misery because no one will take her seriously.”

Shirayuki almost protests—there’s no fugue, and if anything, the rejections just make her more desperate and determined, but—

Her list of high-profile options has been reduced by a half, red lines spiking through some of her best hits with no relief in sight. She is about two seconds from eating her feelings through the oversized cinnamon buns in the company vending machine, and a fugue state is starting to sound like a preferable way to spend her afternoon.

“Ugh,” she decides, and lays down again.

“There, there,” Kihal croons, patting her back across their desks. “Someone will have to give you the time of day at some point.”

“I’m getting calls back.” She rolls over onto one cheek, thoughtful. “People are fans of the show! They just...don’t think we’re serious.”

Kihal scoffs. “About what? Aliens? Ghosts? I’ve been fielding queries all morning from Shuuka asking which direction we want to go for The Alexandria episode.”

“It’s the whole ghost hunting angle.” Higata leans over, liberating her artichoke from her grip, tossing it between his hands. “If I want to be fair, which I don’t, but here we are—it’s a new direction for the show. I guess it could be confusing to people used to our format.”

“I know, I know.” She pillows her chin with her hands, letting out a sigh. “I just wish one of them would give us a confirmation instead of—“ she waves her hand at her empty schedule—“all this.”

“They will.” She doesn’t know where Higata unearths all this unearned confidence, but she’s glad one of them has. “Let this season run its course. Zen was never big on the supernatural episodes, but these ones with Obi...people are definitely going to pay attention.”

He wouldn’t be saying that if he had to suggest waiting to Izana Wisteria. “They’re already paying attention to Obi. I’m always getting asked if--”

“If I’m as handsome as I look on screen?”

The thing is-- she’s not expecting it. One minute she’s sprawled across her desk, and the next Obi’s purr is tickling her ear, and--

“Ow, fff--” his gaze darts over where he clenches his nose-- “fudge. Sicles.”

“Nice save,” Kihal deadpans. “Now if only you could do that in the first minute of every video.”

“What can I say,” he honks, rubbing his nose. “I’m an off-the-cuff kind of guy.”

“You’re a ‘ruining our monetization’ kind of guy,” she shoots back, though she pushes over an abandoned chair for him to sit on.

“Oh, Obi!” Shirayuki yelps, hands hovering on either side of his face as he sits. “I’m so sorry! I was just--”

“Surprised, yeah, got that part.” he lifts his fingers, wobbling the bridge of his nose. “No harm done.”

“Good thing,” Higata mutters, “that face gets views.”

“Oh please.” Obi grins, devastating as always. “Chicks love a broken nose.”

Kihal barks out a laugh. “When it comes to you, chicks love breathing.”

He shrugs, sliding into a slouch. “Still no luck, I’m guessing?”

“None,” Shirayuki confirms. “Though people have been saying they enjoy the new season.”

“The concierge at the Roosevelt says you’re a lot cuter than Zen,” Kihal offers, needlessly.

Obi’s grin widens, wolfish. “You don’t say.”

“Maybe you should start using that Abayan charm to get us some bookings,” Kihal suggests wryly. “Earn your keep around here.”

“Please, I earn my keep. I’m the eye candy.” He winks. “Besides, I’d be happy to, but the big boss over here always tells me--”

“You don’t need to worry about it,” Shirayuki says, “it’s really my job--”

Higata waves a hand, long suffering. “You see the problem.”

“I do.” Kihal settles back. “Well, if you really just need a place...”

“I’ll take anything at this point,” she says to the particleboard of the ceiling. “Even if it’s just a haunted hole in the ground.”

“All right, well--” Kihal grins, sheepish-- “my condo is haunted.”

[Obi] So you’re telling me that this is just some crazy lady’s house, filled with all her stuff?

[Shirayuki] Isabella Stewart Gardner was a socialite and a philanthropist, *not* a crazy lady.

[Obi] Right, okay, but...she did turn her house into a museum, and then made everyone promise not to touch it. Not exactly what I think of when someone says ‘stable.’

[Shirayuki] Because she *curated* it, Obi!

[Obi] So what you’re telling me is that she knew that from forever to the end of time, she would have better taste than everyone else on the planet.

[Shirayuki] *sputtering* W-well--

[Obi] No, no, you’re right. I retract the crazy lady thing. Because that’s *baller*.

[Shirayuki] *laughs* O-obi!

[Obi] I want to be that lady. Like that is shade from the grave.

[Shirayuki] . . . . She also was personally friends with Monet.

[Obi] SEE? Life goals.

“So,” Obi hums from around a dumpling, his chopsticks already rooting for another, “what do you think?”

Shirayuki looks up, halfway through a very un-dainty bite of her own. “About--? Oh! I can’t believe they’re only fifty cents each! Where did you find this place?”

Despite his reputation on camera-- forward-facing, casual, intimate-- Obi isn’t someone who looks at people head-on. She’ll catch a glance sometimes, or maybe a considering look from the corner of his eyes, but for the most part, he’s always moving, eyes darting around to watch who filters into a room, or at the cars moving outside, or staring down the squirrel that likes to scratch at their window.

So when he looks at her, gold eyes trapping her as thoroughly as amber, she notices.

“Well,” he says after a long moment, “when you run a food show, people do give you some hot tips. But, ah--” he rubs at the back of his head, ears pink at the tips-- “that wasn’t really what I, ah, meant.”

Her mouth rounds. “Oh.”

His hands raise, chopsticks knitted under his knuckles. “Though I’m glad you like it! It’s, ah, one of my favorite places too. I just thought that you might have some, er--” he grimaces-- “thoughts, about the whole haunted condo thing.”

“Oh! That.” She taps her chopsticks on her plate, trying to gather her thoughts. “I just think...I don’t know. It’s not a bad place to start, but I just wanted...”

She blows out her cheeks on a sigh. “The ghost hunting is a new aspect of the show, and I wanted us to come out strong with an actual location...”

His mouth curls at a corner, too knowing. “And having us just carry around proton packs and talk about cold spots in a friend’s house isn’t really going to do much for our supernatural cred?”

“Yeah.” She slumps against the chair, defeat. “That. But I also feel like beggars can’t be choosers, and no one else is telling us yes, so...”

He nods, mouth pressed into a thoughtful line. “So there’s no rush to say no.”

“Right, yeah.” She glances at him from the corners of her eyes. “How about you?”

Obi blinks, eyes fluttering wide. “Me? This isn’t really my--” he hesitates, mouth working, starting a half dozen words-- “ah, I mean, I think...it’s smart. You’re right, a bigger place will give us more credit, but if one doesn’t come through then we have to start somewhere. Besides,” his mouth tics at a corner, twitching toward a smirk-- “I’ve always wondered whether she’s bikini or boyshorts.”

It’s only when her chin hits her chest that she realizes her jaw has dropped. “We’re not there to look in her underwear drawer!”

“Well, we’re not at work for her to look in my gym bag either,” he replies, sour, “but she did anyway.”

“She already said that was an accident--”

“--a likely story--”

“--That’s not what I meant anyway,” she admits with a huff. “I wanted to know if you were okay with the whole, ah...” her shoulders round, shy-- “metrics thing.”

“Metrics?” His head cocks, quizzical, but then-- “you mean, the stuff Izana showed us weeks ago?”

“Two weeks ago,” she corrects, heat flaring on her cheeks, “and, um, yes. I just...you’re not mad?”

Obi stares. “About what?”

“Unsolved.”

He shakes his head. “You’re...really going to have to be more specific than that.”

“The ratings.” She pokes at a dumpling, miserable. “Stand the Heat-- that’s your baby isn’t it? You pitched it and everything.”

“I...did?” he says, brow furrowed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s just-- Unsolved is doing better.” It’s not bragging, she knows that, but it feels like it. “And it’s-- it’s okay if you’re, um, upset about it. You’ve been doing this for--”

“OH.” Obi coughs, suddenly looking anywhere but at their table. “No, I really-- you don’t need to worry about that. At all. Please.”

She stares. “Obi, it’s okay. I’m not going to take it personally if you--”

“Kid, please,” he begs, holding up his hands. “It’s nothing. I mean, yeah, if Stand the Heat was on top, I’d be happy. I mean, I was happy when it was on top. But, this is...” his fingers twirl his chopstick mindlessly-- “this is good, too.”

“But--”

“Listen, I know you may find this hard to believe, especially with how we, uh, met, but I wasn’t kidding when I said I was a huge fan of the show. Not even a little. Understated it, in fact.” The tips of his ears flush. “So, uh, it’s kind of cool that I joined my favorite show, and now it’s super popular. That’s sort of the whole fanboy dream, right?”

“O-oh!” She stares down at her hands, willing them to stop trembling. “I, uh...I didn’t...I didn’t really think of it like that.”

“Yeah, well, now you know you don’t have to worry about it,” he says with a laugh. “I’m living the dream here. Not only am I on the show, but I’m more popular than the last guy. And I get to take the cute host out to lunch and call it business. The only square I need to finish fanboy bingo is getting to ki--”

His teeth snap down, so loud she hears the click. “Haah, never mind. Hey look, is that the waiter? Could we, ah, get the check?”

[Sender]: iwisteria@wisteriacorp.com [Recipients]: s.lyon@hypewire.com [Subject]: Season 3 Hard Proposal

Is there any reason this isn’t in my inbox already?

Shirayuki closes her inbox with a grimace. “Ah, hey, Kihal?”

Her editor looks up, brows raised. “Yeah?”

She licks her lips, bracing herself. “Just...how haunted do you think your condo is?”

[realtacuardach]

Acts of Bravery

Entry 4 for Obiyuki Bingo - Medical Drama AU

...

Zen leaned against the counter as he watched Shirayuki grind at her medicines with a pestle. “Isn’t that a little old school?”

The pharmacist looked up from her work. “Better get off of there before Garrack sees you.” Zen smiled sheepishly and pushed himself away; lead surgeon or not, no one messed with the director of pharmacy. “And it might be old school, but if I’ve got the spare time, I like using it. It makes our ointments and medicines more potent.”

“Always working, even in your spare time,” Zen shook his head grinning. “No wonder my brother says I need to learn from you.”

“Really? I didn’t think he was too wild about me.”

“No, he wasn’t too wild about us dating - big brother’s snobbish.” Zen shrugged. “He never had anything but respect for your skills.”

Shirayuki flushed. “Well, thanks. I think.” She busied herself with the pestle.

Zen reached up to the ceiling, and she could hear his shoulders pop. “I’m taking advantage of the rest while I can. i know the medevac went out not too long ago, so it’s a matter of time before I get paged back in there.”

Right on cue, his phone began vibrating and buzzing on his hip. He undid the clasp holding the phone in place and looked at the screen. His face went pale.

Shirayuki felt her blood run cold. For as dramatic as Zen could get off the clock. While on shift, he was as cool and unflappable as they come. For him to have any sort of visceral reaction was out of character and concerning. “What is it?”

“Medevac’s coming in; the OR just got radioed by Torou.”

“Is it bad?”

“Kids having to get to the hospital by helicopter is never good, but his injuries aren’t too bad.” Zen continued in a level tone. “The other injuries, though -”

“What other injuries?”

The look in Zen’s eyes as they met hers made her heart stop. “It’s not good, Shirayuki.” He sighed, and his voice just barely wavered. “It’s Obi.”

“Obi?”

...

The day had started out so normally - with their colleagues in the hospital cafeteria struggling awake to be alert and ready for the upcoming shift. Shirayuki was rubbing her eyes and yawning as Obi was reaching the end of another story.

“And I leapt out of the window, just out of reach of the flames, and made it to the helicopter in the nick of time!”

Shirayuki turned to Torou, who watched Obi’s storytelling with a resigned detachment. “The window?”

“Don’t ask me,” Torou shrugged, her large earrings clinking softly against her shoulders. “He went inside through the window too, even though there was a perfectly serviceable door not far away.”

“You want me to give the fire more oxygen, Torou?” Obi asked. “The window was open and available, and I saw an injured person. It made sense.”

“Whatever, rogue,” Torou snorted, examining her manicure, “you just like living dangerously.”

“How,” Mitsuhide asked, “did you get the patient through the window? I didn’t see a scratch on him when I assessed him.”

Torou rolled her eyes. “Because we carried him out through the door.”

Mitsuhide groaned and turned back to his perfectly portioned, well-balanced breakfast. Kiki raised an eyebrow over her plain bagel and dark roast. “Can’t do anything the easy way, can you?”

“Nope,” Obi replied cheerfully, taking a big bite of his bacon, “that’s why I don’t fly the helicopter.”

“You don’t fly the helicopter,” Torou countered, slight fire in her eyes, “because you’d crash in two seconds, rogue.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “I leave the fancy flying to you - lets me get to jump through windows and be all heroic.”

Zen rolled his eyes. “Just try not to get yourself or our patents killed being a hero.”

Shirayuki snorted into her granola and fruit at Obi’s affronted look. “Boss,” he lay a hand on his heart dramatically, “I would never -”

“Don’t worry, boss,” Torou interjected, “I’m also there to keep him in line.”

...

Shirayuki had managed to smother her impulses towards worrying until she and Obi were in the locker room. “Did you really need to go through the window?”

“It made sense at the time, Miss,” Obi closed the locker and looked at her seriously. “I didn’t know if it would be safe to go through the door, and when I saw someone unconscious, the first thing I had to do was check on them.”

That made sense, but Shirayuki still felt uneasy. It must have shown on her face, because Obi took a step forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m always safe, Miss.”

Shirayuki didn’t say anything, but her eyes strayed to where the pale lines of long-healed scars gleamed past the sleeves of his shirt and above his eye.

“I know my limits.”

Shirayuki sighed. He was good at what he did, despite his bravado there was no doubt about that. But she spent as much time worrying about his stunts as she did being impressed by them. And by his bravery. Maybe she could be brave, too. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped.

Obi looked puzzled. “Miss?”

Do you maybe want to go to dinner with me? She sighed. Not brave enough yet. “Just be safe, please?”

He grinned at her, making her wish she was braver. “Cross my heart,” he promised, “I’ll always come back to you.” He coughed and blushed, turning away just as Shirayuki to hide the own hopeful burning in her cheeks.

...

Shirayuki was a seasoned professional, and had seen her fair share of blood and injury, even as far removed as the pharmacy was from the OR. But it was with trembling legs that she stepped outside after she could no longer force herself to focus on her medicines. She took a deep breath of air, and felt it burn her lungs as she shut her eyes. There had been so much blood...

“Head wounds always bleed a lot,” she muttered, continuing the mantra that had kept her from storming the OR or breaking down crying. “It might not be as bad as it looked.”

“Here’s hoping.”

Shirayuki gasped and turned to face the source of the sound. Torou sat at one of the picnic tables, a lit cigarette smoldering between her fingers. As Shirayuki looked over, she brought it to her lips and took a deep drag on it. “Hey, Red.”

“What happened?” Shirayuki asked, rushing over to where she sat. 

“Kid was hurt.” Deep drag. “Got himself stuck up a tree. Crying, scared.” Another drag. “I know we should have landed, but that damn fool swore to me that he could make it. I believed him too.” She let out a laugh that sounded like she was close to becoming unravelled. Shirayuki noted her hair, normally somehow contained in its chaos, was in disarray. “Two damn fools. Climbed that tree like a monkey, got the kid to laugh and let go of the trunk. The limb could hold one, but not two. Next thing I knew, he was throwing the kid through the open hatch. And then he was gone.”

She sniffed. “He hit a lot of branches on the way down, so that hopefully slowed him down.” She took another drag, and looked to where Shirayuki was staring at her cigarette. “I know, I know, these are going to kill me one of these days.”

Shirayuki didn’t launch until her typical lecture on the addictiveness of nicotine. She simply reached out a hand. “Give me one, please.”

Torou drew back in surprise. “No chance, Red. Obi would never forgive me if I got you hooked on this stuff.”

Shirayuki had to swallow hard. Torou never referred to Obi by his name, just by a myriad of colorful and occasionally bizarre nicknames. And she never cried, but neither woman could ignore the tears building up in her eyes

The redhead reached forward to place a comforting hand on the pilot’s shoulder, and she was so upset she allowed it.

“He’ll be okay, Torou.”

“Yeah,” she sniffed roughly.

Shirayuki bit her lip. He has to be.

...

She settled back in the uncomfortable chair and stared at where Obi was resting in the hospital bed. It hurt to see him lying so still, when he was usually by energetic and full of life. Only the slight rise and fall of his chest, and the reassuring beeps of the monitor showed he was alive.

Boldness and desperation made her reach forward to take his hand in hers, to feel the warmth and pulse beneath her fingers. Please wake up.

His face was mottled with bruises, his head wrapped snugly with bandages, and the stark white of the casts stuck out beneath his hospital gown. She shuddered and began rubbing her thumb against the back of his hand, whether to comfort him or herself she wasn’t sure.

“I wish I had been in there,” she whispered, “I wish I could have been more help.”

It had been all hands on deck to care for the injured. The child fortunately only suffered a wrist fracture and skilled knees from being flung into the medevac. Obi had taken much longer, and the faces of her friends had been grim when they came out.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Zen had said with an expression that looked painfully like the one he wore when passing bad news to grieving loved ones. “It was touch and go for a while. But it’s up to him now.

Why did I have to be a pharmacist? She thought bitterly. I could have been in there. I could have helped instead of just waiting and feeling helpless.

A tear dropped. “I’m so useless.”

“Don’t...say...that.”

Shirayuki jumped at the slight pressure on her palm. “Obi?”

“Don’t ever,” he opened his eyes blearily, “ever say that. You could never be useless.”

She held back from hugging him with an effort. “You’re alive!”

He tried to strike a pose in the bed, but winced and coughed. “Mostly.”

Shirayuki could have said a lot of things right then.

Don’t ever do that again, you idiot.

So did, You nearly scared me to death.

And, I love you.

Instead, she settled for - “Do you want to go out for dinner with me? Once you feel better?”

Obi looked puzzled, and then inordinately pleased. His grip tightened almost painfully, but Shirayuki didn’t care. “Yes.”

[recurring-polynya]

It is time, once again, friends, for me to watch a Bleach Filler Arc and tell you about it. It is time for the Zanpakutou Rebellion.

I wasn’t really sure I wanted to do this one for a number of reasons, but we watched the second episode last night, and it featured Rukia and Renji fighting back-to-back, and sorry fam, we’re doing this, you’re getting the full force of my zanpakutou spirit headcanons whether you want them or not.

Chrome updated and stopped letting me take screenshots a while ago and I am too lazy to figure out another way, so I figured it would be easier to just illustrate these myself. Let’s see how this goes.

Okay, one thing up front. My attitude towards Bleach filler has always been that it’s just for fun, and it’s up to you, the reader/viewer, whether you want to take any of it as canon or not. I, personally, do not accept this story arc as canon, but I honestly don’t care if you do. My main problem is that I don’t think zanpakutou spirits should be humanoid as a rule, although I do headcanon that most zanpakutou can choose how to manifest themselves, and so they may have a humanoid representation, but that’s not necessarily how they usually appear, which also explains why a lot of the shinigami has trouble recognizing their zanpakutou. I also think Muramasa made Hozukimaru put on that skirt, Hozukimaru has the demeanor of a being who does not believe in pants of any variety.

Anyway, as usual, I am ahead of myself. We starts in a cave that looks exactly like the cave from the Bount arc, with some ominous stuff, but I don’t care, I want to talk about Byakuya! Fighting! Renji!  

I think every filler arc has an OP with Byakuya fighting Renji that never actually happens, but right here! First episode! Byakuya fighting Renji while Squad 6 stands around and jeers! Kyouraku and Ukitake are here, too, for some reason! It’s super lit! Byakuya stops paying attention halfway through, but he wins anyway and negs Renji a little, and Renji thanks him for the fight very earnestly and Kyouraku and Ukitake tell Renji he did a good job. This is honestly all I want out of Bleach filler. This is my happy place. Thank you, Zanpakutou Arc for these beautiful Squad 6 hijinks.

As if I weren’t on a big enough high, now we cut to Squad 10, where Matsumoto is lounging on the Crash Couch. Hinamori and Isane come in to hand-deliver an invtation to a vice-captains meeting (Aren’t they just… like… on Wednesdays?) and to complain about their zanpakutou (boy, I wish we got to see Isane’s zanpakutou in this arc!! But no!!) Matsumoto, once again, claims to be training for bankai, mostly by complaining a lot. Hitsugaya grumps around, grumpily.

All of this is so, so perfect, I just need a trip with Iba to the shinigami pub, but instead, everyone gets a mysterious invitation from the Captain Commander to come to Soukyoku Hill at midnight. Really? I would not go.

Regardless, everyone goes. This scene is great because there are too many characters standing around and this is filler meaning the animators phoned it in, so whenever one character is talking, there are at least three people in the background not moving and making a facial expression that does not go with whatever else is going on. For example, Sasakibe shows up and falls over, and his body is just… there. In the middle of everything. Also, it’s mostly captains and vice-captains, but also Ikkaku and Yumichika and Rukia are there. Someone’s like, “Hey, Ikkaku and Yumichika, why are you here?” and they’re like, “Uh, Zaraki and Yachiru are on a business trip” and then someone else is like “Hey, Rukia, why are you here?” and she just does Big Shrug Arms. This is perfect Big Filler Energy. They are here because we want to see their embodied zanpakutou spirits obviously, why must you demand explanations?

Anyway, Muramasa shows up in hall his Hot Topic glory and waves his scary fingernails and cries blood and announces that all the zanpakutou have rebelled. Then follows a hilarious scene where everyone tries to do their releases and it doesn’t work.

Episode ends/next episode begins.

Ichigo is bouncing around Karakura, like he does, when Rukia falls out of a senkaimon in the sky. (They can make them next to the ground, I don’t know why they never do) Sode no Shirayuki then shows up and it takes Ichigo a phenomenally long amount of time to figure out who she is. To be honest, I would love if this arc went in the direction that Shirayuki has it out for Ichigo for taking Rukia’s powers (Zanpakutou Headcanon #2: Zanpakutou spirits have zero perspective outside of their shinigami being the most important thing in the world to them, and Shirayuki, especially brainwashed Shirayuki, would love to take a piece out of Ichigo. Obvs, they would become best friends after Ichigo defeats her, as is his way).

After being suitable ominous, Shirayuki ollies out, and Ichigo takes Rukia back to the Shoten for Orihime-heals and flashbacks.

Rukia recaps back to Soukyoku Hill, except this time, Renji’s the only one trying fruitlessly to do his release. One reading of this, is that it’s just a recap, we don’t need to see all this again, except that then they cut to Byakuya making the Mariah Carey “I don’t know her face” for like, 10 whole seconds, and it’s sublime.

Anyway, everyone starts fighting, and Ikkaku tries to attack Komamura’s zanpakutou, which is such a colossally bad idea. I am always hoping that they will kill off characters during filler arcs and then have them be inexplicably alive later, like they used to do on Teen Titans GO! and I absolutely would have offed Ikkaku at this point if I were in charge. The zanpakutou spirits start absolutely trashing the Seireitei, mostly setting things on fire and causing ice avalanches, and just generally going bananas. I really wish there had been a montage of someone cutting heads off parking meters and spray painting “Fuck the Central 46” on the side of Squad 1, but no.

We then see Rukia and Renji running around, fighting together, and I ascended. This is all I ever want. Bless this arc. They get attacked by Sasakibe’s Gonryuu (I wish there was a running gag of no one knowing who he is, and maybe there is, later, I don’t remember) and Hisagi’s Kazeshini, who is the best zanpakutou in this whole arc, he is an unhinged Nightcrawler with sick abs and I love him. I don’t remember what happened next, because I was so distracted by my OTP doing Battle Couple, but Byakuya shows up, standing on a tower (dude likes standing on a tall thing almost as much as Rukia does), so of course, we have to do “Nii-sama!” “Taichou!” B L E S S.

Then Senbonzakura shows up, also standing on a tall rooftop, dunh dunh DUNH! It’s too bad that the Fullbringer arc sort of ruins this because the whole time, I was like “just nail him in the safety zone,” and honestly, Byakuya having a “safety zone” is… well, it’s kinda lame when you say it out loud. Anyway, Rukia flips out, and Renji’s like, “no, no, I’m sure he’s fine,” and then they get avalanched by Sode no Shirayuki and that’s all Rukia remembers.

As usual, no one is the least bit concerned for Renji, but honestly, if anyone can survive being repeatedly Senbonzakured and Hakurened, it’s that guy.

There’s a part where Rukia is telling this story and Ichigo puts his hand on his chest, and you can see the little wheels in his head turning, like, “where do I keep my zanpakutou? Is it here? What is the ‘heart’?”

Yoruichi shows up to provide more exposition, as is her Filler Arc duty, and they establish that the rebellion seems to have only gone as far as Soul Society.

Ichigo goes home to sleep in his clothes, but the Mod Souls show up to tell him that Rukia went back to Soul Society in the middle of the night. Man, the Mod Souls are in this arc, W H Y ? ? ?

Urahara agrees to send Ichigo to Soul Society why WHY W H Y would you send the guy with the awesomest and most DNGAF zanpakutou to the place where the zanpakutou are rebelling??? At this point, if I hadn’t seen this before, I would definitely assume that Urahara was behind all of this.

Some other points: Why would you not take Chad and Ishida and Orihime (and Yoruichi, for that matter), people with powers who don’t have zanpakutou? Truly, I tell you, Chad does not mind being woken up for this, and Ishida would love the chance to smugly show up and lecture a bunch of powerless shinigami. Also, if I were in Bleach, you better bet my first reaction to everything would be to ask Orihime to try to reject it, no matter how dumb it sounded. It’s worth a try! I would not go anywhere without Orihime. Orihime is the GOAT. Did we all forget the part in the Bount Arc where she killed some friggin’ ninja? I sure didn’t.

Anyway, that’s it for this time, keep tuning for next episode, where Ichigo will surely have regrets.

[rekutopia]

In which for once, Shirayuki didn't regret going to the Wiesn

A part of the Flatmate AU (one, two, in accidental order)

The skies were grey, thick clouds hung low over the bustling area, threatening at any moment to send gallons of water pouring down the people milling around. Judging from their happy, smiling faces, they didn’t seem to care.

Shirayuki gazed around with disinterest. With the sun hiding, the usually garish colour of the stands and tents appeared dull, muted, sad. Even the merry bleeping and honking and ringing around her could not convince her that this was a place to have fun.

She sighed inwardly and pulled her thick woollen cardigan tighter around her body. When she went out of Yuzuri’s flat the sun was still shining. Now, merely twenty minutes later, the said sun was missing, the temperature had dropped and she was left shivering. Her mind drifted longingly to her Trachtenjacke. She wished she had worn it instead.

Regretting her poor clothing decision, Shirayuki hurried to keep up with her friend, who was making a beeline for ‘Schottenhamel’ – the liveliest tent within the Wiesn. Yuzuri had on a new Dirndl she had bought a couple of days ago. It was blood-red with black rose pattern – much too short for Shirayuki’s taste – which she combined with a black satin apron. Her chosen blouse was also black, short-sleeved and lacey, which she pulled down to show off her immaculate ivory shoulders.

No matter how often Shirayuki begged Yuzuri not to buy cheap, touristy – and not to mention slutty – Dirndl anymore, Yuzuri always waved off her protests with a laugh.

It may be fine for you to wear the same Dirndl every time, Yuki, but for me, it’s simply boring! And it’s not like I can afford to buy one so pretty like yours every year! So, let me have my fun, okay? Just pretend that I’m a tourist!

When they entered the tent Shirayuki wished she could just grab Yuzuri and drag her back outside, all the way to the subway station and back to her flat. 

The tent was full to bursting. There was live music playing, and although people had not started jumping on the benches some drunken pairs were already dancing on every available free space. Even more people were standing about on the aisles, talking and drinking. The security was trying to shoo them, but mostly to no avail. Balancing giant trays of dishes and huge mugs of beverages, the waiters and waitresses manoeuvred carefully to and fro. 

Shirayuki stood frozen at the entrance. Her head was starting to spin. “There’s no way we could find a seat here, Yuzuri! Let’s just go!” She had to shout so her friend could hear her over the blaring brass band.

“Don’t worry, Yuki! I have a plan! Just follow me!” Yuzuri shouted back. Then she grabbed Shirayuki’s wrist and the next thing she knew she was plunged into the madness. As she worked her way through the crowd, Shirayuki tried to make herself smaller and keep a safe distance from other visitors’ feet and elbows. She was focusing so hard not to get bruised that she almost ran into Yuzuri’s back when she stopped abruptly.

“Why, hello there, lads! I’m so sorry to bother you! But would you mind squeezing together for two small girls? We won’t take up much space!”

It’s amazing how Yuzuri could even shout flirtily. 

Twirling the end of her braids and showing off her shoulder, she winked confidently at the three guys sitting at the edge of a table like she didn’t expect any answers other than yes. The guys were all wearing some sort of Lederhose (definitely not the real thing, Shirayuki noticed) paired with checked shirts.

At first, Shirayuki thought they were foreign tourists who didn’t understand them since they were all just staring at them with half-opened mouths, speechless. She was about to nudge Yuzuri and tell her to repeat her question in English when the dark-haired one shouted back with a large grin, “Sure ladies! I think we could arrange that!”

Turning to his company, the guy explained their request in English and the other two nodded and smiled at the girls. After a quick shuffle, all three guys managed to squeeze together on one side of the table and the girls could sit down opposite them.

It was only friendly to do some small talk with other people sharing your table at the Wiesn, even if they were complete strangers. Even if you don’t share the same language. Alcohol makes everything possible. And so they all chatted a little while Yuzuri and Shirayuki waited for their beverages. 

Shirayuki played nervously with the hem of her apron. It’s been a while since she last had a conversation in English. The last time was probably at the university and that was like, five years ago. The guys were probably too drunk anyway to check on her grammar but Shirayuki didn’t want to risk saying something embarrassing, so she let Yuzuri do most of the talking.

Turned out their seat givers were all Americans. The dark-haired one now sitting in the middle has a Japanese mother, though. Figured. He had a typical handsome hafu face. As a matter of fact, all three guys were handsome in one way or another, but Shirayuki found herself helplessly drawn to the half-Japanese guy.

His eyes were astonishingly golden. Initially, Shirayuki thought the light was playing tricks on her but after glancing at him again and again and again she was pretty sure of their colour. She wondered whether it was caused by some kind of genetic mutation but she was smart enough not to let her curiosity out in the open.

Apparently, this guy was the local person and his friends were currently visiting him just for the beer festival. Shirayuki thought they must have loved beer that much. They said they each have had three Maß since lunchtime and they surely looked that way.  Their local guide still seemed fairly sober, though. Unlike them, there was still no sign of redness on his face, no stuttering on his words. After 3 litres it’s quite impressive. 

He was also rather quiet compared to his two friends, Shirayuki noticed. He simply listened attentively and nodded from time to time.

Maybe he’s The Silent Drunk type.

---

When their drinks arrived, at last Shirayuki had an excuse to rest her gaze somewhere other than on the golden eyes. She blushed when the guys teased her as they found out that it was not beer she was drinking but apple fizz. Yuzuri, the traitor, also sided with them.

“Oh, come on, Yuki! You’ve been miserable the whole day! The least you could do is drowning your sorrow in alcohol! Here, have a sip of mine!”

Shirayuki made a face at Yuzuri. She did not want to be reminded of her pitiful situation. “I don’t like beer! And it’s not like I could drink my problem away!” She took a sip out of her own giant mug. Then she sighed out loud and propped her chin on her palm.

The guy in the pink checked shirt seemed to notice the sudden change in Shirayuki’s mood and decided to butt in. “Hey, is everything alright with your friend?” he shouted at Yuzuri. She blinked a couple of times before realising that she and Shirayuki were no longer talking in English.

“Don’t worry, she’s fine,” she said, switching back to English. “It’s just that her landlord has kicked her out of her flat and now she’s homeless.”

Shirayuki glared daggers at Yuzuri. How embarrassing! She didn’t want them to think she had been spending her nights on the streets! She tried desperately to save her dignity. “No, no! I’m not homeless! I’m currently staying at her place!” she said, pointing at Yuzuri, who chortled.

“That is called homeless, girl! And don’t get me wrong, I love you and all your plants, but you’ll need to find a new place, soon.”

As usual, when they had this conversation, Shirayuki fell into her steaming discourse about how hard it was to find a flat in this city, how high the rental fees were and how although she had been trying, she didn’t think she could ever find another flat, let alone a decent one, which she could pay with her pathetic pharmacist’s salary, in the next ten years.

Unexpectedly, the guy in the pink shirt butted in again. “How about sharing a flat? Obi here has a room you could use,” he jerked his chin towards his friend.

“Yea,” the other guy in the blue shirt added, “you’ll have to wait until we’re gone but then our room could be yours, right, Obi?”

The mesmerising golden eyes fell on Shirayuki’s, accompanied by a lazy smile. “If that’s what the lady wishes.”

Shirayuki’s mouth fell open and she stared at him dumbly. This can’t be real. Beside her, she heard Yuzuri gasp loudly. Whether out of excitement or out of bafflement she couldn’t tell.

The guy – Obi? – seemed to notice her discomfort and added, “I apologise for my friends, Miss, they seem to take the matter rashly into their own hands. But actually, I do have a vacant room in my flat and I am currently looking for a flatmate. The room is also listed on the web, so if you’re searching for one, we would probably meet anyway, one way or another.”

Yuzuri turned to Shirayuki and grabbed her arm, shaking her. “This is even better, Yuki! We’ve been talking with him the whole time! So there’s no need to do the usual annoying flatmate interview, right?!” She turned and glared intimidatingly at Obi. “Right??”

Shirayuki mentally facepalmed. The emphasis was on “we”. Yuzuri had been talking with Obi the whole time. And to be more precise, it was less with him than with the other two guys. Obi and Shirayuki were more on the listening end here. “U-um, I-I–”

On the other side of the table, Obi chuckled and waved his hand appeasingly in front of his face. “If it would make you feel better we could still do the interview, Miss. But trust me, I don’t bite.” His lopsided smile was the complete opposite of his words. “And I’d very much like to get to know you better. We could also do a trial period if you want – if it doesn’t work between us, you could always go back to your friend’s place.”

Wording!

Yuzuri grinned and shook her head, “Oh, I’m sure you two will get along very well! You like plants, don’t you, Obi?”

Obi’s smile went wider. “I love them. I just somehow always end up killing them.”

“Perfect! I’ll help you pack as soon as we’re back, Yuki!”

Shirayuki wished the ground would open up and swallow her. This was not the progress of the day she had imagined. On the other hand, she had been living at Yuzuri’s place for two and a half weeks now and she was feeling guiltier every day. Maybe this guy’s offer was not so bad after all. She just wished he wouldn’t turn out to be a serial killer or a psychopath or both.

---

The tent was rather uncomfortably warm now. Shirayuki didn’t think even more people could fit in it, but somehow they did. Her cardigan was tucked in the joints under the table, abandoned, and she wished she had her short-sleeved blouse on. Today was a disastrous day when it comes to her fashion choice. Shirayuki tried to ignore the heat and drew her attention back to the conversation.

“By the way!” slurred Pink Shirt after gulping down the last drop of his fourth Maß. “You girls look like you could take great pictures!”

Blue Shirt slurred along with his friend. “Oh, yea! You-you must help us! Did you know that waitresses here took terrible, terrible pictures?! Here, look!” He shoved his iPhone into Yuzuri’s hand. 

Shirayuki took a peek at the picture over Yuzuri’s shoulder. There were the guys cheering, bumping their 1-litre mugs together, their beer sloshing down to the table. You could see each of their grinning faces, still looking pretty much sober. Nothing was obscured, nothing abnormally cropped. She couldn’t see anything wrong with the picture.

“We don’t look sexy at all, right? Right?! Please, be honest with us!” shouted Blue Shirt. “And look at our Ooobi! Waaay too much at the back! The mug is bigger than his head! Not. Sexy. AT ALL!” he added, jabbing his forefinger with every word on the screen.

Yuzuri scrunched her nose. “Isn’t it just because of the perspective? I think you guys look perfectly–”

“NOOOO!!” Pink Shirt bumped his head on the table. “That picture is unacceptable! We need more SEXY!! Take another one for us, please?”

Blue Shirt clasped his hand together and batted his eyelashes at Yuzuri. “Pretty please?”

(Later that night at her place Yuzuri told Shirayuki that by then she was one hundred per cent sure their newfound friends were dead drunk and, to her utmost disappointment, gay. But she said it was good for Shirayuki because that means her future flatmate is gay. It’s a huge bummer – since he’s hot – but hey, at least it’s safe.)

For now, she just played along and told them to get ready for a shot.

“Sweet!” Pink Shirt clapped his hands gleefully. “Obi! Ooobi! Let’s do our usual pose!”

“Hmm?” Obi was distracted by his phone. When he looked up, Shirayuki took note of his slightly mussed hair and his sleepy, dazed look. His shirt was opened to the second button, revealing more of his tanned skin. Oh, my. When did that happen?

“Our usual pose, okay?” Blue Shirt slung an arm over Obi’s shoulder and gestured to Pink shirt to do the same. Obi was now trapped between his friends. To Yuzuri Blue Shirt said, “We do one-two-three, then snap, got it?”

Yuzuri nodded and readied the iPhone.

“One. Two. Three!”

With that, Blue Shirt and Pink Shirt kissed Obi’s cheeks. Obi himself pursed his lips and winked to the camera, hand raised in a peace sign.

It was the second time that Shirayuki’s jaw dropped open that evening. Yuzuri squealed and instantly took several shots of the pose.

“You guys are CRAZY!” 

Pink Shirt grinned mischievously at her. “Wait! Wait! We need our Ultimate Pose! Ready guys?! One! Two!! Three!!!”

Instead of snapping Yuzuri almost dropped the phone and started to laugh hysterically. Shirayuki covered her mouth with both her hands.

Oh. My. God.

Blue Shirt was nuzzling his nose into Obi’s ear, his right hand underneath Obi’s chin. On the other side, Pink Shirt was taking Obi’s earlobe between his teeth, pulling it a little. And Obi. Obi was looking sensually at the camera, slowly licking his lips, a finger tugging on the V of his shirt, pulling it further down…

Shirayuki thought she might faint. She could feel all her blood rushing up to her face, now certainly as red as Yuzuri’s Dirndl. 

Okay. Maybe he’s The Flirty Drunk type?!

When Yuzuri’s hysteria had at last ebbed away, she carefully wiped the tears from her eyes and announced that they were obligated to take a group picture next. The guys shouted their approval and struggled to get up, almost tumbling over each other. Shirayuki followed timidly, crossing her fingers that they wouldn’t ask her to do any of their famous poses.

---

[Obi, 00:34] back home safely miss? *grin emoji*

[Me, 00:34] Yeap, thank you for asking!

[Obi, 00:38] thank you for the lovely evening miss *smile emoji* [Obi, 00:38] also from my friends *beer emoji* [Obi, 00:39] they’d write to you personally but they’ve passed out *sleep emoji* [Obi, 00:39] give our best regards to yuzuri *wink emoji* [Obi, 00:39] sleep tight miss *kiss emoji*

[Me, 00:39] Good night, Obi!

[Obi, 01:52] note2self [Obi, 01:52] room [Obi, 01:52] interview [Obi, 01:52] trial

**********

Late September. It was that time of the year again. Shirayuki smiled fondly as she swiped on her phone, looking at the pictures from three years ago. They were hilarious.

There was one with all five of them together, in different states of drunkenness except for herself. Pink Shirt and Blue Shirt were leaning heavily on each other. Shirayuki felt sorry for them – she couldn’t remember their names even if she tried. Huddled together beside them were Obi, Yuzuri and herself. She remembered it was only when they managed to stand up did she realise how tall Obi actually was.

There was one with Obi and Yuzuri in their coincidentally matching red attire. Yuzuri wanted Obi to lift her in his arms but he politely declined, saying he was already too drunk and didn’t want to risk dropping her.

And then there was one with Obi and Shirayuki herself, standing side by side, his hand resting lightly on her hip. There were two shots of this, and in one of them for some reason, Obi was glancing down at her. 

Shirayuki caressed the picture lovingly. In there, she was wearing the same outfit now hanging outside of her bedroom door, fresh from the dry cleaner’s. The moss-green Dirndl with its fuchsia apron had become her favourite, as well as her long-sleeved white blouse. Ever since that fateful day, she almost always wore that outfit when she went to the Wiesn and to other folk festivals, especially when she went together with Obi.

Obi, on the other hand, had finally owned an appropriate Tracht, thanks to Shirayuki. No more touristy red checked shirt. The Tracht was his birthday present last year. Though it had cost her a small fortune it was so worth it. Proper Lederhose, proper white shirt, proper velvet vest in moss-green. It’s not that Shirayuki wanted them to be matchy-matchy, but the colour just suited Obi best. Despite his exotic look, in Shirayuki’s opinion Obi could pull the outfit off very well. Even better than Zen, if she was completely honest.

Another swipe on her phone and her heart leapt into her throat. There was that picture again. The sexy picture. The Ultimate Pose. Blue Shirt was kind enough to share the pictures with the girls. Shirayuki couldn’t stop herself staring at Obi’s eyes, and lips, and tongue, and–

“Nee, nee, how do I look?”

Startled, Shirayuki hid her phone behind her back in reflex. “Oh, uh,” she looked up and down at her flatmate, who just burst into the room. “Is-is there anything different?”

Obi pouted. “Really? You don’t notice anything?” Shirayuki shook her head.

“Mina from the reception scolded me for my chapped lips and gave me her lip gloss.” Then Obi continued talking while pursing his lips. “Dun’t ui luk kissuble luik this? ”

Shirayuki gave him a flat look. “Have you seen yourself in the mirror?”

Obviously, this was not the reaction Obi was hoping for. His act dropped. “Uh, why?”

“Would you want to kiss yourself like that? You look like you’ve just had greasy fried chicken for lunch! That kind of thing only makes your lips even drier!”

Shirayuki got up from where she was perched on the sofa and stormed to her room, leaving her flatmate dumbfounded in the middle of the living room. A few seconds later she came back and without warning attacked Obi’s lips rather aggressively with a tissue. Then she thrust a small thing into his hand.

“Use this if your lips are chapped,” she grumbled.

Obi stared at the alien thing in his hand. It said it was an organic calendula lip balm. He blinked once, twice, “O...kay?” and started applying it onto his lips. Shirayuki folded her hands in front of her chest, pointedly not looking at him.

“Is this better?”

Shirayuki wanted to keep frowning but couldn’t help the little smile blooming on the corner of her mouth. Obi’s lips now looked soft, moist, and most positively, heartbreakingly kissable.

“Much better.”

——————–

Notes:

Alcohol does make everything possible, especially huge hangovers.

It’s a pain in the ass to find a flat in Munich, and interviews as well as trial period for shared apartment are not so uncommon.

Shirayuki’s Dirndl (but in moos-green + fuchsia apron + long-sleeved lacey white blouse).

Obi’s Trachten.

Yuzuri’s Dirndl (more or less).

Lederhose with checked shirt (It’s also an official Tracht, but what Obi and the gang wore just looked touristy).

Just give me a nudge if there are any German words that need to be translated.

[k-itsmaywriting]

Any chapter from Vessels?

(oh god this got so long and it took me so long but I WANTED TO INCLUDE EVERYTHING)

VESSELS

So I’ve chosen chapter 4 for this because it comes straight after Shirayuki’s big shock, contains Obi’s turning point, and it ends with a Big Idea that sets the trajectory for the rest of the story.

Overall, this story happened because I got the Android slot on Bingo 2018! :D The first thing that I thought up of was “what if Shirayuki is an android and Obi is her creator” and then I also thought “BUT WHAT IF OBI IS ALSO ANDROID BUT HE DOESN’T /KNOW/”. And the rest kind of snowballed to include post-apocalyptic Wistal and the Outside to explain how that might happen in the first place. But because of the nature of that setting, the story overall became A LOT more political and philosophical than I originally planned on but uh HERE WE ARE. Since Wistal’s government is fictional, I guess I had the freedom to draw inspiration from the actions of multiple governments as well as anxieties about what how they might respond to disaster (or at least an extreme example) and what that might mean for society in the future.

Also the title is like…android bodies are vessels for their brains and designed purposes. Bodies in general are vessels. There are also blood vessels, which I contrast with injuries that show wiring instead of them. Vessels, man.

The chapter circles back to Obi’s POV for the first time since chapter 1 and in pretty much two minutes he, with very little context, has to decide whether to give up himself and Shirayuki and continue life as they did before, or live with the truth and run. He runs because he’s realised that Garrack, someone he knows hates this whole gig, was involved in turning him into an android too. He doesn’t want to give himself or Shirayuki up partly because she’s betrayed him (will get to the other parts of it soon), and he doesn’t trust her anymore.

Then it’s the flashback when Obi and Garrack met for the first time, and is where he learns that Garrack was definitely not as in this for the money as he was. At that point, he was curious at best, but he also knew there was /someone/ who knew the Wisterias aren’t up to much good like everyone else thought they were. He shared that sentiment, so there was just a tinge of camaraderie there. Which hits another nail into the betrayal. The flashback also sort of hints that Garrack had changed since then to become someone who was willing to sacrifice Shirayuki and Obi so she could keep being with Ryuu, still knowing how it’s impacting everyone else. And I wanted that to reflect the whole “save yourself and those close to you, don’t care about anyone else” thing that happens sometimes in very stressful circumstances.

As for the Wisterias, it’s kind of an explanation to what they actually do. So, basically Zen and Izana are co-directors of Starlight, an AI development company, and Izana also joined Kain’s political party around when Zen turned 20 (which was like…a year before he hired Obi and so between 5-6 years before the present). I also wanted to hint that like, ISN’T IT IFFY THAT THE PM HAS FAMILIAL CONNECTIONS TO THE PPL IN CHARGE OF MAKING ALL THE TECHNOLOGY THAT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO REALLY UP THE SURVEILLANCE EVERYWHERE AND STORE CRAZY AMOUNTS OF DATA WHILE ALSO LITERALLY TURNING PEOPLE INTO ROBOTS. TO CONTROL THEM. ESPECIALLY WHEN SAID PM IS A DICK WHO USES PPL’S LIVES AS LEVERAGE SO HE CAN HAVE CONTROL OVER RESEARCH IN OTHER AREAS OF SCIENCE IE CONSERVATION AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE IE THE THING THAT’S GONNA BASICALLY SAVE EVERYONE GIVEN FOOD SCARCITY IS A MENTIONED ISSUE IN CH2 :)))

The next scene is when Obi wakes up Shirayuki and she’s grappling with the fact her entire life has been fabricated. Obi is able to quickly say that she’s a person with thoughts, feelings and actions like everyone else because this is what he already thought of her in chapter 1. He cares about her and loves her dearly as a best friend, and as an honest person who’s trying to do good in the world. He believes she’s good in every way that he is bad. And he’s gutted that he’s been lying to her while she was risking everything to save him. And that’s also why he ran away with her, even though it meant she would know the truth and possibly hate him for it. But he knows she’s the kind of person who would rather the hard reality than the comfortable lie.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THIS PARTICULAR PART:

“I was in love with you and this entire time you’ve been lying to me?!” Shirayuki screams.Obi freezes, eyes wide as he stares at her. She…she what?

“That’s why Zen and Dr Gazelt looked at me like…like I was just pitiful.” She grits her teeth as tears begin to fall. “Don’t pretend you don’t know!”

“You weren’t supposed to love me,”

Shirayuki at this point believes everything is fabricated, right down to her feelings for Obi. But Obi saying she wasn’t supposed to love him means that those feelings developed while they were living together. I was actually super cautious about this because I was kind of afraid it’d be like, SHE’S TRANSCENDED TO HUMANITY BECAUSE SHE CAN FALL IN LOVE, but it’s more about her being a person because she can change and develop feelings without an instruction to. Which also applies to her running from Zen, saving Obi, and later deciding to escape Wistal. None of those things are good for the Wisterias, but because she’s designed to be able to think for herself and to value justice and Doing Good, she’s able to act in ways that they do not expect. In doing so, she’s able to reclaim her autonomy, so to speak.

But the same goes for Obi as well. The reason why Zen and Garrack look at Shirayuki Like That every time she talks about Obi being her best friend is because the Obi that is only in it for the money and doesn’t care about anything else is a lot more known to them than the best friend Obi. They don’t have much reason to believe Obi would risk it all for Shirayuki considering he’s the one who made her in the first place and has been lying to her the whole time (not to mention that Garrack also just feels sorry for her because of that). Yet he too runs away and saves her, just like she did for him. And tells her that who he is - what made him smile and laugh, his happiness when they were together - was not a lie even though his past was. To her, that’s what tells her that he really does care about her and that he’s changed since he first came to Wistal. And again, that is without instruction. Those feelings and the decisions that came out of them are also therefore his own.

He tells her his actual past too, so FINALLY, ANOTHER GLIMPSE OF THE OUTSIDE AND THIS TIME I WROTE ABOUT MORE PEOPLE. The idea that people left the wastelands for the mountains just to live a peaceful life was very much inspired by how so many young people’s dreams these days is like…to live in a cottage among nature and bake pies, or another form of very peaceful mundanity. I felt it would be the same in a world that feels so hopeless like in Vessels, where people had to sort of choose to either follow Kain’s father and his crew to live in the same society that failed them before the apocalypse, or stay in the wasteland and try to survive there. The rumours of regrowth were HUGE symbols of hope, including for Obi’s family, for those who just wanted that peaceful life.

Obi, unfortunately, is the only one who makes it. And he’s so heartbroken even when he’s cared for by Mukaze and his parents that he runs away back to the wasteland to become a scavenger. I didn’t really get to go very deep into it, but the wasteland is pretty much Trade Central. There’s no clear power structure, but everyone’s still trying to get ahead somehow. So it’s not Wistal, but it’s also not the total opposite of it either.And Obi spends his teen years/early adulthood in that environment, so it’s very much involved in the kind of person he became by the time he met Zen.

Mukaze and his family taking care of this child Obi who literally fell into their garden out of nowhere is kind of like…a communal care humans give each other that is not widely seen in other settings of this story but one that is really important? Like, humans working together and building each other up to survive after the apocalypse. So when Shirayuki shows that kind of care by saving him and Obi decides he wants to return it, Mukaze’s place is an image of something that’s within their reach when Shirayuki voices her idea to escape Wistal and All This Shit.

[akaivampire]

Okay so i’ve noticed that Obi is doing his best to hide his past as a criminal in the underground, including his amazing skills but still doesn’t sell himself short.

(early 30s) 

he clearly missed, but i believe it was on purpose, considering that he pinned a man to the ground by throwing knives at him also:

(chapter 3)

he shot an arrow a few inches away from Shirayuki’s face, knowing that she was also running up the stairs makes it harder for him, but Obi doesn’t hesitate to shoot and scare her. there’s no way he would have missed in the competition with Kiki.

When Haruka hired Obi he knew what he was buying, but for team Zen Obi is selling himself as a highly skilled bodyguard, he doesn’t hide the fact that he’s strong and skilled but at the same time he wants to fit in with them without them wondering what he possibly did with such skills, knowing that people might pay high prices for someone like Obi to do the dirty job, so Obi doesn’t want to be put into the killer’s category.

Another reason for me to believe he lost on purpose is that this happens right after meeting Torou for the first time, after team Zen got a glance on his past, so he tries to fit in, showing that no way he is skilled enough to be a part of that world that they all fear.

But here’s the thing, Obi mainly wants to hide it from Shirayuki, he knows all of them are a bit familiar with that world and his act can only hold up so much against them, but he’s afraid Shirayuki would never accept him if she knew.

And since i’m still not over their reunion in chapter 88, i’m going to link this to obi’s behavior when Shirayuki ran to him.

(chapter 80)

here Obi barely gives the slightest information about him working in the underground, but he talks about the details of how he got the information like he was actually there. So after the long period of living peacefully in the castle, this part of Obi became more like a bad dream, like it never actually happened to him, but this reminded him of his sins and how he and Shirayuki stand on different ends of the moral scale.

Also, i believe Obi might still have professional connections with people from the underground. That might turn back on him.

So whether Obi believed Shirayuki knew that he was in the underground or not, Obi almost lost all of the progress he had with Shirayuki and Ryuu and Team Zen.

To me here Obi’s face is saying “silly me” for thinking what he thought of Shirayuki hating him, but also that she actually still wants to be close to him. and that close up to Shirayuki’s face shows surprise and realization, she knows something happened. though he does sort of come clean when she gives him back the stone necklace, saying that he’s been through fights that could either take life or his opponent’s life. but that’s for a different time.

[sabraeal]

Happiness Is Just Around the Corner

The Wide Florida Bay | Previous

Written for @bubblesthemonsterartist for her birthday! This was...not the fic I thought I’d be writing, but this is where this subplot needed to start >:3c

There is an improbable amount of fireworks on the lawn.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure none of it’s legal,” Kiki assures him, taking a long drag of her Sam’s Summer. “Shiira took his ducklings up to New Hampshire yesterday, and they came back with two coolers worth of...something.”

Zen coughs on the dregs of his Magic Hat. “What? Should we even--?”

Kiki’s flat stare is more effective than a hand over his mouth. “You really think we’ll get in trouble.”

His gut instinct is yes, because there’s not a day in his life where his brother hasn’t caught him with his pants down just to prove a point. It would be just like him to send a cruiser around so that he could experience the heart-stopping terror of being on the other side of a two-way mirror. Sure, Haruka would be down at the station before he could even ask for a phone call, and all of this would slide off his permanent record like water off a duck’s back, but still-- trouble.

But he doesn’t say that. He takes a deep breath, thinks. It’s quiet here on campus. They’re rowdy, sure, but it’s just the frat there, not some rager with Omega Delta Nu. The campus cops are probably bored out of their skulls, but they’re not going to nail the honor’s frat for a light show.

“No,” he admits, begrudgingly. “Not unless they light something on fire.”

Her mouth twitches, following the spark in her eyes. “Well, there’s a non-zero chance of that.”

Ugh, of course Kiki would be excited by the prospect. “Well, as long as we don’t get--” Obi crosses the lawn, aviators looming over a wide smile, and hovers just at Shiira’s shoulder, perusing the goods. “UH.”

“Fuck.” Kiki hops off the porch, straight down into the landscaping. “I’ll handle this.”

Zen settles back against the porch swing and sighs, taking another swig of Magic Hat. “Yeah, please do.”

Kiki’s already halfway across the lawn by the time he’s finished talking, so quick that when Obi picks up a particularly patriotic package of pyrotechnics, she’s there to snatch it out of his hands. Even from here, Zen can see the jut of his pout, hear the faint whine of Ms Kiki on the air.

Mitsuhide’s lighting up the grill, surrounded by a crowd convinced cooking works by consensus. He takes a handkerchief out of his back pocket-- stars and stripes, stuffed there early this morning as Obi solemnly announced, you are America’s hat today, big guy-- and wipes the sweat beading on his forehead. Zen can’t tell whether it’s from the heat or from the effort needed to withstand six guys offering advice on proper grilling technique.

A cool breeze tumbles through the porch, carrying the muted voices of a dozen conversations. Zen closes his eyes, letting the smell of smoke and the heat of the day wash over him, the swing rocking gently on its chains.

It’s nice, having all this. People he can anticipate. People he can depend on. Friends. The real kind, not just kids whose parents went to the same prep school as his.

This isn’t where he’s supposed to be.

A year ago that would have sent him scrambling-- last minute tickets and crumpled up itineraries paired with the crushing guilt of never being enough. But now--

Now he knows this is where he wants to be. And there’s only one person to thank for that.

“Hey.” His eyes slit open, and there she is, brilliant smile and bright hair, peeping around the post. “Enjoying yourself?”

Zen drops his legs from the rail to make room. “I am now.”

Shirayuki’s mouth slants, playfully wry, and his heart strains against his sternum like a dog testing its leash. “It looked like you were before too.”

“Well, sure.” He wishes he had Obi’s obnoxious aviators right now, if only so she couldn’t see the eager way he watches her as she comes up, tucking herself neatly onto the opposite end of the swing. “But even more now that you’re around.”

Freckles disappear behind a bloom of pink, settling in on either cheek.  “Ah, w-well,” she stammers, staring at her bare toes. “It’s good to know you don’t regret staying here.”

“Instead of being with my family?” He laughs, incredulous, draping his arm over the back of the swing. His fingers just barely brush the freckles on her shoulder. “More like I’m thankful for the excuse.”

Her smile dims. “Oh, um, right. You and Izana...”

She hesitates. There’s a wealth of ways she could end that thought, but instead she says, “It must be nice. I mean, the place your family has, not...”

The fraught relationship you have with your brother. She doesn’t have to say it for him to know exactly what she means.

“It’s all right, I guess,” he allows, wishing she’d sit closer, that she’d give him a good reason to put his arm around her for real, and not just let him awkwardly hang here. “I mean, it’s just a house. The beach is nice though. Private, of course.”

That doesn’t stop his mother from inviting the paparazzi if she thinks it will make a good photo op. Last year he’d made the cover of the Inquirer, face scrunched and unattractive as Izana has splashed sea water in his face, with the words Final Frolic for World’s Most Eligible Bachelor? There had been a two-page spread inside, dedicated entirely to the relationship rumors Izana had accrued since Valentine’s Day.

Well, he didn’t have to worry about that this year. No paparazzo was going to stake out a college frat to take pictures of an illegal fireworks show. Now Haki could deal with having her picture slapped across the tabloids because mother thought candid shots made for better family photos.

“Ah, right...” Her laugh stutters out, awkward and endearing. “That sounds...good?”

Shirayuki’s still next to him, the heat from her skin humid against his fingertips, but she’s never felt so far. He grunts, frustrated, shifting closer.

“There’s an old carousel on the island too,” he offers, haltingly. He’s not sure why the impulse takes him to tell her; why he thinks she, specifically, might like it, save that when he looks at her it’s the same as when he saw those hand-carved horses the first time, well-loved and shining beneath antique lights.

“Oh!” She blinks. “My grandparents took me to one of those, once! Back when we visited...”

Her mouth works silently for a moment before pulling tight, the bittersweet twist making her smile more grimace than grin.

“Well, you’d love this one,” he assures her, sweat pricking at his palms. “It’s the oldest in the US. But it’s still really nice! I’ll take you next--”

His words slam to a stop, running headlong into the barrier of his teeth. She’s staring at him now, eyes wide and mouth parted, and-- and what can he say? I’ll take you next year, when my brother suddenly approves of you.

Yeah, he knows better than to hold his breath for that.

“I’m glad, anyway.” She folds her legs up on the swing, one arm hooked around her knees, and tilts her head back. “It’s nice for all of us to be here, together.”

Her eyes are closed, face serene in the evening light, like she could just sit here forever, breathing into the twilight. His heart flutters just looking at her, at the way she relaxes next to him, content with the slow rock he eases them into. No one can just be the way Shirayuki can.

“It is,” he agrees softly, because anything but a whisper might break this moment, might let the rest of the world in. “It’s going to be weird when you...”

He tries to stop himself, but her eyes fly open before he can. Of course, the one moment he’s gotten her to himself, and he’s gone and ruined it by bringing that up.

“I just mean...” He laughs, tipping his head back on scroll of wood behind his head. “It’s going to be strange when you and Obi are gone next year.”

A month from now, really. It looms over him, a ticking clock that chimes every evening, telling him he’s wasted another day if it wasn’t with her.

“Oh!” Her head snaps upright, cheeks flushed. “I-- I guess. I didn’t really think...” She bites her lip; he wants to kiss it. “Mitsuhide won’t be here either!”

He blinks. It’s true, but he’s never actually thought about that. Mitsuhide has always been in the house, it seems, never the president but a calming influence just to the side of him, and now--

Well, it’ll just be him and Kiki next year. And the rest of the frat, of course, plus all the new pledges.

Still, the future is distinctly more lonely than he’d like.

“He’ll be close, though,” he says, if only to hear the words out loud. “Harvard is a bit of a drive from here, but now that him and Kiki are, you know...”

Banging. That’s what he means to say at least, what he would say if he didn’t, last minute, remember who he was talking to. The last thing he needs is to get a scolding about taking feelings seriously and supporting their friends. Especially when he’d rather be talking about another relationship entirely.

“...Together,” he settles on, and she hums, approving.

“I’m glad that happened.” She rests her chin on her knees, surveying the lawn. Kiki’s abandoned the fireworks committee, instead shooing away the flock of fraters that have congregated around the grill. “They’re good for each other.”

“Made for each other,” he agrees, tickling her shoulder with his thumb. She squirms, a giggle bubbling out from her lips. “Just like...”

Us. He wants to say it, so bad it’s almost an ache, but-- it’s not fair. Not when they’re not really anything, when they can’t be anything, because--

I don’t know if being with me like…like that will be…good for you. I don’t think either of us are ready for that sort of…of attention.

-- Because everything about his life makes things complicated.

“I’m...happy for them,” he says, because he is, because there’s no two people in the world who deserve every bit of goodness they can wring from life more than they do. Even if that leaves him on the outside, again.

“Me too.” Shirayuki smiles, soft and fond, and it’s impossible to believe it’s barely been ten months since he met her, that she isn’t someone he’s known his whole life, not when she just slips seamlessly into every part.

Her hand reaches out, taking his, cool in the evening breeze. “I’ll miss you too.”

His breath catches in his chest, painful. Maybe she feels so familiar because he’s been waiting for her his whole life, too.

“I-I mean, all of you, of course,” she stammers, pink flooding her cheeks, and oh, he wishes he could just lean over now and kiss her, like he was some normal boy with a normal crush and normal expectations of privacy. “I’m excited to go, but...it won’t be the same without everyone.”

Good. He smothers a grin. This whole trip is a great opportunity for her, he knows that-- how could he not, when Izana keeps reminding him about the connections she’ll make-- but--

Two years seems excessive. After a year, she’ll realize that too. And then she can come back for senior year, live in the frat, graduate, spend the summer with him in the Vineyard, and--

“We should do something together,” she says, fingers knotted around his, shoulders rounded shyly.

“Yes!” he blurts out, squeezing way too hard. “Definitely”

“All of us!”

“Ah...” That wasn’t what he thought she was going for. “I mean...”

“One last big adventure.” Her lips spread giddily. “Just the five of us. For now, of course,” she adds, “we’ll be coming back.”

“Oh, ah...” He blinks, staring down at where her hands are tangled with his. She has little over a month left here, and what he really wants is to be doing this, this whole...being together thing, but--

But it’s not like this is going anywhere either. Two years is a long time, but they’ll be sitting here just like this when she gets back. Well-- with more kissing, he hopes.

He can wait. He’s not the only one who will miss her. “Yeah, that sounds...nice.”

His eyes flick up, catching her just as she sinks teeth into the soft pillow of her lip, leaving a dent that begs to be soothed. Zen swallows, hard.

Well, a friendly getaway will have its opportunities for some, ah, private time too. He just has to create them.

“I was thinking,” he starts, lifting a hand to ruffle his hair, trying to be, you know, casual. “What if we--?”

“Hey.” Kiki perches herself across from them with a deftness that says she’s been hanging out with Obi too much. “Burgers are off the grill.”

“Great,” Zen grits out with a glare. “We’ll be down in a minute.”

Kiki hums, brow raising dubiously. “What are you two up to out here?”

“Nothing.” He glowers at her, wishing she would just take a hint. “Just talking.”

“Ah.” Her mouth twitches. “I see.”

“We were just talking about taking a trip!” Shirayuki blurts out excitedly, red-faced and glowing. “All of us! One last adventure before me and Obi go to Lyrias.”

Kiki blinks at that, cocking her head. “What were you thinking?”

“Oh, um, I don’t know.” A giggle burst nervously from her as she smooths the hem of her shorts over her thighs. “We hadn’t really gotten that far.”

All right, it’s time to drag this conversation back on track. Zen clears his throat. “Kiki, doesn’t your dad have that house in the Berkshires? We could go for a weekend, maybe take in the--”

“Why? We’re already in western Mass. What will a forty minute drive get us?” She wrinkles her nose. “It isn’t even peak foliage season.”

Privacy, he wants to say, but he knows how poorly that idea would fly with her. For someone who always seems to find time to be alone with her boytoy, Kiki’s awfully invested in seeing that he never has any with his girl...thing.

“Hm, I wasn’t really think a trip-trip either,” Shirayuki admits, crushing his dreams of a nice afternoon alone in a hammock, just the two of them and their bathing suits. “But something like an, ah...activity. Like an amusement park.” She perks. “Do you have something like that out here?”

“Six Flags!” he blurts out before he can even consider what he’s saying. “It’s only a half hour away, and the coasters are supposed to be some of the best. I mean, if you, ah, like that sort of thing.”

Which he doesn’t, but there’s really no need to mention that. Not when she lights up like she does, hands clapping together over her heart.

“That sounds perfect! I’ve never been to one of those.” She leans in, conspiratorial. “Opa always got vertigo on the Turkish Twist.”

He may not know what that thing is, but it sounds gut-wrenching enough to keep in head in the trash for a good ten minutes. Zen plasters a smile on his face, steadfastly ignoring the arch look Kiki gives him-- god, that’s the last thing he needs, Kiki deciding it would be funny to tell the story of when they rode the Tower of Terror in middle school-- and says, “I’ll go on any ride you want.”

Kiki makes an unearthly noise, somewhere between a cough and a choke, and he braces for it, for the you know, Zen can tell you the location of every trashcan in Hollywood Studios--

“When were you thinking?” she says instead, mouth just barely twitching at the corner. “It’s going to be busy this weekend.”

“Oh!” Shirayuki’s eyes round, matching the curve of her mouth. “I didn’t think of that. It doesn’t have to be right now. Maybe in another...week? Or so?”

Kiki whips out her phone, flicking through with one finger. “How about...the seventeenth?”

“Ah...” Shirayuki squints, eyes rolling upward like her brain is an open book she can skim for answers. “Y-yes. I think that’s all right.”

Zen stares. “Did you just...pick a random date?”

“No.” Kiki clicks her screen off, slipping it back into her pocket. “This weekend will still have traffic from the fourth. Next week we’re supposed to submit our paperwork to the student affairs office for this semester, and I know you haven’t started. I don’t want to go during a weekend rush, and Thursday is far into the week where if we have any last second problems with student affairs, we won’t have to reschedule.” She holds out a hand, ta-da. “The seventeenth.”

It’s not fair how she can just...do all that. “W-well, all right. But we still have to make sure that Obi and Mitsuhide--”

“Hey, Obi,” Kiki calls out, catching his attention as he cuts across the lawn toward them. “What are you doing on July seventeenth?”

In full sunlight, in the view of every member of the frat, Obi stumbles over absolutely nothing. “W-what?”

“July seventeenth.” she repeats archly as he slinks up beside her, arms resting on the rail. “Are you doing anything.”

When he thinks of Obi at rest, he thinks of languid limbs, of a frustratingly canted smile and glittering eyes, but--

He’s not any of that now. His troublesome mouth lays in a tense line, the corners of his eyes creased and wary. “Why?”

“We want to go somewhere, all five of us,” Shirayuki informs him giddily, mouth stretching from ear to hear. “And Zen suggested Six Flags--”

“Oh no.” He holds up his hands, shaking his head. “No way. Hard pass. I don’t do amusement parks.”

Kiki arches a brow, unimpressed. “Is that so.”

“Yeah.” He tosses his head, mouth straining towards casual derision and falling short. “Not my scene.”

“Oh really.” The mild look Kiki levels at him had leveled lesser men, but Obi only flinches. “Too cool for them, huh?”

His shoulders twitch. “Sure, we’ll go with that.”

“Ohh,” Zen grins, enjoying the way Obi squirms like a cat with his head caught in a fence. “So you mean that’s not really the reason? You have some other secret, terrible Bugs Bunny trauma in your past, maybe?”

“Well, I have to tell you,” Obi says loftily, “I’ve never really cared for Yosemite Sam.”

Shirayuki frowns. “We really don’t have to--”

“I think we all know this is just to obscure your Lola Bunny fetish,” Kiki deadpans.

“Excuse me?” Obi presses a hand to his chest, aghast. “Space Jam is a formative experience. To say any of us don’t owe Lola Bunny--”

“Hey.” Mitsuhide hops up the steps, wiping the sweat pouring down his neck. Zen valiantly doesn’t notice how Kiki stares. “The burgers have been done for a bit. What’s keeping all of you?”

“Obi is allergic to fun,” Kiki informs him, earning a shocked gasp from Obi.

“That’s not it!” he protests. “You just want to go to Six Flags--”

“Oh, Six Flags!” Mitsuhide’s mouth break into a guileless grin. “I love amusement parks.”

Obi stares, jaw slack. “Big Guy, don’t do this to me...”

Zen grins. “I dunno, Obi. Looks like you’re outvoted.”

Shirayuki shifts beside him, wringing her hands. “Oh no, I don’t think-- if Obi doesn’t want to go, we can just pick--”

“Nah.” Obi waves her off, one hand clasping at his shoulder. “You guys can do what you want. I’ll just sit this one out.”

“Obi--”

“I better check in on Shiira,” he says, stilted. “Don’t want them blowing up the front forty by accident.”

Shirayuki half stands, but it’s too late, he’s already sauntering away, laughing at he calls out to the brothers on the lawn.

“Don’t worry, Shirayuki.” Mitsuhide assures her with a clap on her shoulder. “He’ll come around.”

“I...” Zen watches the way her mouth sets, too knowing, a grim white line cutting through the flush of her face. “I don’t know about that.”

[sabraeal]

Meet Cute

Part of The Wide Florida Bay, written for @notesintheflyleaf for winning4th place in my 500 Followers Raffle! She has no specific request, so I thought I should start at the beginning: this should be the official first chapter of Nothing Was My Own (Before I Loved You)!

Exhaustion is almost an asset at this point; the figure in front of her blurs, and suddenly the progression from gill arches to jaws seems plausible. Shirayuki rubs her eyes, crusty sleep seeds skittering onto her keyboard, and tries to focus. She’s only had a week worth of classes with Garrack, but she knows she’ll have to be able to draw this on the test. From memory.

“Well.” Shirayuki startles, back protesting as she twists, nearly curving it around her chair to get a glance at the door. “You’re up at an ungodly hour.”

She lets out a sigh, shoulders collapsing over her ribs. It’s-- it’s just Kihal, impossibly fluffy robe wrapped tight around her, eyebrow lifted in an elegant arch. Her roommate.

It’s hard to get used to this, to having someone around, sleeping less than a full Mitsuhide away. Someone who comes and goes from the room like any normal person would, because this is a normal college experience, having a roommate, not one that should send her scrabbling for the nearest exit.

She’d had one before, back in Freshman year. It’s just...different now.

The scent of vanilla clings to the air, along with that pleasant ozone-y scent water gets from a spray, and it’s all just-- distracting. Shirayuki’s not sure when she forgot how to live with someone, but it certainly doesn’t help that the curtain over Kihal’s cubby is gauzy, so when she slips back there she’s backlit like a cell straight out of Chicago.

She’s not shy-- she spent half her summers skinny dipping in the local pond -- but still, it’s weird to know someone is just...casually naked six feet away.

Isn’t it? Shirayuki grips her desk, the edge biting into the pads of her knuckles. It would be nice if she felt like she knew how to people anymore.

“It’s only seven.” She winces as the words come out. Too terse. Too defensive. “I just-- I feel like I have so much to catch up on.”

Kihal barks out a laugh. “That’s fair. If I showed up almost a month into the semester, I’d probably burst into flames with all the catch up.”

That’s an understatement, to say the least. It’d be bad enough being two weeks behind, but with-- with Raj, and her bus ride north, and the whirlwind transfer to Clarines, and then Mihaya, it’s just--

A lot. But it’s the sort of a lot that doesn’t just fall into someone’s lap like this, the sort of a lot that you have to grab with both hands before it fades away, and--

She rubs her head. That’s not helping.

Kihal pokes her head out from behind the curtain, hair falling in a solid sheet. Her scalp tingles looking at it, remembering the weight of her own hair, like some sort of phantom limb. It’s still weird to comb her hair and feel it just end, but-- well, she’d miss it more if it behaved like Kihal’s. As it is, she’s just glad it isn’t here to frizz in the humidity of the dorms.

“How late were you up last night?”

Shirayuki blinks. It was two when she woke up, drool pooling on her keyboard, and rolled herself into bed. She doesn’t remember much before that. “Not...very?”

Kihal’s brows collapse beneath the weight of her skepticism. “Uh-huh. Come on, let’s go.”

Shirayuki stares, frozen, helplessly watching as Kihal slides into a pair of flats, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Go?”

“Yeah.” She turns her chin over her shoulder, flashing her a sly smile. “This is the sort of situation that calls for coffee.”

Shirayuki isn’t sure exactly what Kihal’s situation is; she’s friends with Zen, after all-- or the closest you can come while still calling each other by your last names-- and from what she’s been able to piece together, she’d been living in that double like it was a single since the beginning of the semester, not a hint of another roommate in sight.

On top of that, she walks with the same sort of confidence as Kiki, the kind that has Shirayuki taking two steps to her one, like she’s a corgi keeping pace with a greyhound and, well-- Shirayuki’s never thought about her friends’ net worth before, not when she’d lived so far out from town it took an hour bus ride to get her to school, but-- there’s few people on this planet with the sort of money the Seirans have.

She shakes her head. It doesn’t matter, not when they don’t use it like some people do.

“So this is, um--” she fumbles for words, breathless-- “a coffee shop?”

“A cafe, yeah.” Kihal barely glances back, but her gait slows, letting her keep pace. “It’s student run place. Super cute. You’ll love it.”

Shirayuki practically has to bite her tongue. “Is it...just coffee?”

“Nah. There’s tea too. And maybe some juice?” She lifts her shoulder, the strap of her tank top slipping to the cusp of it. “There’s food too. The bagels are amazing.”

Her stomach gurgles at the though at the same time her bank account aches. Food sounds great right now, but--

“You have flex points, right?”

She blinks. “I...don’t know? Is that with your student ID, or..?”

“It’s with your meal plan.” Kihal explains it’s like it’s old hat, like it’s something everyone knows, and Shirayuki can only think about how she’d spent her last two lunches trying to get a card that worked in the reader, let alone thinking about any of this. “You can use one of your meal swipes and buy something under ten bucks.”

“Oh, um.” She’d hardly looked at the options past ‘three meals a day,’ and even that had cut deep. “I don’t think--”

Kihal waves a hand. “Whatever, don’t worry. I have you.”

It’s stupid how her eyes sting, just at that. I have you. “Are you sure? I can pay you back--”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it.” Kihal turns to her with a wink. “If anyone deserves to be treated, it’s you.”

“No, that’s--”

Could be fun, keeping you for a while. Even now, just thinking of that grin sends chills down her spine. Right, Red?

Shirayuki lets her mouth shut with a click. “Yeah,” she decides, finally, “I guess I really do.”

Freshman year, Shirayuki had made this mistake of taking a philosophy course as a gen ed, spending a whole semester trying not to nod off as a man expounded upon the thoughts of other men, most of whom had been financially solvent enough to have servants take care of them while they entertained their lofty theories. It had been almost as much of a disaster as her art history class, but she’d persevered, eking out an A- by the end of the course.

Still, when her professor had spouted off truisms like freedom is the burden of choice, it had taken all of her compassion for humanity as a whole to keep from rolling her eyes.

But right now, staring at the eight chalkboards covered in cramped cursive, she almost wants to email him an apology. This amount of choice is oppressive.

“Do you know what you want?”

There’s so many options, she can hardly remember her own name. “Ah, it’s only...there’s so much to choose from.”

Kihal raises a brow, mouth curving to match. “What? You don’t know how you take your coffee?”

“Oh, well, you see--” her feet shuffle under her, toes scuffing at the tile-- “I don’t really, ah...drink coffee.”

Shirayuki braces herself for the blank stare, for the dismayed frown that comes right before, what sort of person doesn’t drink coffee? She’d heard it enough last year, floormates peeling away in the morning before she could get a word in edgewise.

But Kihal only laughs, shaking her head. “And you, what? Just let me take you to a coffee place?”

It’s infectious; as soon as she starts to giggle, Shirayuki does too, and soon she’s covering her face, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Well,” she manages, breathless, “they usually have hot cocoa.”

“They do,” Kihal agrees, nodding her head at the counter. “And once it rolls around to October, they start selling hot cider too. The local stuff.”

“Ohhh.” Her mouth waters just thinking about it. “That sounds good.”

“We’ll come back,” Kihal promises, elbowing into line. “But I promise the cocoa will tide you over for now.”

We’ll come back. Shirayuki’s hands tighten around her satchel. “Right. Sounds good.”

“Large Iced Mocha?” the barista calls out from behind the counter. “For--” he squints, tilting the cup-- “Kyle?”

Kihal rolls her eyes, plucking off a cinnamon chip from her muffin. “I think that’s me.”

His eyes narrow, like he’s trying to suss out whether she’s really Kyle enough, and then shrugs. “Enjoy.”

She takes a sip and nods. “Mm, yes, definitely me.” She holds up a hand, keeping him right at the bar. “Do you know when my friend’s hot cocoa will be out?”

He blinks, giving her a careless shrug. “I dunno. A few minutes? We didn’t really have the machine set up.”

Kihal stares, mouth pulling long. “It’s just some hot milk. You’re making lattes already.”

“I don’t make the rules, lady,” he tells her, and Shirayuki practically trips trying to catch Kihal’s arm before she can really make a scene.

“It’s fine,” she tells her, bagel gripped so tight in her hands the cream cheese oozes out. Ah, she should ask for some napkins. “This happens a lot. I can wait.”

Kihal hesitates, throwing one last glare over her shoulder at the barista, and backs down. “All right. I’ll go grab us some seats, okay?”

Shirayuki nods. “Sure. I’ll be over when, ah...”

The barista has stopped making drinks, instead holding out his phone to a coworker with a laugh. Kihal lets out a long sigh. “You’ll be over when you’re over.”

Shirayuki watches as he pulls the phone back, as he mouths, wait you gotta see this too, and grimaces. “Yeah, something like that.”

It’s not the first time she’s had to wait for a cocoa-- she’s not precisely sure what the mechanics are behind running a coffee shop, but it seems cocoa and coffee are two streams that can never cross-- but it still feels like forever as she’s standing there, wondering whether they’ve even started to work on it. At this rate, Kihal will be finished before she even gets a sip in, and she’ll have to just...wait there, watching her as she eats.

“--Sharon?” A barista calls out, holding out a small cup . “With a y?”

“Oh!” She squeezes up to the counter. “I think that’s me?”

She looks down at her, impassive, and puts the cup in her hands. “Okay, cool.”

It burns her fingertips, and it takes her a full second, staring dumbly at her hand, to realize there were nice cardboard holders on the bar, just for that reason.

“Wait!” she yelps, fumbling to open one around the bottom of her cup. “Do you have, um, napkins?”

The barista blinks slowly, pointing over her shoulder. “Uh. Drink station.”

“Oh!” Shirayuki whips around, catching the small table of straws and stirrers, flanked by a row of dispensers. “Thank--”

She’s already gone. “--you?”

Shirayuki heaves a sigh. Mrs Kino always said New Englanders were a little cold.

Turning on her heel, she bee-lines for the drink station, napkins on her mind--

Only to run smack dab into a wall.

A very warm wall. A very warm wall that laughs, hands banding around her arms to steady her.

“Careful there, Miss,” it says, “don’t want to have an accident, now do we?”

She settles back on her heels, gaze dragging up-- and up-- until it catches on a hooked grin, canines peeking out from behind a crooked lip. “N-no, of course not. Sorry, I wasn’t--” her eyes pulse wide as she realizes she’s still holding the cup, that it could have spilled-- “did I get any on you? Are you all right? Where are you burned?”

He laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling, rucking up the scar that winks over one eye. “Don’t worry. No harm done.” His smile curves into a smirk. “Though you’re welcome to check if you like.”

Shirayuki nearly reaches out, nearly takes the invitation, but he takes a step back, hands dropping from her shoulders.

“That’s me,” he says, and it takes her a minute to realize the barista is holding another small cup over the bar, waiting. “Watch yourself, Miss.”

She stands, brows furrowed, watching him wade through the crowd. Watch yourself. It’s a normal thing to say, but still--

She can’t shake how much it sounds like a warning.

“Sorry!” Shirayuki slaps down a fistful of napkins, licking cream cheese off the webbing between her thumb and finger. “There were so many people over there.”

It’s a bit of a jump to get up on the stools-- she can’t wait for this high table trend to end-- and her foot nearly misses the rung with Kihal asks, “Did you get his number?”

She blinks, hoisting herself onto the seat. It swivels threateningly beneath her. “Whose number?”

Kihal raises both eyebrows, incredulous. “Uh, the gorgeous guy you were talking to?”

“Who?”

She sighs. “Tall, tanned, had biceps made for putting your mouth on?”

Shirayuki stares. She wasn’t aware that’s what one did with biceps. It seems like a bad time to ask if it’s hyperbole.

“You nearly ran him over?” Kihal ventures, jerking her head toward the counter.

“Oh!” Tall seemed fair, and tan, but she hadn’t, um, speculated about the mouthfeel of his muscles.“No. I just-- I asked if I’d hurt him, he said no, and then he got his drink.”

Kihal tips back her head, casting a helpless glance at the ceiling. “Shirayuki.”

“There wasn’t anything else to it.” She casts a curious glance over her shoulder, but it’s no good, it looks like Mysterious Man has come and gone. “Was he really--?”

“Hot? Extremely.” Kihal’s mouth curves slyly. “I know you and Wisteria have something going on, but you can look at other guys, you know.”

Her cheeks flush, which is-- it’s stupid, because there isn’t any reason to it. “We don’t have anything, we’re just...friends.”

Kihal gives her a dubious look. “Mm-hm. Well, all the more reason to look, then. Especially when tall, dark and handsome seems to be chummy with the barista. Maybe you can score us some free coffee.”

Shirayuki frowns. “I don’t really think talking to someone to get free stuff is--”

“Also, he looks like a good kisser.”

Ethical gets stuck in in her throat, and she blindly grasps for her cup, taking a sip to wash it out--

And nearly spits it out.

Kihal stares. “Are you okay?”

She grimaces, edging the cup away. “This is not cocoa.”

Kihal’s brows furrow, and she scoops it up, taking a sip. “Ugh, this isn’t even mocha. It’s like, half-cocoa, half-espresso.”

Whatever it is, the taste lingers bitterly in her mouth. “Do people drink that?”

“No.” Kihal’s mouth tilts, coy. “Too bad Hot Guy isn’t around to talk to his friend for you.”

“It’s fine,” she wheezes, sliding off the chair, “I can just--”

“No, no.” Kihal snags the drink from her. “I’ll deal with it.”

“No, I couldn’t--”

“Hey.” She holds up a hand, mouth spread in a grin. “I paid for it, I deal with it. you enjoy your food. Besides,” she waggles her eyebrows, “now I can go find out more about your boyfriend.”

[sabraeal]

We Seek That Which We Shall Not Find, Chapter 6

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

Written for Trope Madness’s betting kitty winner, @ruleofexception! It’s been....over six months, but here is this HUGE BEAST of a chapter. I know I said I thought this would be the last Laxdo chapter, BUT...there’s gonna be at least one more!

There hadn’t been much in the way of entertainment, back in the country. At least, not the way Shirayuki’s constantly bombarded with it here, videos up on billboards and scrolling across phones on the subway. The B&B had a limping internet connection, and with the only television in the common room, she’d spent more time inside a book or outside the house than struggling to find a channel the other boarders would agree to.

So when Zen asked her to join D&D, when Kiki had teased her for not even knowing what she’d said yes to --

Well, she’d done her research. Not just the kind Izana gave her, reading source books and studying lore, but watching videos, listening to podcasts, finding the D&D episodes of popular shows -- anything that would give her something to expect. Nothing could have rivaled her disappointment or her relief when she realized costumes were optional; she hadn’t known how she would cobble together historically accurate, fourth century Welsh gown when even the SCA shrugged their shoulders at the idea, but, well...it was exactly the sort of challenge she would have risen to, if she had the excuse.

Still, she’d thought she had an idea of what to expect: roleplay, quick thinking, rich story, complicated feelings, improv, maybe even some funny voices, but --

Nothing had prepared her for the amount of planning.

“So that’s it?”

Shirayuki startles; she’d been deep into splitting healing duties with Mitsuhide. Paladins are only half spell casters, only good for buffs and an occasional off-heal, so all the curse removal duties fall to Lynet. Bedwyr is more or less moral support; unless the curse itself had some sort of permanent stat drain, there’s nothing he can do.

Zen isn’t invested in this conversation, of course; magi don’t have magic that can’t be applied to themselves or their weapon. Which is why he’s craning his neck toward Izana, incredulous. “We just cast a whole bunch of Remove Curse and then hit the road?”

Shirayuki isn’t an expert on Izana’s expressions, not when the difference between them is the angle of an eyebrow or the twitch of a lip, but she feels confident in calling this one positively withering. “Is that what you think you should do?”

The temperature of the room drops two degrees. That’s a question where everyone knows the answer.

“We still don’t know who started this,” Mitsuhide tries, haltingly, thick fingers worrying at the edge of his character sheet. From the dog-eared corners on every side, this isn’t a first-time occurrence. “It’s not a good habit to leave enemies behind us.”

“Not a healthy one, at least,” Kiki adds, leaning her knee against the table.

“But we don’t have any hints either.” Zen’s flushed, frustrated. “Do you guys just want to hang around here, waiting for him to come back? If he comes back?”

“Or her.” Kiki’s brow twitches, and Shirayuki’s not sure whether to read it as amusement or annoyance. Maybe both is the better bet. “Then again, you haven’t tried to woo any rescued damsels this session, so probably not a dread sorceress. Unless there’s something Shirayuki isn’t telling us.”

Kiki turns to her with an inquisitive look, and even though she knows she’s joking, even though she sees the quirk at the corner of her lips, Shirayuki’s cheeks flare fire-engine red.

“Hey!” Zen snaps, not looking much better. “Shirayuki--”

“Well.” Obi’s mouth cants, eyes catching hers from their corners. “I know Beaumains is under her spell.”

She can feel it, this moment of opportunity being flung open like a window, and -- and his wink is not helping matters. Not at all. Especially not when Kihal’s flirt back or make out with his face is burning a hole in her pocket, reminding her of what she was trying to do before plot carried her away. It’s just --

She can’t say something now. This isn’t Lynet and Beaumains, this is -- is them, Shirayuki and Obi, and that might mean something, and she doesn’t -- she isn’t --

Well, there’s just a huge difference between a flirtation and a boyfriend, probably. And she hardly knows if she wants the first, let alone -- that. Not with some college boy she’s known a week. He might play trumpet, for all she knows.

The moment stretches on, too long, and Kiki hums, amused. “I suppose that is some damning evidence.”

“Okay.” Zen’s folded himself into a huff, fuming so hard it’s an honest surprise smoke isn’t pouring out his ears. “So you all think we should just...hang around? Hope for some Big Bad to come wandering back to check his work?”

“Well.” The word bursts out of her, unbidden, but -- she’s committed now, with everyone watching her. “We do have, um, another reason.”

He blinks, some of his flush fading back to pink. “Oh?”

“I, uh, only prepared one Removed Curse at our last rest.” Her hands twist themselves in knots under the table, anxious. “But I can fix that at our next one! If this works like it should, then I should be able to get everyone on their feet in...a few days, maybe?”

Zen lets loose a whine that would make a puppy worry. “A few days.”

“Um, well...” Shirayuki squirms in her seat. “Give or take.”

Kiki’s eyes narrow. “Just how many spell slots do you have?”

“Um...” She flips through her sheet, squinting at the chart on the second page. “Three?”

Mitsuhide lets out a worried hum, too high-pitched for a man his size. “How many people are under this spell again?”

The question sits heavily at the table until Izana leans back, the picture of surprise, and asks, “Oh, are you asking me?”

Zen stares. “Is there someone else who would know?”

“It could have been rhetorical. A nice little thought exercise.” He shrugs, and Shirayuki does not miss the way his mouth twitches at a corner. “But the answer is: as many as it takes to make a castle of this size function.”

Zen groans.

“Oh, looks like we better get comfy, my liege,” Obi says with a wolfish grin. “We’re gonna be here a while.”

This night is your longest yet; you had thought the first interminable, when all the miasma of illness hung thick over the room, choking you even behind yours mask. Despair had clung to every wrinkle in your gown, tight like a child’s hand on a mother’s apron, always niggling, reminding you that time would run out, that perhaps no amount of your cleverness could save them.

But hope is worse.

There is no reason to pick the man you do -- or rather, the lack of one becomes it. With only a single brew, Bedwyr suggests that you spend it on the castle’s healer, but--

But this magic is familiar somehow. It slicks along your skin like a drop of oil in water, and though you cannot divine its maker, you do not trust it to act as it ought. Curse though it may be, there is a part of you that worries any cure that you brew will only add to your troubles.

You worry over that same thought for endless hours, trying to get to the marrow of it, to logic out why dread settles so firmly in your gut. There has never been an instance, not one, where your gifts have failed you, where the joy of victory has turned to ashes in your mouth. Except for the one, of course.

Despite your misgivings, the man wakes at dawn.

It is not a calm thing, oh no; he heaves into life, breath filling his chest so forcefully it arches him upright. He clutches at his breast, wide-eyed, but besides the atrophy expected of long illness and the shock of waking, he is healthy. So healthy he empties the first bowl of broth you give him, and the second, and when you bring the third he inquires after a heel of bread as well.

“Well, this certainly stands as a testament to your skill,” Arturius remarks, bemused, as the man sops up his bowl. You are tired, and for a moment you are tempted to ask if he had doubted it, but -- it would be picking a fight, and it is not the prince’s fault that his particular skills meant he slept, rather than wait.

“I brewed more last night,” you tell him. “Enough dose for three.”

“Our priority is the healer, of course.” He bites his lip, head tipped back in thought. “But the others...”

For the first time in hours, you feel your mouth lift into a smile. “I did have a thought about that...”

Izana blinks. “The dwarf?”

“He’s cursed, isn’t he?” She must be the only one that remembers; despite happening only hours ago, the rest of the party stares blankly at her. “Worse than anyone else, if I’m remembering right.”

“Oh,” Obi hums, thoughtful. “Yeah, I think I remember that. He’s human.”

“Oh, right.” Zen scoops up the dwarf’s figure, squinting hard at its shapeless features. “I thought he was going to be the Big Bad’s sidekick, honestly.”

“Mm, agreed.” Kiki leans over, giving the plastic the same skeptical look. “I was waiting for the backstab.”

“Such little faith in your fellow man,” Izana clucks, shaking his head.

She arches a brow, eloquent in her disdain. “It is your game.”

His mouth stretches, curling into a smile Shirayuki’s only ever seen on the Grinch. “That is fair.”

“Still.” The word drags Izana’s attention back to her, his eyes almost comically wide. “I want to give our friend at least one of these. After all, he’s been helping us this whole time.”

“Has he though?” Obi mutters, and without even thinking, Shirayuki puts an elbow straight in his side.

Every hair stands on end as she realizes what she’s done. She’s -- she’s practically scolded him, the boy she maybe-kind of-might want to flirt with. Or his character, at least. For, you know, fun.

When she dares a glance at him, his eyes have rounded, eyebrows practically up at his hairline, but -- but --

He almost looks impressed.

“Huh,” Izana huffs out, drawing her attention back to the topic at hand. “Do you now.”

It’s not a question, but she hasn’t gotten this far by letting him practice his rhetoric. “I do.”

He hums, tapping at his notes. “Well, I suppose you could...try.”

“Me?” The dwarf shifts on his spindly legs, wringing his thick-fingered hands over his belly. “But -- but there are others. Other who would be of much more use than me!”

“We have more than enough for your healer,” you assure him, though you have to grit your teeth as he dances.

There’s something strange, off-kilter about the way he moves, about the way his face changes, as if your mind is trying to make him into two different people entirely -- one which is familiar, and one which is entirely not. It is tiring to say the least.

You meet his eyes, those warm hazel-green, and say, “You have helped us immeasurably. Who else could be more important than you?”

“The head of the guard?” he supplies with a squeak. “The steward. The -- the cook? Anyone, my lady, would be more helpful that me.”

You lower yourself to a chair, coming to his height. “No one is more important here than the man who knows how this all came to be.”

His gaze is watery when he tears it from yours. “No, no,” he insists, voice ragged. “Spend it on the others. All of them are more deserving than me.”

"Welp.” Obi pops the ‘p’, annoyed, and it draws attention to his mouth, to the way it fits around the words he speaks and -- well, Shirayuki really didn’t need help with that. “We’re doing real good, solving this mystery.”

It’s been three in-game days, and with every awoken man, more questions are asked than answered. So far none of them can remember being cursed, and when they bring the dwarf in front of them --

Well, Shirayuki knows this is all pretend, that the dwarf is really just Izana bending his voice into something new, but the way his expression crumples as every soldier calls him a stranger -- it’s a lot.

“What is even happening here?” Zen groans, fingers pulling at his face. “The dwarf knows something, but he won’t tell us.”

“He can’t tell us.” It comes out a little sharper than she intends, but -- it’s an important distinction. “He’s cursed.”

“Right,” he agrees absently. “But also he won’t let us help him, so it’s pretty much the same thing.”

Her hands clench on her lap. “It’s really n--”

“Can’t you just cast it on him anyway?” Obi asks, chin in hand, drumming his fingers on the table. “Then bingo-bango-bongo: the whole problem is solved.”

Her jaw drops. “I’m not going to treat a patient without his consent!”

Obi rounds on her, eyes incredulously wide. “He’s not real.”

That...is a good point, she’ll give him that.

“Well, he’s real to Lynet,” she informs him primly, setting her hands flat on the table. “And she would never.”

For a moment is mouth goes flat, annoyed, but then -- then it curls, Obi leaning casual on one fist. “I’m sure Beaumains could be persuasive.”

Her mouth wraps around the word, silent. The look he gives her is too knowing, eyebrows lifted in invitation, and she’s so, so tempted to ask just what kind of persuasion Beaumains might be inspired to do--

“Even if Shirayuki cast it, he could still resist it with a Will save,” Mitsuhide interjects, sending the moment skittering. “If he wanted to, at least. And then we’d be out of a spell slot.”

“If we’re stuck here, we should be focusing on the Big Bad anyway.” Zen settles back in his chair, running a hand through his hair and leaving it adorably askew, like he’d just woken up. “Someone has to have said something interesting, right? And we’re not just thinking about it.”

Mitsuhide leans a chin in his hand, pondering the idea. “The head of the guard mentioned that a traveling caravan came through before this all happened.”

Kiki nods. “And the steward mentioned buying wood from traveling merchants. Probably the ones who supplied the logs with the Will debuff.”

Zen settles back, thoughtful. “So you think they were force to sell the wood?”

“They must have some leverage on them,” Mitsuhide agrees. “They didn’t mention any children--”

“Or maybe,” Kiki deadpans, “they were all bandits?”

Mitsuhide gapes. “But there were women in the caravan.”

“Oh my,” she hums, teeth flashing behind her lips. “You’re right. How silly of me. We all know a woman could never be dangerous, oh no.”

“T-that’s not what I meant!”

“Oh?” Kiki smiles, and the room drops an entire degree. Shirayuki practically shivers in the chill. “It better not be.”

Shirayuki blinks, and between one moment as the next, Kiki stabs her pen into the table, leaving it quivering like a knife.

Izana huffs in annoyance. “Kiki, please. The table didn’t do anything to you.”

“It’s just between the leaves.” She shift her character sheets, and there it is: pen nib wedged perfectly into the crevice. With nothing more than a sharp tug, it’s back out again, twirling between Kiki’s long fingers. “Besides, it’s not like this is some family heirloom.”

“No,” Izana agrees, “but it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Okay, aside from Princess Kiki’s love for violence, which, by the way--” Obi tosses her a wink, which absolutely does not send a jolt of disappointment spear through Shirayuki’s belly-- “hot. It looks like our only lead are these bandits.”

Mitsuhide grunts. “We don’t know if they’re bandits.”

“Fine, Schrödinger’s bandits,” he sighs. “We don’t--what?”

The table is quiet, wide-eyed -- even Izana -- and into the silence, Zen says, “You know Schrödinger?”

Obi huffs. “What? I go to college. I know memes.”

“Wow,” Kiki manages, drawling every letter.

“Anyway.” Zen wields the word like a knife, trying to cut through the distractions. “We should track down these bandits--”

Mitsuhide clears his throat.

“Potential bandits,” Zen amends, annoyed. “So while Shirayuki is tending to the people here, we can start canvassing the area.”

“Oh!” It slips out of her, like a punch to the gut. If she’s back at the castle, and Beaumains is out looking for bandits --

She shakes her head. That’s not what this game is about. It’s about saving her sister and having fun with her friends, not -- not practice flirting.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to take it back. Every eye at the table falls on her, and she squirms. “Um.”

“That isn’t very fair,” Kiki observes, dragging her gaze to Zen. “Shirayuki should get a chance to have an adventure too, not just heal in the background.”

“But we can’t take her with us.”

She hadn’t even minded being left behind -- Izana would give her something to do, and it wasn’t as if Lynet would feel strongly about bandit chasing -- but it stings, hearing it from his mouth. Zen had wanted her to be Gwenhwyfar, to be the one waving the handkerchief from the parapets. Instead she’d made Lynet -- an alchemist, an arcanist, an asset -- but even still he’s finding ways to keep her at Camelot, leaving her behind when the knights rode out.

Mitsuhide grunts, disapproving.

“She’s using her highest slots to do this curse thing,” Zen explains, and she gets it, she does, it just doesn’t help. “If we find the Big Bad--”

“--We should probably have our healer with us.” Obi’s mouth cants into a lop-sided smile, cajoling. “Come on, my liege. We don’t have to jump in the deep end the second we get a hint of where this guy is. We have plenty of time to give my lady here a heads up before we get ourselves neck-deep in trouble.”

He winks, and -- and maybe she’s just projecting, but it feels different from the one he gave Kiki. More...personal.

“Um.” Now is really not the time to blurt out, I’m more upset that I can’t flirt with your character, so she just nods, ducking her head so he can’t see her blush. “Okay! But I’ll need a day to swap out my spells.”

He’s just -- adjusting, she knows that, but his foot swipes right along the bottom of hers and every hair stands on end. Oh, goodness. “We’ll see what we can do, my lady.”

Each day, more men awake from their stupors; three at a time, all of them disoriented, groggy. You had hoped that when you woke the healer, he would at least be able to ease your burden, but all the cursed are emaciated, their muscles atrophied to the point that they must be helped to the chamber pot and back. It is up to you to brew the potions, to cook the broth and, eventually, heartier stews to strengthen them.

And still there are more chores; small things: opening windows and keeping your stores stocked, organizing and documenting the treatment of your patients. Each day blends into each other, sleep only coming in fits and starts and never restful. Still, it is enough. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, hands doing what you ask of them, until --

Until one day they don’t.

Most of the men have not been moved from the great hall, though now, at least, there is room between them to walk, not just bodies laid haphazardly across the stone. It is not a situation you find ideal, however -- it is not feasible to move so many, and in their fugue state, few will care about privacy or proximity. However, those awoken few have been moved to more private chambers; the weft of the curse is thick, as fine a weave as any linen, and you suspect it does not allow any inference, either magic or mundane. Those who lay dreaming are free from any ailment save the caster’s making, but the others --

Well, that many men pressed so close is just tinder waiting for a kindling.

There is a way within Laxdo’s halls to reach the dormitories from the great hall, however, a quick dash through the courtyard’s arcades cuts minutes off a day that already has too few to spare. You hurry through, gaze set ever forward, laden with yet another heavy box of supplies.

Your mind is not on your day, of course. Oh no, it has long wandered far into stranger lands. The dwarf is what plagues your thoughts, for with every man that wakes, their eyes passing over him with barely more than a curious glance and no flash of recognition, he fades a little further. One day, you fear, you will turn to see he is little more than a shadow, a suggestion rather than a reality.

Whoever he is, he must be much changed. Perhaps he is knight, strong bodied and deep-voice; or perhaps he is truly only a boy, and --

Your heel catches, so hard that your teeth jitter in their sockets. It snaps your spine straight, feet staggering beneath you to balance both your weight and the box’s.

All for naught; the shock jolts like lightning through your limbs, and the moment you right yourself, the box slips from boneless fingers, straight to the stone below.

There is a moment where your life flashes before your eyes. Or at least, the last week, which has felt like a lifetime. On shivering fawn legs, you bend, touching each bottle and jar as if they were the saints’ bones themselves. It is not the first inventory you have done with your heart lodged in your throat, but it is certainly the one where you had the most to lose. After all, it wasn’t as if the people of Castle Perilous would rely on their young mistress alone.

Your breath huffs out on a sigh. Misfortune’s bony fingers have no hooks in your skirts today. Not one cracked jar or one broken seal.

You get to your feet, hauling the box into you arms, but -- but you are made suddenly and terrifying aware that you have not slept for days. The world swings in a mad carousel around you, and with the momentum of your lift and the weight of the box you tilt back --

But never hit the ground.

“Oh,” Zen groans, flopping back in his seat. “Come on. Really?”

“Oooh, master, you just wish you had moves like me.” Obi’s hips give a sultry swivel in his seat as he scoops up his natural twenty. It absolutely does not give Shirayuki any -- any ideas. The room is just unnaturally warm for a basement.

“Careful, smooth moves,” Kiki deadpans. “K-pop impressions and bad pick-up lines won’t save you from not investing in your health.”

Obi huffs out a laugh with one of his devil-may-care shrugs. “I don’t invest in nerd things like hit points, I invest in being cool, and I stand by that decision. Besides,” he says, pink flaring high on his cheeks, “my pick-up lines are great.”

“Name one that worked.”

“I dunno.” His shoulders hunch, defensive. “All of them.”

Kiki’s eyebrows lift. “On who?”

Me. Shirayuki catches the word in her teeth, swallowing it down. It’s not -- it’s not even true. Beaumains has been using them on Lynet, and Lynet is the one interested, not -- not her. They’re different people. Probably.

“You know.” He sniffs. “People. You don’t know them.”

If anything, Kiki’s brows only raise higher. “Hmm.”

“If we’re quite done speculating about Obi’s romantic prowess,” Izana interjects smoothly. “I do believe we’re in the middle of something?”

Heat blooms across your back, the way it would when you sat at the hearth, tilting a book so it might not lay in shadow. It smolders along your side, not like a bonfire, but a brazier, or even a bed warmer --

Ah, now there is a thought your father would not appreciate you having.

Your gaze is fixed to your supplies, but it takes you a long moment to realize you are not holding them. No, it is a steady hand over you, sheathed in black leather, and in one, delirious moment, you realize that bare indigo must be pressed into your back, hooking just so at your hip. He doesn’t even shake.

“Careful there, my lady.” The words rumble against your ear, too intimate in the cage of his chest. “Keep this up, and a man could get ideas.”

You lift your gaze, gold tangling with green, breath catching in your throat. He might have made a shoddy assassin, but as your protector, well --

“Do you think if it happens another time, you will believe it?”

He blinks, eyes as wide and gold as coins. “Believe what?”

With all the courage you can summon, you mimic his flirtatious smirk and say, “That I’m falling for you.”

If the birds still sang at Laxdo, then the air would not be so still, so silent. At it is, you could hear a pin drop, so long as it was louder than the throb of your heart.

In a single, staggering moment, you are back on your feet, and Beaumains shakes his head, hunching his shoulders against the cold. “You need to work on your delivery.”

Your jaw snaps shut. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not the flirting type, my lady.” He shrugs, a smirk peeking out from behind his cowl. “Too earnest, I think.”

Blood boils in your veins, and you know he can see it on your skin when you say, “It does not seem fair that you may make love as you wish, but yet I cannot.”

He huffs out a laugh, sweeping a step closer. Oh, he smells...nice. Leather and pine with a hint of brimstone. “You know what I have and you don’t, my lady?”

“What?” You wish it wasn’t so breathless.

He leans in, and unbidden, your eyes flutter to half-mast. “Charisma.”

“Wait.” Kiki snags his sheet, sliding it across the table. “How on earth is your charisma higher than your con?”

“I’m a rogue-sorcerer!” Obi squeaks, snatching it back. “It’s my casting stat.”

“This is ridiculous,” she decides. “Are you planning on using it any time soon?”

He gapes. “I use it all the time!”

“I mean besides for bad pick-up lines.”

“How do you think I snuck up on Shirayuki at all?” He waves his hands. “Obviously magic!”

“I mean...” Kiki shrugs. “There is a stealth stat for a reason. A good rogue wouldn’t need Invisibility--”

He sniffs. “There’s just no reasoning with you, Princess.”

“I thought you were supposed to be bandit hunting.” The words come out breathless, and you wish you were like Morgaine, who never sounds as if anything bothers her at all, instead of -- of this. A girl ripe to be teased, since she can never wear her heart anywhere but on her sleeve.

He looks out over the yard, eyes squinting into the distance, and it is a fine view for watching the smirk creep up the side of his face. “Seemed like my job was here, my lady.”

Warmth blooms in your chest, as suddenly and easily as if he had laid a hand over your heart. Still, you frown. “And you did not think to announce yourself?”

“You did well enough alone,” he tells you with a speculative glance, and the flash in his eyes makes you think he likes what he sees. That he is, perhaps, even a little impressed with you. “And anyway, it seemed like you understood well enough about hiding in plain sight.”

You do not miss the bite of censure in his words, the warmth spreading from your chest to your cheeks. He put space between you, but you close it as you say, “I am the only one who can do this work, I do not have the luxury of--”

“Peace, my lady.” He holds up his hands, as if he might ward you off like a bitch anxious over her pups. “I know well enough. Still...” He edges a step back, teeth flashing white against the dark of his face. “Should you not be wary of me?”

You stare, brows furrowed. “Wary? Has not Uther himself consigned me to your care?”

“That’s true enough,” he admits, hand raising to squeeze at his shoulder. An old injury must lay there, aggravated by the heavy weather. “Though I thought His Grace would fill your head with all sorts of things.”

“Things?”

“Speculations. Rumor.” He grins, sharp enough to cut, though it is not a blade faced outward. “Maybe even something close to the truth.”

“Beaumains.” You step closer, and he watches you now, not the quintain creaking in the distance. “I think my own thoughts, not those of Arturius. And I have never been wary of you.”

The arcade is so quiet, you can hear his breath rasp in his chest.

“Besides--” you let yourself share in some of his smile-- “I was the one who had you pinned.”

“My lady,” he protests, “I let you--”

“I think we can call this argument thoroughly explored,” Izana informs them. “Not that I do not enjoy the enthusiastic roleplay.”

“Oh!” Shirayuki chirps, hands clapping to cover her blush. “I’m sorry, I didn’t--”

“No need.” You do not miss the twitch of amusement at the corner of his lips. “Besides, I think we all know it was your tanglefoot bag that did the pinning.”

“In any case,” you continue, perhaps a little forcefully, “you have proven yourself to be a man worthy of trust in my eyes.”

Beaumains stares, inscrutable. “My lady...”

Whatever words he means to say are lost; he folds his lips around them and the moment carries them away.

“My lady,” he tries again, more sure. “You’re wearing yourself down.”

“I am fine--”

“Perhaps His Grace--”

“I am fine,” you insist, sharper than you intend. “There is no reason to worry Arturius. So you might as well not.”

The silence between you itches, and when those golden eyes look at you, when they stare through you as if you were a specimen under glass, you want to squirm out of your own skin. “Who says I have to listen to anything you say?”

Uther. The name bubbles up, unbidden. You would have to be a fool to speak it; what passed between assassin and king is known by them alone. To pretend you know either of their minds would be a mistake of the rarest form.

Instead, you take a step forward, skirt brushing over the toes of his boots. “You owe me.”

His eyes narrow, thoughtful. “Owe you?”

“Yes,” you breathe. “You do.”

He stares at you, and you know he remembers the same as you do: the botched assassination, him grabbing your wrists and pulling you under him, the way his skin had warmed so pleasantly against yours --

“Fine.” His gaze swivels away, chin turned so much your neck hurts just looking at it. “But...why keep it a secret, my lady?”

Teeth prick at your lips. You cannot just say, Arturius. Not when he has been so kind to you, when he has taken on this quest that no other would. But still, still -- you were barely allowed to come. If he were to know that you are weary, or weak, or, Father forfend, overwhelmed --

Well, you do not have to imagine what sort of behavior that might invite from His Grace.

“Because I can manage on my own,” you say instead, lifting the box from his hands.

Or at least, you would, if he would let go. “We’re only having this talk because you’re not managing, my lady.”

Ah, that is...a point. Your shoulders drop, grip loosening until it is once again only Beaumains that holds it. “I...”

“My lady?” You cannot meet his gaze, but you feel it on you, warm and inquisitive, perhaps even concerned.

“It’s only...”

He leans in. You can feet his heat against your skin.

“The dwarf,” you manage, a flush gathering at where your wimple meets your collar. “There’s something about him.”

“He’s short?” Beaumains offers, voice low, a pleasant rumble so close to you. “He’s cursed?”

Your mouth pulls thin. “That is not what a meant. However...” You shake your head, at a loss. “I only have this...this feeling. It is important that he be cured of his affliction. But...if he does not want to be saved before the others...”

Frustration tangles your tongue. If only you knew what words would convince him, what proof you needed to lay before him --

“Ah,” Beaumains sighs, mouth crooking into a grin. “Is that all?”

Izana blinks as his phone hoots at him, scanning the screen.

“Hm.” He sets it aside, laying it square on the table. “Obi, if you would come with me.”

Zen’s eyes narrow as they stand, gaze darting between them. “What are you doing?”

“Me and the big boss here have some business in hallway time,” Obi tells him with a grin even Shirayuki has to admit is insufferable. “Got a problem with it?”

He frowns. “Why do you need that?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” With a waggle of his eyebrows, Obi skips around the corner of the stairs and is gone. The door above shuts with an almost jaunty click.

“Wha--?” Zen stares after him, sputtering. “That’s why I’m asking!”

It is quiet, for once. Only the moan of the wind outside and the scratch of your nib against parchment reach your ears, the crackle of the fire long faded into the background of your mind. It lulls you, the gentle sweep of your own hand, and you close your eyes -- just a blink --

Only to wake at the creak of your door.

“Lynet.”

You do not expect the prince to darken your door, not this late at night, but here he is, cloak dusted with snow, sword at his hip. He follows your gaze, and he seems shocked to find his blade there as well, as if he does not always keep it at his side.

“Arturius,” you say, rising to your feet. “I didn’t think to see you so late.”

“I needed to know something.” He sweeps a hand toward your bed. “Would you mind?”

You blink, and for a moment, he is a different man telling you to get to a bed, gaunleted hands reaching --

“Yes,” you gasp, shaking yourself. This is different. Arturius is a friend. You trust him. “Of course.”

Your legs dangle off the side of the bed, toes just brushing the floor, and he draws his chair up in front of you, holding your hand.

“Close your eyes,” he says. “I’m going to count.”

“Are you taking my pulse?” His fingers are not in the proper place for such a thing. At your wrist is truly--

“Please,” he laughs. “Just trust me.”

You do, and so your eyes flutter closed. For a moment, you are only aware of your breath, of his touch, and you --

Jolt awake, as the door flies open again.

“Beaumains!” Arturius snaps, dropping your hand as if it scalds. “What are you--?

It is only once he is in the room room that you can see -- there is someone behind him. A small someone.

The dwarf.

Beaumain’s smile stretches smugly from ear-to-ear. “Our friend here says he’ll do it.”

“What?” Zen squaws, glaring daggers at his brother before settling back on Obi. “How could you?”

“How could I what?” Obi grins, hooking his hands behind his head. “Get the job done?”

“Intimidate him!” He waves a hand vaguely towards the head of the table. “He’s our friend!”

Obi blinks. “Izana?”

“No, not -- I mean the dwarf!” He lets out a huff. “Izana is definitely not our friend.”

“Brother.” Izana presses a hand to his chest. “I’m wounded.”

“You’re like Rasputin,” Zen tells him. “You’ll get over it.”

“I didn’t intimidate either of them.” Obi darts a glance at her, hooking her with a grin. “I just used my raw charisma.”

Kiki groans. “Go home.”

“Are you certain?” You glance at Beaumains behind him, but there is no menace to the man, just an unseemly amount of gloating. “I will not force you.”

The dwarf hesitates, wringing his small hands over his belly, but in the end he nods, meeting your gaze with a confidence that is wholly new. “I am ready, my lady.”

Your hand shakes as his fingers cup the rounded bottom of the flask, as he pulls the glass from your grasp, and with a deep, steeling sigh, upends the entirety of the potion into his throat.

“Oh!” The sound hiccups out of you, and though you’ve worn a groove in your voice the shape of the warnings you give each time, they tangle in your mouth. It is too late to say, drink slowly, to say, stop if it does not feel right, and oh, you are usual say this to a man prone, insensate --

And yet, nothing happens.

It takes time, you know. Your palms itch, eager to reach for your notes, to see if this was too long an interval, if this was a sign that this geas was worse, that the caster was fighting your remedy --

A muscle twitches. The dwarf blinks, raising his hand -- his hand that is now large, now small, that cannot decide its size at all, which is fine since his whole body follows suit, growing and shrinking. His shoulders rounds as his spine stretches, as if he’s hit a wall, some sort of barrier --

And it shatters, like an egg’s shell, his body growing well beyond its confines, the proportion of his limbs and face changing, until --

“Oh!” You whirl around, putting your back to him. “Oh my!”

“Ah,” the man says, his voice reedy, yet not as high as you remember. “I had hoped that this might be better done.”

“Here.” Arturius tosses one of the sheets from the cots. “Cover yourself.”

“I thank you,” the man says, humiliation riding high in his tone. “My lady, please forgive me, I did not think--”

“You...you are--” it is hard to find the words with your cheeks as hot as this -- “you are the lord of Laxdo’s son!”

He lets out a single, pained laugh. “I am afraid I am more than that now, my lady. I am Laxdo’s lord.”

“But--”

“Arturius!” Bedwyr sweeps into the room, ragged. “The men are all waking!”

“Wait, wait.” Shirayuki shakes her head, brow furrowed. “I removed his curse, and now everyone is healed?”

Izana lifts a hand in a lazy shrug. “So it would seem.”

“But...but...” She swivels, fixing on him. “But he didn’t want to be turned back! He wouldn’t let us, not until--” Shirayuki stops, her brain rushing to put the pieces together. “That was part of the compulsion. He wouldn’t let the curse be broken so that we -- so that I--”

She groans. “We could have done this in a day.”

“Welcome to Izanafinder,” Kiki deadpans. “He may not kill you, but he will make you wish you were dead.”

“My name is Shuuka,” the man says, better settled with the sheet around his hips. You still keep finding the wall just over his left shoulder fascinating. If only Bedwyr would be faster at locating the young lord’s costume. “I must admit, I had hoped you might remember it, my lady.”

You grimace. “I am...very bad with names. My father often despaired of it.”

And as in all his wishes, it bore very little fruit. 

“I think I remember that.” He laughs, weary. “It is no matter. I am in your debt regardless.”

“Pray, do not think on it,” you tell him, even as Arturius grunts. “I would not have a soul beholden to me.”

You do not miss Beaumain’s cough, nor the amused way he watches you from the door. Doubtlessly, he would find time to say his piece on that, but it will not be now.

“But, my lady--”

“What would help us most would be if you told us what happened,” Arturius says, oddly strangled. “Since you are the only one that seems to remember.”

Shuuka blinks, as if he had forgotten his prince sat mere steps away. “Of course. I shall explain it all to you.”

“That would be--”

“But first.” He slips his hand around yours, smiling shyly. “We must celebrate how you have saved us.”

“Oh,” you breathe, gaze flying to Arturius. A muscle in his jaw jumps. “I do not think--”

“Please, give me this,” Shuuka insists. “A banquet in your honor.”

You do not look at him, but you can feel Beaumain’s grin as a palpable touch. “Truly, it is not necessary. It was all of us who--”

“Ah yes, then in all your honor!” He squeezes your hand, and gives you a boyish smile that sends you straight back to girlhood. “All the men have been healed, and it would do them good to have a night of merriment.”

You cannot refute it would raise morale. Which would be much needed, once they took in the state of Laxdo’s disrepair. “I suppose...”

He leaps to his feet, thankfully taking the sheet with him. “Then a banquet it is!”

Shirayuki buries her face in her hands. “Oh my.”

“Oooh,” Obi croons. “Looks like you got some competition, my liege.”

Zen frowns. “Oh, shut up.”

[sabraeal]

Les Liaisons Juridique

A shirakiki fic in honor of @krispy-kream’s birthday, inspired what is probably her own failure to realize she was on a date YOU WERE ON A DATE SHARON

Shirayuki is getting this job.

“You’re getting this job,” Dr. Weise -- Shidan, he corrected her earlier with a smile, Doctor Weise was my father -- tells her, sitting back in a leather office chair that must have been paid for out of his grant money. “You’re more qualified than any other candidate; you shower, thank god; and Garrack called me up to personally call me a -- how did she put it? Fuckwad if I let you pass me by.

“And let me tell you, Doctor Roos.” He leans forward with a conspiratorial smile. “I am not a fuckwad.”

“I...wouldn’t imagine you were, sir,” she manages faintly, more than a little light headed. She’s been worrying around this interview for a month, and just -- she has it. She’s...going to be a post-doc.

Shidan’s smile widens into a grin. “You see? Already doing better than half the idiots in this lab.”

But that’s only half of why she’s getting this job. The good half, because the other half --

“You’re getting this job,” her HR liaison -- Zen -- tells her as he pierces the seal on his juice. He says he’s her handler, which is a much more appealing title than the reality, which is babysitter. “I’ve been doing the processing for Shidan’s other candidates, and you’re really just top of the stack material. Real talent, you know?”

She does know; MIT doesn’t hand out PhDs for the asking. Still it’s a nice enough sentiment, and even if she’s starting to get the, ah, vibe that maybe Zen is getting a little more personally invested in her hire than is professional appropriate -- well, she’ll take it. Tenure track doesn’t grow on trees.

“Yo, Zen!” A collection of limbs folds itself into the plastic chair next to her handler, teeth broad and white in the bronze of his face. “Is this the interviewee?”

“Obi,” Zen remarks mildly. “I didn’t realize you’d be coming to lunch this early.”

“And we didn’t realize that you would be taking your handler duties so strictly,” another voice wryly observes. Its owner followers, and --

And Shirayuki doesn’t really keep up with celebrity gossip, doesn’t really look at the covers of magazines unless one of the tag lines boasts something like 10 SPF 80 Sunblocks That Really Work! so she doesn’t really know anything about models, but --

But she’s pretty sure that they aren’t supposed to work in academic labs, even if those labs are in California.

“Kiki,” Zen says, voice only mildly filled with dread. “You’re here too.”

“I am, willingly or not.” Her ice blue eyes shoot him a look that would freeze most men on the spot. “We thought you’d be eating alone. Though I’m glad to see you’re enjoying the...perks of your position.”

Zen flushes red from collar to hairline, and Shirayuki feels a pang of sympathy. It’s not easy having a crush with pale skin. “Prospective employees have a fully paid lunch scheduled into their day --”

“You know, you never personally showed me how the voucher system works,” Obi complains, eyelashes fluttering. They’re long for a man. They’d make him pretty, if he didn’t have a shiny scar right over his eyebrow. “Should I be hurt? I think I should be.”

Zen murmurs something, and over the din of the cafeteria Shiryuki can’t quite make it out, but it sounds like, I think you should shut up. But that doesn’t sound very Human Relations-y to her.

“You know, I’m pretty too,” Obi forges on, grin getting sharper with every word. “Aren’t I, Kiki?”

Kiki spears a cucumber in her salad. “No.”

“Striking.”

It takes her a full minute, and all of them staring, to realize it was her that spoke.

“I mean, you’re more striking than -- than pretty.” She swallows, eyes darting towards the other woman at the table. “And Kiki is...”

Words fail her. Beautiful is something you say when you look at a sunset, or someone’s kid in a prom dress; Kiki is --

“Sublime.” Oh god, who let her mouth do word things. She was certainly not telling it to do them!

Kiki’s mouth ticks up at the corner. “Well, that certainly is a new one.”

“Oh, I like her,” Obi says. “I’m gonna tell Shidan we’ve got to hire you.”

Shirayuki, of course, promptly forgets about all that. Hiring takes months, and between applications, interviews, and straining to make ends meet -- she is never going to quit on the spot like that again, she can tell you that much -- she forgets the specifics, just remembers when she gets the call that, yes she liked this place very much.

Yes, she would very much like to be hired.

It’s a decision she only half regrets later, when she turns a corner at the end of her first week, and runs straight into Zen.

“I told you you’d get hired,” he says, teeth Crest ad bright. “And here you are!”

She bites down on the fact that she knew it too, that Shidan told her straight out that she’d get the job and that his request just had to chug through HR’s red tape. It seems like a defensive thing to say, especially to a guy who works in HR, and especially to a guy that probably filed most of the paperwork.

“Ha ha, yeah,” she goes with instead, so smooth. Guys like Zen always intimidate her; that whole combo of handsome and confident is just...overwhelming. “Here I am.”

He leans against the wall, all casual-like, and her heart kicks up in her chest. Oh no. He’s going to do that thing. That thing handsome and confident guys do.

“We should go out sometime,” he says, oblivious to the copious sweating she is doing. “You know, for coffee. To celebrate --”

“Sorry!” she yelps, too loud for this size of corridor. “I like girls!”

She completes this stunning feat of social prowess by bolting down the hall like there’s fire on her heels and doesn’t stop until she’s half a building away. Which is the exact opposite way she should be, if she wants to be at the vending machine that sells cinnamon buns for ten cents cheaper.

Wow, this whole acting like a normal person thing -- really starting off strong. Go team.

“Hey.”

Shirayuki’s chin snaps up as she hurries into her bay, feeling like everyone knows what just happened, even though it’s impossible; rumor works fast but it can’t possibly be that fast. Obi’s there waiting, all tense with some tortured expression on his face, and for a long minute she worries what sort of bad news could have him this knotted up, whether he’s about to tell he’s moving bays -- which would be terrible, since having him as a bay-mate was one of the best surprises this week --

“You’re gay?”

Oh, nope, this is worse. Way worse.

She draws herself up, still only coming to his chin, and says, “Ye--”

“Oh, awesome.” His whole face lights up, and he presses a hand to his chest. “I’m bi! Or well, pan? I really don’t know what the difference is, to be completely fucking honest. Probably pan.”

“Oh my god.” All the wind goes out of her, and she gets that light-headed feeling, like she might pass out, only like, from relief. “Me too!”

He cocks his head, like a curious bird. “You too?”

“I’m bi,” she says. “Or -- well I don’t think I’m pan? From what I understand? I don’t know.” She hesitates. “I maybe I need to brush up on the literature.”

“Let’s just call it part of the bisexual experience.” he laughs. “But wait, I thought you told Zen you were into girls?”

“Ohhh.” Right, this would be the, uh, sticky part. Obi and Zen are friends; close enough that in the fifteen minutes it took her to take a walk around the building and mentally scream, Obi had managed to get a blow-by-blow of their two minute conversation. “I...um...”

“No judgement here,” he assures her. “He’s my friend, but like, I get it. If he asks me, I will say you are full on into the ladies.”

“I...” She doesn’t really know how to handle that sort of thing, the whole...loyalty deal. She’s never really had anyone like that. “I’m just like, um...a Kinsey Scale five, honestly.”

Obi blinks. “I feel like this is a terrible thing to admit, but I know shit about, you know, the academic gayness.” He grimaces. “I hope that doesn’t lower your opinion of my academic or gay credentials.”

That surprises a laugh out of her. “No, it’s fine, I just -- labels helped when I was trying to tell my grandparents. Just being able to quantify on a scale was easier than trying to, you know, explain everything.”

“I feel it.” He twists back to his computer, typing with his loud hunt-and-peck style.

“It’s when --”

“No, no!” He holds up a hand over his shoulder. “I’m googling it. I’m educating myself.” He squints at the screen. “Only incidentally heterosexual, huh?”

It feels like a lot to get into to, trying to explain how incidental a lot of her attraction feels, that it took her a lot of googling and staring up at the ceiling to even get her a number, so she just says, “Yeah.”

His mouth peels back in a grin. “And Zen wasn’t the incident.”

She wants to glare, but -- god, she needs to remember that. “No,” she manages around a giggle. “Boys are okay, but you know...girls.”

He laughs, settling back into his chair with a groan. “You make an excellent point.”

It’s hard to shake the feeling, at first, that the other shoe is about to drop, that just like last time her dream job is going to be wrenched out of her hands by some...some idiot with a trust fund, but --

But two days after her disastrous I like girls word vomit, Obi mentions they need to gay up this place. She thinks he’s joking, up until he sends her links to etsy shops that sell desk tchotchkes with the bi pride flag on them, asking her whether they’re going for understated or opulent.

“You don’t think people will get weird?” Everyone here has been nice, but everyone at her old work was nice too, right up until it became inconvenient.

“Kazaha works here,” he tells her, “people are already weird.”

“No, I just mean...” There’s no good way to say, do you think we’ll get fired. “People, could, um...”

“I’ll punch ‘em,” Yuzuri’s disembodied voice offers through the bench. Shirayuki can see her just on the other side, a blur of blonde and neon. “If anyone gives you any trouble, you let me know, and I’ll go straight to Shidan and raise hell about it.”

For a minute, her chest gets tight, and it’s -- it’s nice to know that someone has her back, but there’s a part of her that wants to say, but I don’t want to need your help. She doesn’t want there to be a problem in the first place, doesn’t want to have someone have to speak up for her because of who she is --

But she’s grateful too. That someone would. It’s a...weird feeling, being angry and touched all at the same time.

Yuzuri stomps around the end of the bench, fists sitting high on her hips. “If Suzu can keep his dolls around, there’s no reason anyone should give you trouble for flags or whatever.”

“Uh, first off, they are collectable figurines,” Suzu says following after her, like always. “And second, Cardcaptor Sakura is an institution.”

“They’re dolls,” Yuzuri tells him. “Cute dolls, but still dolls. Also, not really the point.”

“Oh, right.” Suzu distinctly grims up. “It’s your bay, decorate it however you want. We’ll all back you up. You can put up porn for all I --”

“Please don’t put up porn,” Ryuu says, the loudest she’s ever heard him.

This is, of course, the worst time for Shidan to walk in. “Who is putting up porn?”

Shirayuki drops her head to her desk. Well this will certainly be a new thing to get fired for.

Shirayuki’s been at the lab two months and one very excruciating discussion about workplace pornography (re: not even once), when Shidan catches her in the hall, looking sheepish. She nearly bolts right then -- the last time he looked like that, she suddenly found herself as the new lab safety officer, and she does not need to interface with Mihaya from EHS ever again, thank you -- but he says, “I need to ask you a favor, for Ryuu.”

This is dirty pool and there’s no way Shidan doesn’t know it, giving her that look. Ryuu may have his PhD, but he’s just a baby; she’s not precisely sure how old, but considering how he keeps forgetting he’s old enough to come to happy hour, she’s guessing not very.

“You know that the university is very excited about his new paper --?”

Of course, everyone in the department does. He’s -- well, he’s no where near having to worry about thirty, and his first paper as a post-doc is getting published in Nature. It’s been all anyone can talk about for the past two weeks.

“Well, they want a press release,” he explains, looking guiltier by the second. “And we don’t really have a...PR department, per se, so we have to write them ourselves...”

Shirayuki sees the writing on the wall. “And you want me to write it.”

Shidan deflates in relief. “Yes.”

“I’ve never done anything like that before.” Not for real, at least. She’d had to practice writing a fake one, way back for her undergrad writing course, but -- something that actual people with journalism degrees would see? Never. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“That’s fine.” Shidan waves a hand, as if her protests are nothing more than technicalities. “Legal’s got someone who did PR. They send her around whenever one of us has to write up a brief. I told her she could wait by your bench.”

“She’s here now?” Shirayuki blinks. “You want me to do this now? I have --”

“Just to get the ball rolling!” he promises. “It won’t take more than a couple of minutes.” He gives her a knowing look. “It’s for Ryuu, after all.”

She lets out a soft sigh. “All right. I can -- I can take a few minutes.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Shirayuki starts, swinging around the corner of her bay, restraining herself from adding, but Shidan didn’t tell me I should be expecting you. “I was just --”

Her eyes catch on the impeccably tailored suit, the sharply pulled back ponytail, the whole towering blonde in heels thing --

It’s Kiki. Here. In her bay.

And Obi’s nowhere in sight.

“Hnn.” She shakes herself. “I mean, sorry, I don’t think Obi’s here -- maybe he’s already in the cafeteria? -- I just thought you were -- Shidan told me --”

Her mouth quirks at the corner, and it’s -- it’s a lot. “I’m not here for Obi.“

“N-no?” Shirayuki grips at her bench. It’s the only way to keep her legs from wobbling.

“No.” Her teeth flash, perfect and white, between her lips. “I’m here for you.”

Pretty girls like Kiki really shouldn’t say things like that to her, her heart can’t really take it.

Kiki taps something in her pen holder. “I like your flag, by the way.”

She nearly asks what flag? when it occurs to her -- her bi flag, the one Obi had shoved in next to all her ballpoints as he’d waved his own, pink, yellow and blue, saying well, it’s more impressive if they’re different.

“Oh!” she shrills, suddenly very aware of how very...colorful her whole desk is. “Thank you! But...you....um....have something...that I...uh....?”

“Didn’t Shidan tell you?” Kiki smiles. “I’m your liaison from legal.”

“Did she say she liked my flag too?” Obi asks, much later, concerned.

“I don’t -- no?” She blinks. “That’s what you took away from this conversation?”

“I’m just saying!” he gestures toward his desk. “The pan flag is nice too! If she likes one, she should like the other!”

“Okay.” She pats his arm. “I’m going tell you this story again, but I’m gonna need you to focus.”

“But --!”

“Focus.”

It becomes a -- a thing.

“Shirayuki,” Shidan calls out from his office as she passes. “Kazaha is having something printed up in Science. Do you think you could liaise with Legal --?”

“Hey, Shirayuki.” Yuzuri waves her over in the cafeteria. “This newspaper wants a quote, do you think you could run this by Legal --?”

“Yo, Red,” Obi leans back in his chair as she trudges in from the imaging room. “Ryuu says he’s confused by the wording on some of that press release. Do you think you could look over these edits and then send the new one --”

“Onto Legal?” she asks wearily. “Yeah, I can handle that.”

“Rough day?” he asks. “I’d thought you’d be excited. You and Kiki are buddies now, right?”

“Yeah, it’s just...” She shrugs. “I just have my own work.”

“Oh, I see.” He waggles his eyebrows. “You want to be passing your own press releases past Legal.”

Heat bursts across her cheeks. “I mean, yes! I’d like to be promoting my own research.”

Obi’s mouth splits into a grin she does not like, not one bit. “You mean, you want to be showing Kiki how smart you are, and not everyone else.”

He -- how? -- that’s not -- “That doesn’t have anything to do with --”

“Shirayuki!”

“Kiki!” She jolts up, chair rolling back into the shelves beside her desk. She winces, but Kiki only smiles.

“Obi, is that a new sticker?” She nods her head toward his laptop, where a round, pink sticker reads STEMINIST. It sit next to another, more worn one that reads I’m going to have to SCIENCE THE SHIT out of this.

“Oh, yeah!” He grins, flipping down the cover so she can see it better. “I saw it on twitter and was like, that is mine, you know?”

She rubs a finger over the word and grins. “I like it.”

“I’ll send you the link.”

“Would you?”

“Definitely.” He swings it open, already typing. “They have it in blue too, but like, what’s the point, you know? Pink all the way.”

“Right.” She turns her attention over to Shirayuki, and her mouth softens into a smile. “Did you get your hair cut, Shirayuki?”

“J-just a trim!” she squeaks, curling a strand around her finger. “It was starting to get in the way --”

“She almost lit it up on a Bunsen burner,” Obi translates helpfully, the traitor.

“It was starting to get in the way,” she starts again, darting a glare in his direction, “and so I either had to, you know, commit to growing it out, or get it cut, so...”

There’s a tug on her hair, right by her ear -- a brush really -- and -- and--

Kiki is touching her.

“It’s cute,” she says, with a tilt of her head. “It looks good on you.”

“Thanks,” Shirayuki manages, in a range that only dogs can hear.

“I was just stopping by about the press release.” Kiki leans a hip against her bench, a long fingered hand wrapping around her waist. “Ryuu sent me the changes he requested --”

“He did? I thought...” Shirayuki darts a glance at Obi, who looks equally surprised. “Never mind.”

“I’m having a hard time understanding what he’s trying to say, I was hoping you could explain it to me.”

“Oh sure --”

“Maybe over lunch tomorrow?” Kiki raises her eyebrows expectantly. “I’ll swing by around twleve.”

“Obi. Obi!” she hisses, whacking at his arm. “Did you see that?”

“I did,” Obi admits. “I’m not sure what I saw, but I was definitely here the whole time to see it.”

“She said my hair was cute!”

“I know, I was here.” He leans back in his chair. “Also, that was what you took away from that?”

“She touched it.”

“She also said my sticker was nice.” He smiles at his laptop. “I wonder if she’s going to get the blue or the pink one. I should tell her pink so we m --”

“Obi!” she shrills. “We are talking about my hair right now.”

He stares. “You’re right, I’m sorry. This is about you.”

She nods. “Thank you.”

“You and your ginormous crush.”

Her jaw drops. “That’s...I’m not...we are...” She coughs. “We are professional colleagues.”

“Shirayuki, come on. You’re gay.” Obi sweeps a hand towards the door. “And Kiki looks like that.”

Shirayuki stares at him, stares at the door.

Flight is the only option. “I’m going to go get cookies from the vending machine.”

Obi’s smile is far too self-satisfied. “Cookies can’t drown out your gay panic.”

“I. Am. Getting. Cookies.”

He grins, calling out after her. “You’ll still be gay when you come back.”

“That’s not -- I’m not--” She huffs. “I just like cookies!”

Lunch is supposed to be a quiet table in the cafeteria with both of them picking over their salads; Shirayuki with a Caesar salad without the dressing but double the chicken and croutons, and Kiki with -- well, whatever she liked on her salad. She seems like maybe a baby corn and avocado person. Lemon poppy seed dressing? That seems...right. It’s supposed to be quick food and work between them, not --

Not the nice little diner down the way, made to look like it’s all down-home even though it’s right next to a Dick’s and a Starbucks in the center of a strip mall ten minutes down the road from their building. Shirayuki’s still looking for the salads when Kiki orders a Belgian waffle with fresh fruit, and with a sigh a relief she orders a set of “mouse-themed” pancakes.

“It’s just Mickey Mouse,” Kiki tells her, “but this way, no one gets tempted to sue.”

Shirayuki, for the first time in her life, is torn between telling her, I know about copyright law, and --and --

Just playing entirely dumb, if only so that Kiki would keep talking to her like this. Ever since they walked in, Kiki’s been -- well, animated, at least more than she usually is. She’s explained about four different features that are the result of class-action lawsuits, asked what she liked to eat before recommending at least two different dishes, and now, well --

“Do you want dessert?”

Shirayuki blinks up from her empty plate. “Dessert?”

“They have a display,” Kiki tells her, nodding towards the counter. “It rotates.”

“Oh!” She cranes her head over her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse. “Just like a real diner.”

When she turns back, Kiki’s just...amused, one eyebrow arched in question. “Oh, is that what makes a real diner?”

“N-no!” She can feel her cheeks burning, and she wishes she wasn’t so -- so pale. “It’s just that, I, um, well...”

“Obi said you were from a small town,” Kiki tells her. “And you had opinions on diners.”

Namely that California didn’t have any real ones, yes. Though this place comes close, if it has a rotating display. “Are there pies?”

Kiki smiles. “The last time I checked. Do you want to go look?”

Shirayuki traipses up to the display, watching as key lime and lemon meringue spin around the top tier, with a half dozen choices of cakes and cheesecakes below it.

“Ohhh,” she murmurs, hand pressed to the glass. “These look so good.”

“Let’s get one,” Kiki says, leaning on the counter beside her. “We can split it.”

Shirayuki stares up at her, wide-eyed. “Really?”

“Yeah, pick what you like.”

She blinks. “But what if you don’t like it?”

Kiki smiles warmly. “I’m sure I’ll like whatever you pick, Shirayuki.”

“O-okay!” She peers at the display, trying to figure out which pie has the most meringue. “I think I’ll pick --”

To this day, she’s not quite sure how it happens. She reaches out a hand, gently slides the door --

And the glass shatters, sprinkling shards onto the floor, onto her shoes, and worst of all, right onto the perfect slice of lemon meringue pie.

“You are a disaster,” Obi laughs, voice muffled through his hands. “You broke a glass door?”

“The owner said it wasn’t my fault!” she protests. “The glass on those doors is just -- just faulty!”

“Uh-huh,” Obi hums, unconvinced.

“It’s true!” she insists. “And Kiki even gave me her number, in case something happens!”

“Wait, roll that back,” Yuzuri says through the shelving. Shirayuki hears the patter of Yuzuri’s flats before she pokes around the corner. “She gave you her number? Are you sure this was a business lunch?”

Shirayuki blinks. “What else would it have been?”

Yuzuri stares at her. “A date?”

“W-what?” Shirayuki can feel her face going red, can feel the heat practically searing her freckles. “N-no, that’s not -- not --”

“She asked you to lunch outside. She tried to impress you with her legal know-how.” Yuzuri ticks the points off on her fingers, expression showing her dry annoyance. “She gave you her personal phone number. Did she pay for lunch too?”

“Only because --” Shirayuki hesitates. “Obi, is Kiki straight?”

He stares back at her, equally lost. “She had a boyfriend.”

Shirayuki waves her hands, as if to say see?

Yuzuri remains unimpressed. “You’re both bi!”

“Well,” Obi hedges. “Actually, I think I’m more p...”

She looks at him. He looks at her.

“Oh my god, she could like both,” he says.

“Oh my god,” she agrees, feeling the blood drained from her face. Kiki may not have been asking her out to business lunch but -- but --

Yuzuri throws up her hands. “Did you both forget bi people exist? Is that a thing that just happened?”

“I mean,” Obi coughs, pink riding high on his cheekbones. “It’s not, you know, a common thing --”

She lets out a huff, annoyed. “There’s two of you in this lab alone! We only have twenty people!”

He shrugs. “Statistical anomaly.”

“I...” Shirayuki turns back to her desk. “I think I have to -- email?”

“Text?” Obi offers.

“Text! Yes.” Shirayuki nods. “Text. I must -- text --”

Hi. It’s Shirayuki. You gave me your number.

Yes, I remember :) Is there something I can do for you?

I just wanted to thank you for lunch. And I’m sorry about breaking the glass. And stuff.

Don’t worry about it It was cute

GREAT. Sorry, I accidentally put capslock on. Also I was wondering if you’d like to go to dinner. As a date. Officially.

I’d love to ...but wasn’t today an official date?

[sabraeal]

Could you write something with obiyuki plus getting themselves into awkward situations, cuz honestly these dorks have no idea what's going on 95% of the time.

(Part 2 of If Thy Set Thine Heart to Wooing)

It’s never been Obi’s job to be the center of attention, not as long as he’s been with Master. Not before it either.

He might have caused a distraction or two – knocking over barrels, setting free horses, and on one memorable occasion, scaring a whole coop of chicken – but his place has always been the shadows, unnoticeable as wallpaper. It’s been him that would wander into the kitchen for a hot bun and the freshest gossip, or share a drink with the off-duty guards and come back with a head full of the latest rumors. He’s the one people talk to, the one they trust with their thoughts and forget about when he leaves.

He’s not supposed to be the one rumors are about.

He’s not supposed to be seen at all.

Obi only suspects when he walks into the mess one evening and all conversation hushes.

That’s not – not strictly true. He had noticed the guards‘ chatter hitting a lull when he passes them on the walls, how ladies he passed would lean toward each other and whisper behind soft hands, how –

How suddenly he would walk into the pharmacy, and all that would greet him were glares.

“Obi!” Miss’s smile pulls tight when she sees him, clutching her books to her chest. Things have been different between them of late, almost awkward. He’s not sure what’s changed, but it’s like – like he has too many limbs around her and not enough words. There’s a gulf between them, and he doesn’t know how to fill it, how to cross it.

“I didn’t –” She ducks her head, cheeks flushed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I was just on my way to the – the stockroom!”

“Oh.” The word falls dumbly from his lips. His hands sit by his side, useless. “I could go with you. Reach the things on the high shelves.”

“I –” Her eyelashes flutter like frantic heartbeats against her cheeks. “I’ll be fine. Izuru said they fixed the ladder.”

He laughs, and even to his own ears it sounds forced. “And you trust it?”

“Ah…” Her gaze skitters around him, settling somewhere past his shoulder. “I should – I’ll see you at dinner.”

He grimaces; tonight is his extra session with Haki. “I took an extra shift –”

“Right!” She slips right past him. “You’re – busy. Of course. I’ll…see you.”

Obi stares after her, lost. He’s not quite sure how he cocked up that conversation, but clearly he’s got a gift.

“What are you doing?” Suzu mutters, grinding his seeds with more force than Obi thinks is strictly necessary.

He blinks. “What?”

“What. Are. You. Doing?” He’s never seen Suzu angry – upset, yes, dramatically wailing in front of the university bulletin, of course, but angry? Never.

He’s not, not now, but there’s a hint of it in the way he looks at Obi, like he’d glare if he didn’t like him so much.

“With Shirayuki?” He sighs, shaking his head. “I wish I knew. She won’t –”

“No,” Suzu snaps. “With Mistress Haki.”

“Oh,” Haki yawns, offering him one of the mugs of chocolate her ladies have brought them. “You hadn’t heard those?”

“Wha?” He gapes, accepting the cup with boneless hands. he hardly even noticed how the ceramic burns at his finger tips. “You did?”

“It was bound to happen.” She shakes out her hair. It’s too long for anything but a civil fight, but Obi knows Haki’s more likely to take a roll with a stable boy than cut it.

“Bound to happen.”

“Of course.” She shrugs. “You’re a handsome, young, inappropriate man. I’m a beautiful, young, proper lady.”

He snorts. “Humble too.”

“False humility is not a virtue,” she snips, savoring a sip of her chocolate. “In any case – you’re my guard, people see us alone together, we get on…it was only a matter of time before someone suggested that your extra hours with me were spent in bed.”

He groans.

“Figuratively, of course,” she assures him. “The rumors put us as quite adventurous. You wouldn’t believe –”

He holds up a hand with a wince. “I’m pretty sure I’d rather not know, your ladyship.”

“Boo,” she says, lips twitching. “You’re no fun at all.”

“You should do something,” her ladyship says, as he makes for the door.

“Hm? Do what?”

She sighs, rolling her eyes aloft. “Do something about Shirayuki.”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “My lady –”

“Obi,” she says, carefully setting aside her mug. “I will be most disappointed in you if our lessons stretch long past these rumors.”

“That doesn’t –”

“Of course it does.” She gives him a warning look. “Sometimes, Obi, humility itself is not a virtue either. Just stupidity.”

Raised voices seep through even the thick door to the walls. Obi hesitates, hand hovered over where he keeps his knives – if he’s about to walk into an altercation, it’s best to be prepared for the worst –

Only to find Jirou standing over two recruits, spitting thunder like an angry god.

“W-we didn’t mean to, sir,” one of them stammers. they both stand a head above their commanding officer, but they cower like he’s twice as tall, wincing as he claps his hands to startle them into looking at him.

“It doesn’t matter what you meant to do, now does it?”

The other recruit swallows hard, rubbing sweat from his brow. “We didn’t – we didn’t know Lady Shirayuki –”

Obi throws the door open, making sure it slams against stone. “What’s that about Miss Shirayuki?”

Both their eyes go wide. “C-captain!”

Jirou frowns at the both of them. “You’re both on late shift for a month. And I don’t want to catch you two at this again.”

Obi trusts his second, but he still has to stop himself from calling the boys back and demanding answers. “What’s that all about?”

“Mistress Shirayuki was waiting for you down at the door to get off shift,” Jirou tells him.

He raises his eyebrows. “Shirayuki?” She’d been doing her best to all but avoid him for weeks now.

“Yeah. And apparently those two idiots have heard the latest rumors –” Jirou sends him a meaningful look – “and were…indiscreet with their words.”

“Indiscreet?” One day he’ll be able to do more than act as his second’s echo, but it’s not today.

“There was some speculation about the nature of your service.” Jirou clears his throat, lips twitching. “And a little about the position and duration.”

Obi scrubs a hand over his face. Ai yai yai. “And Miss heard all that?”

“It was flattering, at least,” he assures him, like somehow that will make it better. “I found them at it, didn’t even know Miss Shirayuki was there until she made a run for it.”

He stares. “Miss? Make a run for it?” She was more likely to give recruits an earful about spreading gossip.

“It was…graphic,” Jirou allows, with the sort of expression that tells Obi he’s feigning thoughtfulness to disguise his needling. “Maybe it upset her delicate sensibilities.”

Obi snorts. Miss is fresh out of those.

“Well, as you wish,” he sighs. “Though I have to say, she looked pretty…overcome by the whole thing.”

“Overcome?” He remembers her, out in the snow, the face she made when he called Haki mistress –

His mouth curls in a grin. “You don’t say.”

This late, the labs are empty, all the lamps extinguished – save for the one on the fifth storey, where he can see a slender shadow cast against the glass.

Obi huffs out a laugh, swinging from grated window to the next, boots digging into the icy stones of the university for toeholds. If his miss doesn’t want to be found, she might consider making her habits less obvious. After all –

He hesitates. But what if – what if she want to be found?

What if she wanted to be found by him.

He nearly misses a handhold thinking about it.

A mixture of snow and wind make opening the window with any level of stealth impossible. Instead he rolls into it, letting the wrought-iron frame bang noisily against the wall, watching her jump, whirling to see him crouched in the window –

And nearly dropping her beaker.

“Ah, it’s a good thing I’m here, Miss,” he sighs, setting the sloshing glass safely on her bench. “You’ll lose hours of work if you’re not more careful.”

Her mouth works soundlessly as he circles back to the window, flipping the lock shut. “Obi – what –?”

He leans, so casual, against her bench. “I hear you were looking for me?”

“O-oh.” She ducks her head, and in the chiaroscuro the lamplight casts, he can’t tell whether her cheeks pink shyly or not. “I thought you were still o-occupied…” Her gaze flicks up as she adds, “with your mistress.”

He grins.

“My mistress?” he manages, so even, as he steps closer. “Oh yes. She’s certainly been putting me through my paces.”

Her pained expression almost makes him give up the game; he doesn’t want to hurt her, not even if the cut is fictional, but –

She tosses her head, lifting her eyes to meet his, and all he can see in her is a challenge. “Good. I’m happy for you, Obi. That you’ve gotten what you want.”

He hums, taking yet another step closer. “You know, Miss, I’ve been chasing her for years,” he admits, conversational. If she could hear his heart, she’d know it was anything but.

She shuffles back, gaze faltering. “Years?”

“Oh, yes.” His mouth twitches. “I just always thought she was unattainable. Meant for far better than me, to be sure.”

Her mouth pulls flat, eyes taking that determined shine that had compromised his heart, so many years ago. It would have been easier not to love her, if what he loved wasn’t the core of who she was. “No one is better than you, Obi. You’ve always been – deserving.”

He falters on his next step, and there must be something about him that seems stricken, since she quickly changes tack.

“And she is…” Miss’s lips pinch. “Very beautiful.”

“Mm,” he says, closer. She hedges back. “That’s true. Though I’ll admit, it’s not what drew me to her.”

“And she’s very tall.”

“To some, I suppose.”

“And – and womanly.”

His gaze drags over her, for once letting himself linger at the slim curve of her hips and the gentle slope of her breast, showing the barest hint of his desire. “I’ve never had any complaints on that front, sure.”

His miss, of course, doesn’t notice.

“And –” her mouth twists – “and blonde.”

“Oh,” he murmurs as her back hits the table. “I don’t know about that one.”

She glances up at him, brow furrowed, but undeterred. “And it seems like you enjoy –” she licks her lips, awkward – “servicing her.”

Her cheeks flush as her words catch up to her. “I mean, being in her service.”

“Oh, Miss,” he purrs, resting his hands on either side of her, bending close. “I haven’t gotten to that yet, but I’m certain there’s no one else I’d rather…yield service too.”

She’s red from neck to brow when she hazards a glance at him, and for a moment all he sees is heat, and then she lowers her head again, and he –

He takes his chance.

Her lips are just as soft, just as sweet as he had thought they might be. She stiffens at first blush, fingers clenching in his coat, but in the next she melts, she blossoms, and she – she –

She opens her mouth against his, surging up to meet his kiss. He staggers back to hold her, hands flexing against her hips, drawing her in closer. Her arms lift, winding around his neck, every soft part of her resting against a hard part of him, and he can’t help crushing her close, his hands stroking her back, burying themselves in her hair.

Her breath stutters across his lips as he pulls away, eyes fluttering open to half-mast.

“Shirayuki,” he murmurs, hand palming down her flank. “I only have one mistress.”

“Then…” Her face is the perfect study of pleased confusion. “We haven’t been talking about Haki?”

He leans in, relishing how her head tips to meet his. “No.”

Zakura makes his excuses after a single bout.

“I have important work to be doing, Your Majesty,” he reminds him with a grin, mopping the sweat from his brow. “You’re to be married in a week, if you haven’t forgotten.”

“Ah, thank you,” Izana drawls, sheathing his blade. “Seeing as Mother hasn’t reminded me in the last quarter hour, I have drawn dangerously close to forgetting.”

His aide sweeps a dramatic bow. “All part of the many services I provide.”

“Just go.” Izana waves at him dismissively, in the way he knows Zakura hates. “You’re boring me with all this wedding talk.”

“I live to serve,” Zakura deadpans, sauntering out the doors.

The room is cavernous now that it is empty, and Izana presses a hand to the weapons rack, steadying himself. A king rarely has time for leisure, but with the wedding looming close, and having started the preliminaries for his brother’s own political courtship dance – he’s hardly had time to breathe.

A king does not have the luxury of falling apart. Not when he has so much yet to do.

The door barks on it hinges as it swings open, and in a single breath Izana is whole again, turning with a smirk. “Honestly, is there no one else you can annoy at this –”

The words quickly die in his throat. His visitor is not Zakura.

“Oh my.” Boot heels click enticingly across the marble floor. “We are not even yet married, and already you tire of me, Your Majesty?”

“I…” His wit is his sharpest weapon, but it abandons him now as his fiancée strolls across the floor, not in her usual fashionable gowns, but in – in buckskins and blouse, waistcoat expertly tailored to sit at the top of her hips, drawing his gaze between the curve of her breast and the curve of her –

“Of course not, my lady.” Heat gathers beneath his skin, and he – he is irritated at his own distraction. Lady Kiki wore mens’ clothes as well, and yet he never – “What is it that I can do for you?”

“I thought…” She’s far too close to him, the scent of ginger and spice enveloping him as she runs her hand along the rack, fingers lingering on the pommel of one of the swords. “That we might spar.”

He blinks, expression flattening into a polite mask. “Spar? You and me, my lady?”

“Yes.” Her smile tilts up at the corner. “Do you happen to play for forfeit?”

He is unprepared for her being capable.

From the first moment, she surprises him, pulling sword from the wrack like she was born to it.

“Your brother never mentioned you studied the blade,” he observes as they circle each other. She’s cautious, perhaps too much so. But there is an eagerness in her too, one that makes him wonder if he can wait, make her try to land the first blow.

Her mouth shifts into a smirk; he wishes the sight did not make his heart clench so. It’s…inconvenient. “It is a recently acquired hobby of mine.”

She steps to him, and it is him who makes the novice move, who goes to block only to find it is a feint, a way to throw him off guard as she dances in close. Her blade darts in, inches from his side, but he is fast as well, parrying well before she slips away, circling him so she is always at his back.

“Your style is…unique.” There’s no other word for it. She’s not experienced, to be sure, but she fights clever and careful.

Her teeth flash in a grin. “I had a unique teacher.”

She’s toying with him, trying to wear him out or dizzy him with these antics. An intelligent tactic, to cover up her inexperience, but he did not best the finest swords in his kingdom to be undone by a pair of buckskins.

He stops turning, and when she lunges for him, he is ready. A single parry gives him time to break distance, to bring her into a space he can control, heaving heavy blow after heavy blow to keep her on guard, to make her falter, and –

He goes to land another, expecting her blade beneath it, but she sidesteps, and while he over extends she cuts in close, not with blade but with –

The pommel strikes his hand, leaving it nerveless. It’s no feat at all for her knee to come up, tapping the blade from his hand up into hers.

“I want my forfeit,” she says, so even.

“We didn’t discuss terms, did we?” He swallows. Foolish.“What is it my lady desires?”

“I…” For the first time since she has entered the room, she wavers, cheeks flushing pink. “Tell me…” She licks her lips. “Tell me you want to marry me.”

“I do.” It wouldn’t have been a lie before; he needed the North, and she was a pleasant concession to make for it. He’d always liked her, that sly wit she let slip through when her polite mask began to crack. He’d thought she would be interesting at least, a comfort if not entirely an ally, but now…

Now he is…intrigued. How could he not be, when she’s come in here dressed like a man and beat him so handily.

“Tell me…that you cannot wait.”

“I cannot,” he agrees. He’s surprised to find he means it. “I’m eager to be told that I can take you as a wife.” He lifts a brow. “Especially if you plan to keep those trousers.”

Now that is a pretty blush.

He leans in, lifting his blade from her boneless hand. “Another,” he breathes, far less controlled than he wished.

Her eyelashes flutter in confusion. “I – excuse me?”

“Another match.” He pulls away, smirk slanting his lips. “After all, anyone can win once.”

Her eyes narrow. “If that is what Your Majesty wishes.”

“Oh yes.” He looms close once again, relishing how her breast rises faster when he nears. “And let me name my forfeit now.”

“Of course.”

His gaze drops pointedly to her lips. “If I win, you’ll allow me to kiss you.”

Her chest stutters for a moment, and then she is closer still, mouth perilously close to his own.

“Husband,” she murmurs, breath caressing his lips. “If you want a good match, you have to make your forfeit something I don’t want to do.”

His hand seizes her waist, dragging her body flush to his. Distantly, he hears steel clatter to marble, and then her fingers grip at his cravat, tilting his chin the barest hint down.

“Oh my,” she sighs, palm curling up over his shoulder. “It seems you have me disarmed already.”

He grins, letting it grow sharp, grow wolfish. “I’ll have you more than that, if you aren’t care –”

Her fingers wind into his hair and tug.

His groan echoes off every surface of the room. He’d be humiliated, if he wasn’t beyond caring.

“If you keep doing that,” he warns, mouth so close to hers that he is no longer sure which breath is hers and which is his. “We will have to call the Justice now, or you will not make it to the –”

Her palm presses tight along his skull, buries beneath the thong that ties back his hair, and she pulls.

“Oh hells,” he murmurs, and then there is no room for thought.

Neither of them call for the Justice.

[sabraeal]

All Pain Will Turn to Medicine: Part 1

Shirayuki is in her twelfth summer when Herr Anda comes to call.

She knows of him, of course; former palace physician turned city surgeon when his treatments failed to save the queen in childbed. He’s older; younger than her grandparents but with dark hair ceding to gray, leaning heavily on his walking stick in a way that makes her think he doesn’t carry it for fashion.

There are whispers about that, spoken in the same hushed tones her grandparents use to talk about the war. He doesn’t look to her like a soldier, but when she says so, Opa just pats her head and tells her, don’t worry about it, dear.

Herr Anda has a reputation as prickly and snappish, as likely to scold as he is to aid when people come to his door. Frau Kino has told her often enough that most would rather chance her inexperience than his bad moods. Shirayuki tends to most anything that doesn’t end with death or dismemberment in the neighborhood, her mother’s journals spread out by her side as she works. They laughed the first time she had offered to try, but none of them do now, taking her poultices and tinctures with the same sort of gravitas they treat Herr Anda’s surgeries.

She expects his visit to be about that, to be him demanding she stop treating her neighbors, but --

But when she answers the door, he merely stares, his gaze sweeping over her with an intensity that makes her want to slouch, to fold in on herself.

She doesn’t. She pulls back her shoulders, drawing up to her full -- albeit, unimpressive -- height. With a shuddering breath, she stares him in the eyes and asks, “May I help you?”

He blinks. His eyes our owlish and ridiculous behind his spectacles. “Are your grandparents at home?”

It’s all really said and done, after that.

She in her thirteenth when it begins. The knocking.

It begins to affect her work; she startles each time the bell above the door chimes. It’s an often enough occurrence that even Herr Anda notices, though he says nothing until Frau Kino comes to pick up her nerve powder and she drops a jar of ground saffron from the highest shelf to the floor, shattering the glass. She stares for a long moment, praying to every heavenly being she has heard of that it will not come out of her pay. The jar was the size of her fist.

He does not yell; Herr Anda hardly ever raises his voice, he instead relies on quips so sharp a man needs stitches, or insults so burning that pride needs an ointment. Instead, he waits, watching Frau Kino hobble out of the shop before he turns back to his office, his invitation clear.

Shirayuki wipes her palms on her apron and hurries after him with hung head.

“So,” he starts when she closes the door. She hardly has a moment to brace herself before he says, “What is it that is bothering you, girl?”

Huh. She didn’t expect that.

Her dreams have been strange, lately.

Herr Anda waves her off when she speaks of them; he is used to the ever-changing fads of court, astrologers giving way the cheiromancers giving way to tassographers. Oneiromancy is just yet another folk superstition, as silly as believing in scrying by bones or stars or whatever whimsy is about to come into fashion. He only believes in what can be seen with the eyes, what can be repeated on the table, not what some fishwife’s mother told her.

Shirayuki presses her lips together as he falls into yet another of his lectures, wondering why he even asked what was bothering her at all.

Opa merely smiles when she tells him, nudging Oma with one of his knobby elbows.

“it’s an omen,” he tells her. “Something important will happen to you.”

Shirayuki sighs at that. Maybe she is destined to wind up like Herr Anda, nodding as villagers tell her Frau Zostra saw that their future in pig entrails.

“You must keep your heart open,” Oma agrees. “It is opportunity that knocks.”

Shirayuki ignores them.

She wakes each morning with her heart racing in her chest and head turned to her bedroom door, waiting for someone to enter. She doesn’t know who.

She wonders if she ever will.

When it comes, it is not at her door.

Pebbles knocked against her windows, click click click, one after the other. Shirayuki rolls out of bed, pulling her housecoat around her. Throwing open her shutters, she is ready to meet her destiny, but --

But it is only Pavo, standing just below.

Her mouth pulls flat in irritation. She made the mistake of letting him kiss her behind the stables on May Day, and he’d taken it as nothing short of proposal. She’d been curious, now that it was all the other girls could talk about -- kissing and boys and being wed -- but a few moments with his tongue flopping about her mouth like a fish had cured her of it. Too bad it had not done the same for him.

“Shirayuki!” he calls up, voice straining from its volume. “Shirayuki!”

“What’s this all about?” she hisses down, trying to pitch her voice so the whole street won’t hear. The last thing she needs is everyone thinking she’s stepping out with Pavo. She’s too young to wed, but not enough for the neighbors to keep from deciding its a done thing, an understanding. “You’ll wake my grandparents!”

“It’s Herr Anda!” he shouts up, looking pale. He’d never gotten along with the physician; it’d been one of the many perks of being her master’s apprentice lately. “He says to come quick!”

She doesn’t need to be told twice.

Belting her dress tightly about her waist, she runs to Herr Anda’s only vaguely aware of Pavo behind her. She’s can’t think of any women that might deliver tonight; the miller’s wife isn’t due for another two months, and she’s the furthest along. If it was any other kind of emergency, he would have someone escort her to the patient’s house, but –

She opens the door to the practice, assaulted with the cloying scent of rotting blood. Despite all her training, her first thought is there is death in this room.

A glut of people crowd the door to the patient room, enough so that she has to push her way past what feels like half the village to get in. She’s not sure what could draw such an audience; most of the people here are squeamish, hardly able to handle what maladies they suffer, never mind something truly awful. They try to part before her, but it’s like trying to squeeze a coin through a cog -- a slow business, and everyone’s going to get a little bent. She finally pops out from the crowd, slipping like soap in a bath, and --

It’s not her master who she sees first, nor even their patient, but the broad back of Shou, the baker. He’s unmarried, childless, and she can’t think of a single person he’d bother to be at the bedside of. Her brow furrows. None of this is making sense.

“Herr Anda,” she breathes, stumbling as the people behind her collide into her back. “What --?”

“Restrain him!” Herr Anda shouts, visible as he comes around the baker, obscuring the patient’s face. “I need him still to administer the sedative!”

Shou is two meters tall and then some, thickly muscled and built like a wall, but he grunts from the strain of holding the man on the table. Despite his struggles, the patient hardly makes a noise besides distressed grunts, growling when Herr Anda leans over, wrenching his mouth open. If she hadn’t seen a glimpse of his face, she might have thought him an animal from the sound of it.

“We’ll have none of that!” her Master tells his patient firmly, slapping a hand over his mouth. He must have tried to spit out the roku liquor; children try the same.

With a sigh -- she can’t tell whose -- the patient goes limp. Shou and Herr Anda step back from the table, and finally she sees him, this man who --

It’s a boy. Or rather, a youth; he can’t be more than a few years older than her, and he is covered in blood. She knows every one of her neighbors’ faces by heart, but this boy isn’t one of them.

Her master’s sleeves are rolled back, arms painted from fingertip to elbow in painfully bright crimson, and he snaps, “Don’t dawdle at the door, girl. Get in here and help me.”

She’s not sure where she finds the momentum to move forward, to approach the table, but she does, taking in the appearance of their patient. He’s more blood than boy at the moment, the wound on his chest spreading in a sluggish blossom, the one at his head gushing with the sort of heart-stopping enthusiasm all head wounds do. He has more – shallower slashes on his sides, lacerations on his legs and arms like he got tangled in brambles on the way here.

“What happened?” she asks, picking up a soaked cloth, pink stain stubbornly lingering even when she wrings it out over the trough. They must have been at this a while, long before she showed up.

“He must have fallen down the stairs,” Herr Anda drawls, sending her a cutting look. “How in the hells would I know, girl? Does it look like I frequent the sort of places knifeplay happens?”

She nearly drops the cloth. “N-no, Herr Anda.” She pulls back her hands, trying to cover how they shake. No one’s ever been so badly injured on this table, not even when cook at the inn nearly roasted himself in the heath. “Should I – should I cut off his clothes?”

Her master softens, just a little. His gaze lingers over the boy’s face and he seems...sad. Melancholy. “Yes. Good idea.”

She turns away, busying herself with the scissors, and he adds, “If he lives, you can ask the boy yourself.”

The remains of his black shirt comes away easily in her hands. It catches on the deep wounds, fibers stuck to where blood has begun to dry, but she is gentle as she removes it. The worst reaction the boy gives is a quick inhalation; unavoidable with this amount of damaged tissue. “He’ll live.”

She can tell Herr Anda wants to disagree; he’s contrary just for the sake of it, always seeing the worst in every situation. Still. he doesn’t refute her. She has the touch, as he calls it; the gut instinct of knowing whether a wound will go septic or heal properly, whether a woman will go into labor as soon as she lays in bed at night or whether it will be a few weeks yet.

He doesn’t, she knows. She suspects it’s the reason he’s kept her on these last few months.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he says finally. “That chest wound is deep. Infected. I’ll have to cut some of it away.”

She wrinkles her nose. She can get used to the blood, to the vomit, to the pus, but she will never get used to the smell of necrotic human flesh.

He must see her reaction, even with his back to her, for he says, “Medicine is not for the weak, girl.”

I know that, she wants to snap, but instead she ducks her head, keeps her eyes on the wound that sinks straight into the boy’s side as she wipes around it.

“Hand me the scalpel,” Herr Anda says finally, seeing he won’t get a rise out of her. “I should start the debridement as soon as possible. Try to close some of these superficial wounds.”

“Yes, sir.”

She hands him the instrument, wincing as he makes his first cut. Bowing her head, she sets to her own work, washing away the blood an grim caked around his more superficial wounds before settling in to suture. It is strange putting needle to flesh, so unlike stitching cloth or even leather, but just as in any craft there is a rhythm to it, a flow, and in a few moments she can almost forget what her master does above her.

He will live. He will.

Why would she dream about the arrival of a dead boy?

She is stitching the shallow wound on his side when Herr Anda clucks at her, hissing, “Apprentice.”

Shirayuki ties off the floss and clips it, dropping her needle into the mug of alcohol beside her. “Yes, Herr Anda?”

He jerks his head. “Come here and finish this.”

She stares. Her master has been stitching the muscle for nearly quarter of an hour, cussing as blood wells up from below, making a mess of his work. Now there is only the skin, and he – he wants her to finish?

“Master, is that all right?” She blinks, suddenly timid. She’s only been under his supervision for a few months now, and she’s never stitched anything more major than a few scrapes. “I’ve only –”

“It’s time you learned to do this properly,” he says crossly. “And if you botch it, at least I’m here to mitigate the damage.” He watches her carefully, tilting his chin in challenge. “Unless you don’t think you have the talent…”

She holds out her hand, now steady. “Needle, please, Master.”

The skin here is a mess; Herr Anda cut away so much flesh that it’s a stretch to get it to pull together. She hopes the boy they have is patient or at least mild; he’ll have to stay in bed for a few weeks to make sure he doesn’t pull the stitches, even if she sews as well as Herr Anda – which she doesn’t. She’s not afraid to admit that.

At least while the person she’s stitching up is still out cold on the table.

The start is easy enough; she picks the side most preserved and starts her slow, methodical stitch. She has an even hand; it’s part of the reason Herr Anda took her on, she suspects, and though the skin grows rougher, more ragged, she’s able to keep a nice, looping hand.

That is, until he twitches.

She startles, pulling tight right in the center. He grunts, and when her gaze lifts, gold stares back at her. For a moment, she is struck by how odd the color it, how rare --

And then he is screaming, thrashing, and her master is pouring roku down his throat to calm him.

(It’s a strange anesthetic, Herr Anda had told her, it doesn’t dull pain, it makes you forget you’re feeling it.

Isn’t that the same? she had asked. If there’s no pain in the end.

His eyebrow raised. Is it?)

“Finish!” Herr Anda shouts, incredulous that she has stopped. She nods, but her hand shakes, stitches coming wide and askew. The scar won’t be pretty, not with this ragged job, but he’ll live. By the time she’s finished, their patient is quiet, asleep.

“Good job, girl,” her master says, washing his hands off in the basin. “Wash up. I should have a change of clothes for you.”

“I could go home --”

“No,” he snaps. He hesitates a moment, gentling his tone when he says, “Stay with him.”

Herr Anda takes in the boy’s face, and something in him softens. “I don’t think he rests well. It will be good for him to wake to a friendly face.”

[sabraeal]

You know the picture where Suzu's wearing Obi's clothes? Could you write Suzu trying to be cool? Thank you for writing!

Yuzuri has been working for nearly five whole minutes, and the door resembles a pincushion more than a lock.

“Hurry up,” Suzu hisses, leaning his chin on her shoulder. Her hair smells like orchids, just like it always does, and that plus the three – or was it five? – pints tonight makes his knees a little weak. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

She flicks her ponytail like she’s trying to get rid of a particularly nettlesome fly. “Yes! Obi showed me himself a year ago. After you told him that story about how I got locked in the stockroom with Kenichi for half a night.” Her gaze cuts to him, hazy with alcohol but still blazing. “Why did you tell him that anyway? That happened ages ago. You know he gets.”

“Are you really complaining that he taught you how to pick locks?” he asks into the soft skin of her neck. This is probably too close, far too close, but she isn’t stopping him, so.

She shivers.

“N-no,” she snaps, petulant. “But he did his whole worried bodyguard thing. Kept cracking jokes and then would get all serious; now you don’t have to worry about your habit of getting into tight spots, Yuzuri –” she drops her voice and octave, suddenly grave – “but I’ll always come if you call for me.”

“It’s nice.” Her cheeks flush. “But it makes me feel like he’s – I don’t know, my father.”

He hums, breath huffing over her neck. She drops a hair pin.

“Do you mind?” she asks crossly. “I’m trying to work here.”

“Fine.” He stumbles a little further down the hallway, letting Yuzuri cuss at the lock in peace – he wonders if Obi will notice that someone tried to pick it in his absence. Probably.

Shirayuki’s room is next to his, as always, and Suzu stares at it for a long moment. Didn’t they have an argument just last week, something about how Shirayuki never takes her own safety seriously –?

He reaches down, turning the knob, and oh –

Oh yeah, Obi would probably be pissed about this.

Shirayuki’s room is dark, the lamps out and curtains drawn – makes sense, since she’s working the late shift in the pharmacy tonight – but still air holds some of her scent.

“You could get robbed,” he tells the empty room, horrified on Obi’s behalf. Shirayuki’s too, but – she’s the one who left it like this.

He sees another door to his right, and -- it can’t possibly be this easy, it’s got to be some sort of prank, Obi’s going to be waiting for him –

“Oh wow.” His gaze sweeps out to find Obi’s much more spartan room empty. “Really?”

How does he even lecture her on security when he leaves their adjoining door unlocked? I mean –

He glances at the knob. It only locks one way. It’s not Obi who has control over whether its open or not.

Oh. Oh. Suzu grimaces. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

The door bursts open behind him, Yuzuri spilling into the room with a yelp. She stares up at him from the floor with a grin.

“I did it!” she tells him. A moment later her brow furrows. “Wait, how are you in here?”

“Shirayuki’s room.” He gestures to the adjoining door. “It was unlocked.”

Yuzuri’s eyebrows tilt up in mild surprise. “She leaves the door between them unlocked?”

He shrugs. It’s more surprising that she leaves her other door unlocked, but all right. He knows where Yuzuri’s priorities lie.

She rolls up to her feet, peering through the door. “Huh, and still nothing’s happened?”

He doesn’t know how to explain to her that Obi can’t just make it happen; he can’t just make Shirayuki fall in love with him, he can’t just invite himself into her room and kiss her until she’ll never let him leave.

Instead he says, “We should get started, or else Obi’s going to catch us.”

Yuzuri grimaces. “Yeah, okay, good point.”

“Do you think we’re going about this wrong?” Suzu asks some time later, flipping through stacks of correspondence. “I mean, can’t we just ask him what he’d like for his birthday?”

Yuzuri stares at him like she scraped him off her show. “That would ruin the surprise.”

“We could ask Shirayuki, though.”

“Please.” She rolls her eyes. “Like she could keep a secret from Obi.”

Suzu considers it. “Yeah, alright,” he agrees. “That’s fair.”

“How come Obi has the coolest clothes?” Suzu complains, rifling through the cedar chest at the end of his bed. “I mean, he has half the wardrobe I do, but he always looks all – er –”

“Handsome?” Yuzuri supplies. “It’s because he’s with all the lords, I bet. He’s fashionable. I’m still not sure if you can see all your colors.”

Suzu glares at her over one of Obi’s black shirts, the fabric filmy against his hands. “If I made as much dill as Obi, I could probably look pretty dashing.”

She snorts. “You couldn’t look dashing if you wore his clothes.”

It’s a failing of his; he can resist every challenge except the ones Yuzuri offers him. It’ll get him in trouble one day, but –

“Oh?” Obi’s fur jacket sits on a chair – he’s wearing his guard uniform now, on shift – and he pulls it up over his head, letting it settle over his torso. It’s not baggy on him, but – his shoulders aren’t as broad as Obi’s, his chest not quite as full. Though he’s built a little more solid than Obi by nature, Obi’s body is one of use, and Suzu’s is one of…sufferance.

Still, not bad.

“Not as goofy as I thought it would be,” Yuzuri allows, parking herself on the edge of Obi’s bed. “But you’re still not quite Obi’s league.”

“He can pick me up,” Suzu agrees with a forlorn nod. He brushes a hand over the fur. “This feels a little bare, I have to say.”

“You’re missing the cape.”

“Oh, right.” He digs through the chest, pulling out one of the thick capes, tossing it over one shoulder. “Oh, hey, I think I’ve figured out why he wears those straps all the time.”

Yuzuri grins, making a sweeping gesture with her arm. “Please, share with the class, Master Suzu.”

He fidgets with the edge, trying to get it to sit just so, how Obi always does. “It’s impossible to keep this on right otherwise.”

She cackles, rolling back on the bed. “You know, I think he only wears those because Shirayuki told him it looks dashing once.”

“Oh, yeah.” Suzu pulls out a scarf, dropping it around his neck. “That’s definitely the reason.”

He pulls up the scarf over his mouth and strikes as mysterious a poise as he can, arms crossed and slanting a look from the corner of his eyes. “I have aliases and many secrets.”

“Wait, wait!” Yuzuri leans across the bed,reaching an arm into the chest, and yanks out another cape. She drapes it over her head just like Shirayuki does in the market.

“Oh Obi!” she shrills, an entire octave up from her normal voice. “Could you please come stand unreasonably close to me for a simple task?”

“Oh, why, Miss.” Suzu drops his voice into a growl, approaching the bed until he brushes Yuzuri’s knees. He does not think about how his stomach jumps at being this close. “I would consider it my duty to stand a friendly distance away from you while we talk.”

“Oh, Obi,” Her hands come up to lay on his chest. His heart pounds so hard against his ribs she must feel it; if she does, she gives no sign. “If you don’t breathe right on my face and stare at me like I’m a cream-stuffed pastry, I’ll have to assume I’ve upset you.”

“Of course, Miss.” He lays his hands over hers. Any time now, she’ll push him away, he knows she will. She just must be…caught up in the joke. “It is completely friendly, the way you must put your hands on me while we stand here talking about what to have for dinner. But realize, I’ll have to be angry at myself later for thinking about kissing you, because nothing about this situation says kiss me.”

She bats her eyelashes coyly, fingers curling in his coat as she leans back. He’s not sure what she’s doing, doing this with him but – well, it’s not like he’s going to complain she wants him this close. “Oh, of course not. I am far too sweet to think about you – ugh, it’s hard to get realism without the straps, Suzu –”

He snorts, following her over until his hands rest above her head on the mattress. “I’ll try to ask him to leave them behind the next time, I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“Please,” she giggles, her breath ghosting over his lips. He suppresses a shiver, poorly “Anyway, Obi, I think you really need to explain what you’re doing tomorrow right in my ear, otherwise I might not hear it.”

“Right, Miss.” He nods, so serious. “I’ll have to do it do my lips brush your ear, otherwise –”

Yuzuri’s gaze slides right over his shoulder, eyes going wide as they fix on something just behind him. “Suzu –”

“Miss, please,” he giggles, leaning closer to her. He’ll never have as good a chance as this again. “Everyone knows secrets have to be passed mouth-to-mouth –”

A hand lands on his shoulder, heavy. Strange, both of Yuzuri’s are accounted for –

“Nice cape,” Obi says.