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If he didn’t know what to look for, Fakir might not notice.
She’s good like that. Or… well, she’s not very good at it at all; and for not the first time, as he watches Ahiru fit Mytho with a bright smile, he wonders how anyone could miss the mistiness in her eyes.
But she blinks it away, in that fearless, idiotic way of hers, squares her tiny shoulders and chirps, “Yeah, okay, no problem!”
.
It frustrates him. More than that, it makes him feel powerless, watching her take on the weight of worlds, watching her shoulder everyone else’s duties.
She’s seated in the middle of Rue and Mytho’s apartment, long hair tied atop her head in a messy knot. There’s a smudge of burgundy paint smeared across her nose, somehow, and her bare toes wiggle in the summer heat as she heaves a sigh and leans forward and drops her forehead against the hardwood floor.
Idiot.
Fakir drops his jacket on the kitchen table and clears his throat. “You’re supposed to put down newspaper, you know.”
She doesn’t even look up. Doesn’t miss a beat. “I don’t know where to buy that.”
“... Newspaper?”
She nods, even though he can barely see it. “Rue wants to go green,” she says, muffled, “and so they unsubscribed from the weekly post like, months ago, and I’ve been using all of mine to paper mache, so—“
“It’s Rue’s living room,” Fakir says, toeing off his shoes. “Not yours. You’re aware of that, right?”
“But she’s busyyyyy planning the weddingggg,” Ahiru whines, and it’s the most pathetic sound he’s heard come from her yet. She wilts more, somehow, a miserable heap of girl, and Fakir’s only a little disturbed how intently he finds himself observing the way the baby hair along the back of her neck flutters beneath the breeze of the ceiling fan. “And that’s supposed to be my job, you know, because I’m the maid of honor—“
You do enough , he wants to say. Instead, because he is a coward, he drops to sit behind her and rest his knee against her elbow. “That is not your job. I think that’s Rue’s parents’ job, actually.”
“It’s their job to pay ,” Ahiru chuffs, and Fakir tries not to stare at the pretty line of her neck as she stretches back up. The muscles of her back are annoyingly distracting these days.
Well. Everything about her is, really. Her yellow painted toes, her messy braid, her galaxy of freckles. The way she thinks nobody sees her cry after they’ve turned around.
“It’s the least her father could do.”
“It’s the least I can do to help her get the apartment in shape.” She scrunches up her nose. “She has enough on her plate.”
Hypocrite. Fakir flicks her right on that button nose of hers for it. “Have you told her you got the job yet?”
“Owwwww,” she whines, swatting his hand away. “Yes!”
“Liar. Rue wouldn’t ask this from you if she knew you have to get up at 6 tomorrow.”
“ Mytho asked, not Rue.” She pouts, then tries to flick him back, too, but he catches her wrist and she blushes prettily. Her skin is soft there, right above the heel of her palm, and thin, too. He tries hard not to stare, but the blue of her veins are so dark, and it’s easier to follow the path of her blood than to watch her face absolutely burn . “... H—Hey, let go.”
He presses his thumb against her pulse. It leaps into a cadence Fakir’s not brave enough to analyze, and instead, he clears his throat and stares over her shoulder instead. “At least let me help.”
“ You haven’t slept in like, three days! No way!”
And neither has she. The purple under her eyes proves it. “You didn’t tell Rue about the job, Ahiru.”
It’s not a question. He looks to her expectantly and she bows beneath the weight of his stare. “... She’s busy.”
“She’s your friend. I think Rue would be thrilled to find out you got the teaching position you’ve been stressing over for weeks.”
Ahiru says nothing. She does look morosely into the can of paint, however, and Fakir puts two and two together.
“... You didn’t tell her you applied,” he sighs.
She shrugs her dainty shoulders. “There was never a good time. She’s been so busy with the wedding, and she’s only been dreaming about marrying Mytho since she was a little girl, and—“
“And she’s still your friend,” he finishes for her. There is a finality to it, and when she goes to argue her point — because she’s Ahiru , selfless, frustrating, stubborn Ahiru — he reaches forward and presses a finger to her lips. “She’s your friend before she’s Mytho’s wife.”
Her eyes widen, and there’s a flicker of fury there, indignation. “She’s—“
“And you’re a person before you’re her friend,” he grumbles, then, pinching her lips together. She looks funny, lips pressed together and puckered up like a duck’s bill, but it’s still so strangely frank and Ahiru that he can’t find it in him to laugh.
For what it’s worth, she manages to still squeak and squirm against him. Ahiru slaps his hand away without any real force and pivots to lean onto her knees and pinch his lips instead. “I wouldn’t be here helping if I didn’t want to be,” she starts, brows furrowed, “so if you’re just going to sit there and berate me for being dumb, don’t bother! Just leave, you big bully—“
For someone so perceptive, it still blows his mind, how clueless she is to other people’s feelings. She holds an immense power, this annoying, honest girl, and sometimes (always) he wishes everyone around her would stop mindlessly taking advantage of it.
She has a way about her. There’s something in the way she smiles, the way she throws herself so wholeheartedly into helping everyone around her that attracts others like moths to a flame. And who would be foolish enough to turn away from her light? Ahiru is as warm as she is clumsy. Even he’s a little bit star struck by her.
But it feels selfish, sometimes, surrounding himself with her. Hogging her time. Her time is her own, after all, even if she can’t quite get that tidbit through her head. It must be exhausting to lend so much of herself out all of the time. Must be exhausting, to leave so little for herself.
It makes him wonder what she’s like when she’s not busy tending to everyone else’s business. What really makes her happy? Is it this? Sitting, alone, in Rue and Mytho’s apartment, sacrificing what little time she does have to herself in an attempt to lessen their burden? It hardly seems fair. Hardly seems human, even.
“I’m helping,” he says, resolutely.
Ahiru groans her way into a way. “Nooo, Fakir, you don’t have to—“
“I’m not going to leave you here to do it all on your own.” Like everyone else has, he wants to say, but wisely bites his tongue and instead offers her a smile. Or what he can manage of a smile, anyway. Even if it wanes at the sight of her bright eyes gone misty. “Hey.”
“You don’t have to,” she says, very seriously, but Ahiru has never been a pretty crier, and her voice cracks as she attempts to scrub away the tears from her eyes. “It’s really no problem! I like being able to do these things for Rue and Mytho, you know, so it’s not a burden. It’s hardly even work! I like making myself useful—“
“You don’t have to be useful to have a place,” he snaps, perhaps too harshly. She blinks once, twice, lashes dark. “You— I don’t know how anyone so emotionally intelligent can be so stupid, I swear—“
“You think I’m intelligent?”
Fakir flicks her, right on her cute button nose. “Everyone but you does. You’d have to be, in order to navigate Mytho’s feelings.”
Her nose scrunches up and it is as adorable as it is funny. “He’s not that complicated! And I don’t want to hear that from you,” she blurts, and though her eyes are still damp, she’s at least perked up, and that’s enough for him. “You’ve been friends with Mytho since you guys were like, eight! You know him better than almost anyone—“
“Doesn’t mean I understand how he feels,” Fakir deadpans.
“Still means you’ve had a crush on him for years—“
The conversation tilts, and soon Fakir’s leaning over to tug on her cheek. “I’ve never said that, you—“
“—Context clues! You’re so obvious, god, you were so jealous when he proposed to Rue—“
“Are you sure you’re not the one projecting?”
She balks, only a little, and smooshes her hands up against his face. Her palms find his cheeks and hold him there, even as he blushes into her touch, and he tells himself it’s because she’d called him out on boyhood crushes and not at all because her perfume smells like lillies. “We have the same taste in men,” she says, and even as she pouts and scoffs and tries to play it tough, her thumbs brush over his cheekbone, his undereye, very delicately.
Fakir blinks, very slowly. His lashes brush her fingertips. She watches intently.
“... Do we, now,” he asks.
“You liked his skinny little ankles just as much as I did.”
She’s not wrong. She’s only clueless. How, he wonders, again, can anyone so emotionally intelligent be so blind to her effect on people? As if he’d let just anyone touch him like this. As if he’d lean into anyone’s palms, allow anyone to trace the shape of his jaw with their fingers. It’s intimate. More intimate than he’s allowed himself to be with anyone else. And he wonders if she notices, if she even realizes the space she’s made for himself in his heart.
Ahiru sighs and leans back. She sits on her hands, cluelessly. Tilts her head, cluelessly. Raises a brow, so cluelessly, and she really doesn’t know the effect she has on other people. The effect she has on him. As if she hadn’t burst into his life like the sun, hadn’t parted his storm with her optimism, with her tenacity.
Fakir sighs and watches her. He allows her to do as she pleases with him, and when she shrugs and looks to the ceiling, nerves apparently shot, as the realization sets in and she blushes, he makes no move to embarrass her further.
Someone should give her a choice, once in a while. Let Ahiru decide what she wants. Let Ahiru do what she wants, even if it’s like pulling teeth.
If he won’t look out for her, well, who will?
“Come on,” he says, finally, rolling up his sleeves. “If we both work at it, we can finish in enough time to get some ice cream before bed. My treat.”
Her resulting smile is worth it. When he catches her tearing up over it, after, with rainbow sprinkles stuck to her lips, he says nothing at all. Only shoves a napkin her way and tries his damndest to ignore the way she sounds, caught between a laugh and a sniffle, and how cute it is.