“Come on, Uncle! You can’t sit out here the entire time! We’ll be in line for at least 45 minutes, you have to come with us!”
Thorin dragged a hand down his face. Mahal love his nephews, but…
“Kili, I would really prefer-”
Kili’s eyes widened. His lip quivered. He gave a barely audible sniff.
For an 18 year old face, it was entirely too convincing. Thorin sighed.
“All right. I’m coming.”
“YEAH!” Kili nearly tackled him in a hug, the two of them only held up by Fili tackling in the opposite direction.
The wait ended up actually being closer to an hour. Luckily most of it was in the shade, and aside from his own nephews and one group of younger teens ahead of them in line, it wasn’t too loud.
The true problem of waiting in line was that it gave Thorin plenty of time to evaluate every single possible design flaw in the roller coaster. Every single rattling bolt, every shaking support beam, and every rickety cart.
Thorin was going to die.
They were almost to the front when he saw the sign.
“Singles Will Be Paired”
Great.
He was going to die, and he was going to do it next to some sweaty, idiotic, chatterbox stranger while sitting in a barely secured cart going 500 miles an hour. He groaned and wondered if Kili and Fili would notice if he slipped out of line now.
“Singles!” a park employee called. “Single riders over here! Sir, step over here please!”
“Bye Uncle! See you at the bottom!!”
Thorin scowled at the two of them gleefully lining up for the next ride in the front cart, and reluctantly stepped over to the employee waving him over. Trepidatiously, he glanced at the single rider already waiting with his back to Thorin. Short, curly hair- he didn’t look too sweaty. Thorin thought that maybe he’d lucked out, right up until the man turned around.
Thorin nearly froze.
The stranger was, by far, the cutest man Thorin had ever seen.
Pink cheeks, slightly upturned nose, bright eyes, and a nervous grin.
“Hello! We’re sitting together then? Hope you don’t get motion sickness, hah.” He suddenly looked worried. “You don’t get motion sickness, do you?”
Thorin finally shook himself from his heart framed gaze and managed to grunt out, “No.”
“Oh, good good. I don’t either, so you have nothing to worry about there. I’m not, ah, particularly, well, fond of roller coasters. But my nephew and his friends convinced me that I’d be missing out on a truly life altering experience if I were to sit this one out, although perhaps I should have questioned further just exactly how my life will be altered-”
“Step forward into the cart, sirs,” the bored sounding park employee talked over him, and Thorin almost slapped a hand over her face for interrupting the flow of his delightful voice.
Thorin lurched forward first, stumbling into the low cart. He sat down just in time to see the man’s eyes flick up, his cheeks flushing even pinker for a moment. Thorin furrowed his brow.
“Are you overheated?”
“No! Nope. Just nerves.” He quickly shut his mouth after that, climbing into the cart after Thorin and doing his own belt.
They sat quietly for a moment. Just one, and then the man said, “My name’s Bilbo, by the way.”
Bilbo. Thorin tucked away the name like a treasure.
“Thorin,” he returned with a nod.
“Lovely to meet you Thorin.”
There was a commotion up front, stalling the employees trying to do the safety checks.
“Oh no,” Bilbo muttered. Thorin raised an eyebrow at him.
“Can you see?” Bilbo asked. “Does it look like a boy, about twelve years old, dark curly hair? Sitting next to a blonde boy wearing suspenders?”
“Suspenders?” Thorin raised an eyebrow. “At a theme park?”
“Honestly, it’s amazing we convinced him not to wear overalls. Can you see? The dark haired one is my nephew, I brought him here.”
Thorin craned his head, looking toward the front. He thought he could see the pair that Bilbo was talking about, but they were just sitting and laughing. No, the commotion was way up front. At the very front, in fact.
Thorin cursed.
“Oh goodness, is it them?” Bilbo asked, alarmed, reaching out for his own look.
“No, I’m afraid it’s my own nephews.” Thorin continued looking, internally debating whether or not he should get out of the cart and go interfere. Just before he moved, one of the park employees triumphantly snatched away two bottle rockets and a lighter.
“Mahal’s sake, how did they even get those in?” Thorin moaned. “Have they been walking around with fireworks in their pants all day?!”
Bilbo consolingly patted Thorin on the arm, doing his best not to snort.
“There, there. They wouldn’t be nephews if you didn’t want to murder them at least once a month.”
Thorin let out a surprised little chuckle and glanced back at Bilbo with a smile.
It was only another minute before the entire ride had been checked, and the park employees were all holding thumbs up. A second later the carts started to click forward.
Thorin gripped the bar in front of them tightly, distantly surprised when Bilbo’s hands latched on next to his, fingertips white with pressure. Thorin glanced over and noticed that a bit of his pink complexion had drained to white as well.
He was so concerned by the change, and perhaps still a bit taken in by Bilbo’s adorable face, that he missed the first twenty seconds of the ride.
Which meant he missed the first incline.
Which meant he missed the pause at the first precipice.
Which meant he was completely surprised by the first descent.
A startled yell tore itself from his throat, his hands gripping the bar even tighter. The sound of his yell must have unleashed something in Bilbo, because he let out a sound that was somewhere between a screech and yodel.
The carts bottomed out and flung up again, this time banking hard to the left, breaking Bilbo’s grip and throwing him into Thorin’s side, where he scrabbled at Thorin’s arm, digging his fingers in and holding on for dear life.
Before Thorin could have any thought about that, the cart swerved to the right, this time throwing Thorin and all his weight into Bilbo, crushing them both into the corner of the cart.
Thorin scrambled to help Bilbo back upright, worried that he might actually get squashed into a pancake if the ride did that again. Bilbo’s grip on Thorin’s arm somehow got even tighter, and the ride swooped down once more just as they both managed to get completely upright.
On instinct, Thorin wrapped both his arms around Bilbo, hiding his yell in Bilbo’s hair while Bilbo yelped into Thorin’s shoulder, the two of them screaming as they bounced back and forth in the shaking little cart. Thorin squeezed his eyes shut and prayed that his sister would forgive him for dying at the theme park, making her have to come pick up the boys.
Bilbo and Thorin both held onto each other, their grips the most stable part of the entire ride, and eventually they began to slow. The wind got quieter, the air a little warmer, and then, finally-
Click
The safety bar unlocked.
Thorin pried one eye open, looking around to be sure that they were back on the stable platform. Slowly, so slowly, he managed to loosen his grip on Bilbo, although not let go of him entirely. Bilbo’s eyes were still shut.
“It’s over,” Thorin mumbled, haphazardly smoothing out his partner’s curls with little success.
“Did we die?” Bilbo asked, refusing to open his eyes just yet.
“We’re still at the theme park, so I suppose the answer to that lies in what you think of heaven or hell.”
Bilbo let out a laugh at that, finally opening his eyes.
“Sirs, you need to exit the cart.” The bored employee was back.
“Yes, yes, alright,” Bilbo snapped. They both got up on wobbly legs and stumbled a little on their way down toward the exit, everyone else having already left.
“Good gracious, life altering experience indeed,” Bilbo muttered, straightening his clothes and hair as they walked. He glanced up at Thorin after a moment. “I was afraid I might have left a bruise or two on your arm.”
Thorin shrugged.
“I’m afraid I might have burst your eardrum.”
Bilbo gave back a crooked smile, and Thorin’s stomach swooped again as if he were still on the ride.
When they reached the exit, they both automatically searched for their nephews, only to find Fili and Kili showing card tricks to Bilbo’s nephew and his suspenders friend.
“Uncle Bilbo, Uncle Bilbo!” The dark haired boy hurried over. “That guy can guess my card right every single time!!”
“What can I say,” Fili said, faux casually. “Some of us are just born magicians.”
Bilbo’s nephew snorted.
“Magician, right. Teach me how to do the trick!!”
“Come on Frodo,” the other kid whined. “I’m starving! There was a corn dog hut back there-”
“Oh, CORN DOGS,” Kili said excitedly. “Uncle!! Corn dogs!”
It doesn’t hit Jester until much later when she’s laying flat on her bed in the ship, the darkness around her filled only by her friends’ calm breathing. Her eyelids feel heavy, threatening to fall and drag her into the deep sleep her body is begging for, but she fights the exhaustion off stubbornly. Fjord hasn’t come back yet, and she can’t fall asleep without knowing he’s alright. Avantika is too unpredictable, too dangerous, too interested in him. She needs to know he came back alright before she can sleep.
She’s worried. She’s been for a long time now. From the second Fjord dove into that pool with Avantika, disappearing into the water away from her eyes, from her reach, from whatever little magic she had left. Her mind had turned into a frantic turmoil of anxiety, panic, and desperation. Waiting for him to come back, fighting their way out of the temple, rushing through the thick jungle, barely making it to the ship alive.
Only now can she think back to it all, order it in her head as she would in her sketchbook if she had any energy left to draw.
• FREE/CATCH-UP DAY • Prompt: Noct survives but deals with things like phantom pains and residual effects from using the ring.
The pain woke him early in the morning. Noctis realized that his
days of sleeping in were long over as his arm throbbed. His other injuries
still hurt, but the lasting damage from the ring reached deep into his bones.
The morning light crept through the broken windows of the
abandoned inn the four of them decided to spend the night in. Noct reminded himself
to be grateful there was morning light.
Sitting up on the dusty bed he felt his joints crack. His father
had developed arthritis early in life. The signs started before his hair turned
grey. If he never had to use the ring or the power of the crystal again, he
wondered how long before his symptoms became worse.
Gladio and Prompto were still asleep. The darkness destroyed
most people’s sense of day and night, which was why he was surprised to see
Ignis awake.
“I almost thought you were going to start making breakfast,”
Noct said.
“I could, though there’s only stale bread and some leeks until
we resupply.”
He drank from the hot tea he had made himself, since Ebony was
rarer to find. Noct leaned against the wall and looked out the window.
“I probably wouldn’t eat it anyways.”
“Still picky.”
Noct’s right hand hurt again. He gripped it closely, with his
left.
“Does it still hurt?” Ignis said.
“A bit,” Noct had grown used to Ignis’s perception. “It’s been
two weeks since I last used the ring.”
Ignis felt for the counter and put down the tea.
“It’s too soon to assume anything.”
Noctis kept looking at the sunrise. Even the falling dust seemed
to sparkle in the light.
There was a frigid bite to the evening tonight. A halo round the moon; ice on the way. The stars bright.
“I’m not used to this yet,” Ignis said, as a shiver took him. It had been a clear day, the sunlight warm on the surface of skin; hope long dormant thawing just beneath it. But clear days bring cold nights, and Ignis had forgotten. He’d left his jacket home.
Still, despite the chill, the night felt comfortable in other ways. Perhaps the sun can burn the scourge from the air, but after ten years, it lingers in the mind. The blue sky still felt too sudden, too vast. Unreal. The nights bought back some familiarity.
There had been an insulated claustrophobia to the false horizon of darkness, and now – with it lifted, with the particles rained down dead and washed away – the world grew just to look at, and everything on it became small on the surface. Himself included. Even the buildings that sheltered them, bolstered and pivotal such a short time earlier, appeared now nothing more than battered husks. Each a pock. A scar to pass by. Relevant to the past, and the past only.
Noctis shrugged the jacket from his shoulders and draped it around Ignis. The glitzy bits clinked as they re-settled, musical in their chiming, quite beautiful, until stillness held them silent again.
“Will you not be too cold now?” Ignis asked.
“We can share,” Noctis said, matter of fact. For punctuation he slid his arms around Ignis in a hug, wrapping them tight to the small of his back. He pressed himself close, without hesitation, as though they’d done this a million times before, though they hadn’t. Not like this. At least nothing quite like it, and not for a very long time.
“Please don’t have come back just to break my heart,” Ignis whispered; it was a plea slipped unbidden through a crack in his affectation. His breath held.
“I just want to keep you warm, Iggy. Like you kept me. For ten years.”
Ignis was quiet, withstanding some tempest trapped wholly within his skin. Noctis was warm against his chest, breathing against his collar. There was no distance between them but Ignis’ stiff surprise.
“If I kissed you now-” Noctis asked, and he leaned back enough to roam his focus all around Ignis’ face- “would you kiss me back?”
It’s naught but vanity, he knows, after the passage of so much time and the loss of so many precious souls, to look in the mirror and begrudge the reflection. Or aspects of it, at least.
Most days he wears his scars like badges of honor; the nick to his right brow a medal of valor, the chip to the bridge of his nose a trophy, each little gauge to his left eye an epaulet. He runs his tongue over the split in his lower lip when in complete solitude, as though he can taste victory over a wretched fate.
But today, and on occasion, he’s exhausted in mind and body, quite tired of the occasional stare which begs attention, reflection. An explanation here, a genial No apology necessary there. His scars come with a great story, the retelling of which can be an unforeseen burden.
When Noctis catches Ignis frozen in the mirror, a distant look of distress wrinkling the skin between his brows, it only takes the gentle, blessed weight of his palms on either shoulder. The kiss pressed to mousy tresses is a boon.
“I think you’re beautiful,” he says softly into his adviser’s ear, turning to leave golden glory in his wake.
@pillarspromptsweekly fill #61: Creating. Y’all get a 3-for-1(sort of), wrapped iin Ederity + Tavi shenanigans. Enjoy! 😀
She was, Charity admitted to herself, perhaps a little rusty. Of course, the practice shield and wooden sword she was wielding weren’t helping. The balance was different for both and she was far more comfortable with a mace than a blade. She’d been trying to lower the odds of hurting Edér, but if the bastard sent her one more cheeky grin after sitting her on her ass, she was going to stop caring about hurting him. The butterflies summoned by the phrase ‘future husband’ only carried so far.
Wrote a thing about Ariela’s arrival in Gilded Vale/first meeting with Aloth. Not entirely certain if I’m eventually going to turn this into a longer fic, or maybe write something similar for her first meetings with other characters, or if I’m never going to do anything with this concept again, but nevertheless here it is. Honestly I think I just really wanted to have a go at writing overly-suspicious Ari.
Her head was pounding. Worse than the migraine that inevitably followed overuse of her psionics, she felt this pain on a level beyond mental or physical. Her whole body hurt and ached, in fact, as though something were trying to tear apart her very soul from the inside.
The last thing that she’d needed was… that. Decaying bodies hung from the tree in the middle of town while the local Welcome Wagon acted like it were a completely normal state of affairs. The smell had mixed with the pain in her head and she’d been a second away from throwing up the contents of her stomach until she’d remembered what she’d been taught during her upbringing. Don’t show weakness. Let anyone see you flinch and they’ve won.
She’d never expected to fall back on what she’d been taught about the inner-workings of the nobility after leaving that life behind, and yet it had seemed appropriate advice given the situation. And so she’d steeled her nerves, looked the man dead in the eye, and pretended like everything was completely fine. She was good at that. She’d certainly had plenty of practice with it.
The warm glow of an Altissian sky never seems to truly end, dissipating from sun to streetlight by night, ever alive and deeply in romance with itself. Ignis taps away at his laptop until late in the evening, relaxed upon the balcony of a more than sufficient villa provided by Altissian leadership. Governance is a nonstop demand on stamina and schedule alike, and in situations such as these Ignis is the one to pick up the slack left by the King’s inability to occupy more than one space at a time.
As per the usual on a typical trip abroad, he’ll enjoy a nightcap and a few stolen minutes-turned-hours in front of the camera with Noctis, if he’s lucky enough to be pulled away from pressing Lucian courts. This night is one of those, delivering Noct mercifully conscious and a little less than half dressed, tucked into bed and mouth full of stories. Ignis has a mind to share a few of his own, too.
“Miss you.”
“I haven’t been gone all that long.”
“Still.”
“You miss my help,” Ignis accuses with the lightest heart, of course.
“That, too.”
It goes on like that until fatigue takes them over, blissfully uneventful. Normal never tastes more sweet than it does like this.
“Sweet dreams,” Noctis says every time without fail, the glint in his eyes just a touch suggestive.
Ignis closes the laptop with an audible click and a hum of delight. There isn’t a dream sweet enough.
To his credit, Noctis is giving it his all, paying attention so earnestly that he grimaces at the reports as he leans close on the couch. Ignis holds them in his lap almost selfishly, definitely not because he’s enjoying the press of Noct’s chest to his arm when he closes in on the quarterlies.
“Your father thought you should start to go over these now that I’m fully versed in them,” Ignis placates, but the knit in his brow is apologetic.He dithers with a finger to the center of his glasses, sliding them up the unique bridge of his nose.
“I know, don’t worry about it,” Noct chirps, relieving some of the pressure weighing heavily on his adviser-in-training’s conscience. “I’m better with numbers than all the diplomatic stuff.”
Ignis adjusts his glasses another time, infernal things, more stately than his last pair but still a bit too large for the youth that lingers in his features.
“Apologies,” he says, waving the report in his hand toward his face. “They’re new.”
“I noticed,” Noctis remarks all matter-of-fact, too distracted by his better numbers to notice the flush on his friend’s face.
serenbach86 