#that's not even the most egregious thing he ignored or (more likely) hadn't even realized was a thing in the first place

[redheadedbrunette]

Any headcannons on the hale sisters? Or any of the spy school characters?

they're both incredibly jealous each other for the upbringing they got. trixie is jealous that erica got to be a part of the family legacy and be a hale in a way that, even if she were allowed to start training as a spy, she would never get to be. erica is jealous of trixie because she gets to forge her own identity outside of the spy business. because even though she's good at espionage and doesn't want that sense of identity taken away, she wishes that it could have been a choice, and more and more she's realizing the toll that it takes on her personal relationships and is wondering if it's really worth it.

erica was homeschooled for the entirety of her time leading up to her entrance at the academy, aside from the two weeks she attended second grade when trixie started kindergarten. it was around the time catherine and alexander's marriage was starting to fray at the edges, and they were hoping that if both girls were going to school, then catherine could spend more time working around the world because she felt obliged to stay at home with them when they were young. it went kind of horribly, and while erica herself didn't get into any fights (because she had been warned explicitly not to hurt any of her classmates), it was going pretty bad for her socially speaking and trixie had received no such warnings and was completely willing to release all of her feral energy and bite seven year olds who were being mean to her big sister. erica was pulled out almost right away and went back to homeschooling, and after her suspension was over, trixie went back and finished the year and started going to boarding school the next year. meanwhile, erica was just taken around with catherine most of the time and dropped back with alexander when catherine went on more involved missions and just did her schoolwork there.

[iceunhie]

indirect kiss moments !

summary: you drink from their cup on accident = the realization that you may or may not have shared an indirect kiss. how do they feel about that? too flustered beyond belief, it seems....

featuring: part one (here) - kazuha, wanderer | part two - albedo, neuvillette, alhaitham

notes: not exactly established relationship, crush crush hehe, fluffy, my two anemo faves in one post.... loud gasp effect in the background (pls don't perceive this as my betrayal to the other anemos they'll have their turn soon i promise 🫡)

WANDERER — (in/ex)ternally flustered as fuck + has stopped working

wanderer doesn't think he has a heart, but the way the void in his chest thumps for but a flicker of a moment proves him quite wrong.

why, you ask? it's all because of you.

he resists the urge to snap, terribly so, but out of being flustered more than anything, not irritation. because there is absolutely no way for him to properly process these turn of events with even a hint of rationality. you seem to be promptly ignorant of the whirring of thoughts in his mechanical head. ignorant of his rather foolish situation of going irrational and borderline idiotic.

all because of a damn indirect kiss.

his eyes lift from where he's burning holes onto the cup you're holding—his cup, he corrects, and lingers embarrassingly long (too long) on your lips. he tries not to fight the way heat creeps up his skin, synthetic yet all too real (perhaps like his own, untouched feelings); he thinks he might be red in the face. horribly red, thinking that oh no, he’s faced with the egregious notion that he may be too (very) obvious with how his reaction to your simple action betrays his secret fondness for your existence. most troubling.

it's fine, he tries to rationalize, he's got to relax. it was but a sip of tea. tea he so carefully procured and offered with much reluctance that was more feigned than anything else. tea he only drank because he heard in passing about your preference for it, very, very sweet tea he wouldn't normally drink, he notes with faint distaste—the things he lets you get away with—

….and then you lick your lips to savor the taste.

if the traveler hadn't showed him a taste of an almost death, then he thinks this might just be how he falls.

[ spoiler alert: he ends up hastily getting up to leave after pouring you another refill, muttering curses that would certainly alarm the average civilian. fast as light; if only to hide the utter mess that was his face. red, breathless (even though he doesn't need to breathe) and disgustingly, horribly flustered.

you’d better do your best to calm his self-imposed brooding— he isn't going to tell you anything about what exactly made him fluster this much. best of luck. ]

KAZUHA — flustered, but smiling like a lovesick fool (wants to write endless haikus about this)

kazuha is drunk, both in love and on the sake that burns his throat in a pleasant blend of sweet and strong.

it all started with your request to drink from his cup. you ordered a different drink from him while the crew of the crux were celebrating beidou’s birthday. even now, the sound of laughter and drunken slurring fills the night, a slow and, if he has to be frank, tone-deaf melody of a simple happy birthday echoing in the air. of course, being as drunk in love (beidou’s words) as he is, kazuha didn't even hesitate at all to give you a sip.

…and it just so happens that you managed to drink at the exact place he drank from earlier.

small mercies come in the form of playing off the intense blush of his face and chalking it up to the effects of the wine and sake. kazuha isn't one to be flustered easily, but he must admit this one elicited no light reaction from him, no matter how much he may downplay its impact.

perhaps it was delusional, but was there not a tradition about drinking from each other's cups like this that could symbolize marriage….?

oh dear, the alcohol was getting to him, and fast.

[ spoiler alert: the next day, when you wake up with a sore headache and an achy body and an extremely clingy kazuha, try not to be confused when he mentions something like kissing you in the haze of his sleep.

the following week will also make you subject to two things: 1) an increasingly clingy kazuha (see above), and 2) dozens upon dozens of haikus left at your home, along with silkflowers of innumerable count you’d think he'd plucked the entire lot of them. you never did know why kazuha had become even sweeter (was that even possible...?) all of a sudden. ]

[९] 2024 © iceunhie :: do not copy or use my works.

[thewhumpcaretaker]

◈━ 𝑩𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑰𝒄𝒆 - 𝑪𝒉. 𝑰: 𝑷𝒆𝒔𝒌𝒚 𝑯𝒖𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝑽𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒍 ━◈

Summary: On a flight to Antarctica, Jens struggles to power through his pain and prepare for inevitable collapse. But reality is already breaking down.

TW: nightmare, panic, generally scary imagery, mention of hallucination, mention of passing out

To Professor Elinor Fernsby, or To Whom it May Concern: If you find this letter on my person, it is because you have, despite my best efforts, discovered me unconscious at an inconvenient time. As you know, I was cleared with sufficiently good health for this excavation despite chronic pain in the form of migraines, and a history of fainting spells. I received a clean medical screening stating that elevation changes do not affect my condition and that I have not had a fainting episode or incapacitating migraine in the past six months. At the time of the screening, that was true. My health has in fact been all but normal of late. However, I neglected to mention some changes that began almost as soon as preparations began for the trip. I'm confident that it's only pre-trip jitters, but I have lost consciousness five three times over the past week, for over an hour on each occasion. Therefore, I thought it best to give you some explanation in the event of my collapse. You've been very good to me, Professor. It wasn't my intention to deceive you or to compromise the effectiveness of the team. I have full confidence that my symptoms will not impact my performance. They are sure to lessen as I settle into the excavation site. They are also not a danger to my long-term health. I will recover without any treatment - simply place me out of the way and I will awaken within several hours shortly, good as new, truly as if it never happened. If I'm screaming, If I make any sounds, please ignore it. I assure you that I don't feel a thing. Above all, I implore you not to send me back. I don't need to be airlifted, under any circumstances. My body's eccentricities are a nuisance, I know, but not a real issue. I have signed all of my waivers and I reiterate here that you bear no legal or financial liability for my health. I want to personally assure you that you bear no moral liability either. It's my wish to remain onsite no matter what. I MUST be on this mission. It's at the crux of my research and I may never get another chance. You understand what that means to a man like me. I remember your stories of traveling to the Nevado del Ruiz in Columbia when you were younger - how you flew out despite conflict in the region. Surely you understand that risks must be taken at times for the sake of discovery. So, I leave my pesky human vessel in your very capable hands and hope to be back inside it soon. Sincerely, Jens Vídalín

Reading it back, Jens realized that the last sentence was the most egregious lie of them all. He had never hoped to be back inside his human vessel once in his entire existence. Was it better than the places he went when he wasn't there? Yes, but that didn't say much.

He scribbled a few more times over the crossed-out sections and folded the letter safely out of sight into his pocket. Thank goodness he was seated far enough from the others to do that, and thank goodness it was done. He was shaking all over from the effort of keeping his eyes focused enough to write. The pain had started almost the moment he'd signed the final paperwork for the trip, and it hadn't stopped for even a moment. It was at first just a dull ache at the back of his head, but by the time he boarded that morning, it had become an incessant, stabbing shard of ice embedded through his skull from back to front. The back of his head was cold to the touch and his face looked visibly bloodless. He was sweating profusely and it wasn't from heat - the thin bomber jacket around his shoulders certainly wasn't keeping him warm. It was almost enough to tempt him into retrieving his snow clothes out of the overhead bin, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself. They were nowhere near Antarctica yet and wouldn't be for many more hours. Yet his body seemed to have decided he was already there.

At times like this, a thought sometimes flashed through his head, an unwanted thought: that it would be very good to be wrapped in something warmer than fabric, to have arms around his shoulders. The thought confused him because the real thing had always been so underwhelming. He found himself thinking of Emily, back in Liverpool. Her arms had been so ridiculously bony, and seemed to go everywhere and jab everything without enclosing anything. He hadn't liked to be touched by her. No, he wanted to be wrapped in something more substantial than arms, something like the all-enveloping sunlight on a summer's day.

He dared to slide open the window porthole a fraction, but there was no rush of heat. Outside, a white fog engulfed the plane. It had traveled south with them on a tailwind for thousands of miles now, blocking out the sun and creating turbulence. The cabin jolted for the umpteenth time, and as it did, it seemed to smear out of itself, to double in his vision.

His eyes flashed back to the cabin interior, away from the window. It wasn't the same way he'd left it. As he looked down the center aisle, it stretched on forever, the cockpit door quite missing and instead giving way to an endless, empty corridor between the seats. There were no people in them. He was alone.

That's not real. That's not real. You're just hallucinating. Never mind that it wasn't exactly reassuring to be hallucinating already. Things were getting bad.

The pain was gone, he noticed. So he wasn't in his body anymore. He was passed out, probably sagging against the open porthole as if asleep. Worse than hallucinating, then.

He fought with his breathing, tried to focus on the mottled plastic texture of the armrests under his knuckles, staring down the aisle the way one might stare down the ledge of a skyscraper. Don't look at it. It's not real. If it's scaring you, and it’s not real, you don't have to look at it. But he couldn't bring himself to close his eyes. If he did, surely someone would walk down the aisle towards him. He knew it. There was someone else on the plane with him - not his colleagues and innocent strangers on the real plane, but someone or something among these infinite rows of seats.

He should get up, he should run. With fumbling hands, he reached to unlatch his seatbelt, and looked both ways. There was no one. But yes, yes there was. In one of those seats, wherever he wasn’t looking, there was someone, and he even thought he knew where: probably towards the back of the plane. He started walking in the opposite direction, towards where the cockpit had been.

Wrong move. A low "ding," and the seatbelt light turned on. No leaving your seat. That meant the thing saw him. He cautiously disobeyed it, took another step forward, and the cabin lights went dark. Only the seatbelt signs continued glowing, over every row, a sickly green. He was a sitting duck. He threw himself into the nearest seat and latched the seatbelt. “Just don’t hurt me. Please, whatever you’re trying to do…we can talk about this.” But the lights didn’t come back on, and seatbelt signs stayed lit. He leaned back, pressed into the headrest, and let himself hyperventilate.

They were behind him, whoever they were. He knew it, he could feel it. Look back. Don't look back. Look back. Don't look back. He drew air into his lungs at a frantic pace until his fingertips were stinging with thousands of stars. Stars... the dark cabin clouded over fully black and he was in space. In deep space, where there is nothing between anything else for farther than he could comprehend and so it must have a direct line of sight straight to him. The void clutched at him and tore at him, tore the air out of his lungs into the vacuum before he could finish inhaling, and suddenly the wall of the plane jolted into him and he was awake in his seat with his head throbbing so badly that he had to close his eyes.

He'd gotten even colder, in his mind's absence. His heart ached too, like he’d been shot through the chest, and somehow, it made the cold feel a hundred times worse. He checked his watch. It had been four hours.

Was the thing still there? He started to look over his shoulder, towards the back of the plane, and found he was too terrified to do so. Yes. Even if it couldn’t reach him right now, it was still there, watching him.

Leave me alone, he thought, as harshly as he could. Whoever you are, leave me alone. But he had no possible leverage against it. He was begging.

Next ▹(coming soon)

Image Sources: 1 2