Work Text:
no good at endings (so let's not)
Guys—you know me. I'm no good at endings. At letting things end. So let's not. -Elisabet Sobeck
“Take care of yourself, won’t you?”
“Mmm.”
Aloy wasn’t listening, focused as she was on final preparations for her trip. She sat cross-legged on the rug in the center of her room, neatly stacked supplies surrounding her in a half circle. Erend stood before her, his own gear packed on the desk behind him. He leaned back and sighed, watching her lithe fingers as she ran them over the tops of corked vials, mumbling under her breath about their contents.
“Cleanse, Stamina, Overdraw—pfft, don’t need two of those—” she muttered, picking one out of the pile and setting it aside.
“Aloy.”
“Hmm?” She glanced up at him, eyes glossy from distraction. Her thoughts were on the medicine pouch she was already reaching toward.
“Take care of yourself out there,” Erend said softly, folding his arms over his broad chest. Aloy’s gaze flickered briefly over his shirtsleeves, noticing the way the fabric stretched taut over his biceps.
She nodded and picked up the satchel of berries and herbs, holding it up for him to see. “That’s what this is for, you know,” she said, drier than a Carja summer, but the slightest of upward movements at the corner of her lips betrayed her humor.
“Please, Aloy, I’m serious," Erend said. "You’ve gotta be careful out there. I—I mean—we—need you." He cleared his throat, lowering his voice, “We all do. So you better come back in one piece.”
“I will, Erend," she said with a small smile.
“You promise?”
“Yes,” she said firmly, though not unkindly. “I promise.”
“Good.”
Apparently satisfied that he’d done all he could to ensure her survival for the time being, Erend dropped his arms to his sides and turned to bend over his own travel pack, triple-checking that its contents were secured.
“You too, Erend.”
He didn’t respond, merely offered a grunt of affirmation as he fumbled with a steel buckle on his pack. Taking stock of the items before her, Aloy plucked her spare bedroll out of the pile. It was wrapped tightly, coiled in on itself and tied with a string, and she turned the bundle over in her hands, considering it.
"I love you,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“You—what?” Erend nearly gave himself whiplash as he snapped his attention back to Aloy.
“I want you to be careful too, you know,” she said with a shrug, dropping the bedroll to the side as if she wouldn't need it for sleeping outdoors on a days-long journey to the Sacred Lands.
Erend was equally appalled by this choice of action as he was by her words, which he needed to make sure he hadn’t misheard.
“But that—what was that—that other thing you said?” he asked, looking anywhere but directly into her eyes as he took one hesitant step towards her.
“That I love you?”
The uncertainty in her tone hit him like a frost arrow to the chest. He looked right at her then, sinking to his knees to join her on the braided twine rug. “You—you do?”
“Of course I do,” she grinned, shoving him playfully on his arm. “You knew that.”
“I did?!” He fell back on his heels, legs folding underneath him. He stared at her, incredulous, as she calmly resumed stuffing supplies into her knapsack.
“Didn’t you?” she challenged, and he noticed a trace of something in her eyes—not quite concern, but something altogether rarer: confusion.
“Well, I—I do now, apparently,” Erend said, running a hand through his hair, “but—by the forge, Aloy, this is a bit unexpected, if I’m being honest.”
“Why? Don’t you love me?”
“Fire and spit, woman, of course I do—”
“Good, so, we’ll both go take care of ourselves then, yeah?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Look, Erend. I love you, you love me. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“But—how—”
Aloy stopped gathering her things to watch Erend try to gather his thoughts. He shifted uncomfortably where he sat, then sighed. It was a low, heavy growl of exasperation, even though technically this was all very good news he was hearing now for the first time ever.
Maybe, he told himself, reining in his emotions before they could jump to any conclusions about being reciprocated in full. It was possible Aloy spoke so casually about loving him because it was, in fact, a casual feeling of caring for one’s friends or chosen family. He didn’t want to assume she meant she love loved him, but he was unsure of how to ask for clarification. He rubbed his face with his hands before dropping them to his thighs.
“I just... didn’t know, is all,” Erend said, sounding deflated.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Aloy said, and she looked it. “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do in this type of situation. Nobody’s ever—I mean, I know Rost loved me, in his way, but he never told me so directly—and he raised me, was the only one who ever...” she trailed off, lowering her head to look down at her hands where they twisted in her lap.
Embarrassment stirred in Aloy's gut, reminders of her outcast upbringing never failing to come out swinging, armed to reveal her social ineptitudes.
“I’ve never been good at this stuff—talking about my feelings," she said. "Never learned how, I guess. I didn’t realize—I probably should’ve—”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Erend said, and he meant it.
He swallowed a hard lump in his throat as he tenderly extended a gloved hand towards her downward-turned face. With a slight intake of breath, his touch reached her, and he tucked her chin between his forefinger and thumb, tilting her head up ever so slightly so he could catch her eyes with his own.
“You’ve told me, so I know now, and that’s—” he sighed again.
It was a completely different kind of sigh, one that illustrated the breathlessness she evoked in him. He was smiling, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. She was in solid form, after being a holo for so long.
“I love you, Aloy—have for a while now,” he said, dropping his hand from her chin rather reluctantly. “It’s nice to get to tell you that, finally.”
“Did you think I didn’t know?” she said with a smirk, sending his stomach into somersaults.
“No, I figured you might’ve known.” He ran a nervous hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. “I’m not exactly, uh, good at hiding my emotions.”
“You were afraid to tell me, though.”
“Extremely,” he breathed, relief coursing through him. His voice croaked when he said her name. “Aloy, I—I never thought—never let myself hope—that you'd ever—”
She reached out then, eager to return his soothing touch. Her fingertips connected with his forehead, landing lightly before brushing a gentle stroke along his hairline and down the side of his face, settling there.
He hummed at her caress, turning his head slightly to plant a soft kiss in the center of her palm, his eyes never leaving hers. His lips parted into a smile as he leaned into her hand, bringing his own up to encompass it. His other hand found her forearm, where his fingers wrapped completely around her. His thumb—his only bare digit—began roaming her wrist, drawing delicate little circles there.
“How long?” he wanted to know.
She swallowed. “I’m... not really sure. It sort of sneaked up on me.” Her own thumb stroked his jaw, trailing down towards his neck and climbing back up. She tore her eyes away from his, gazing over his shoulder. “It had to have happened slowly, over time, but all at once it felt like it had always been that way.” She looked back at him. “Maybe it has, I don’t know. This is all so new to me, you know?”
“I do know. And it’s okay, Aloy. Honestly. I have zero expectations. I just like getting a minute of your time.”
“Or two,” she reminded him, slipping her hand out from under his, running it along his jawline and down the side of his neck before dropping it onto his shoulder.
He broke into a closed-lip smile at her words and bowed his head, bringing his forehead to rest against hers. He once more found her hand on him and held it in his own, stroking her knuckles under his thumb. The amount of skin-to-skin contact they were newly exploring astounded him, considering how little skin he left unsheathed by leather, linen, or steel. Being this close to Aloy made his heart pound against his armor with a force that threatened to burst through the underside of his breastplate.
“I don’t want to say goodbye now,” he whispered, his face so close to hers that she could feel his breath dance over her skin, making her shiver.
“Yeah, now you know how I feel,” Aloy said darkly, thinking of her decision to leave Meridian immediately after the Battle at the Alight.
“Yes, exactly!” Erend said, not entirely missing her point, merely choosing to sidestep in favor of a more literal interpretation: He now knew how she felt about him. He was in too high of spirits to allow her to dwell on past difficulties.
Aloy pulled away to look at him with amusement. “You do realize we’re going in the same direction, right?”
“Oh yeah, I just figured...” He let go of her hand, watching as she let it fall into her own lap. “I didn’t want to assume...” He suddenly had a hard time looking at her. “I thought you might want to take your Sunwing,” he shrugged, "and don’t get me wrong—it’s an efficient method of travel. I just, uh, don’t think it’s for me.”
“I’d considered it, if only for the mountains,” she said truthfully, the hint of a ‘but’ in her tone giving Erend way too much hope, even as the silence dragged on after her pause. He scooted forward, as though being closer to Aloy would get him closer to the second half of her sentence, but she never finished that thought out loud.
Instead, she uncrossed her legs and folded them under herself, shifting so their knees were touching. She looked up at him shyly, a rosiness spreading across her cheeks, drowning out her freckles. When she spoke next, it was to ask Erend the most baffling question that had ever been formed in that brilliant mind of hers.
“Can I kiss you?”
“By the forge, Aloy, yes,” he blurted out, surprised at how readily he was able to answer a question he never saw coming.
It wasn’t something he thought she’d ever be inclined to ask of him, for one, but she also needn't have asked—not if she knew how many times he'd had to talk himself out of asking her the same question over the years. Still, he appreciated her thoughtfulness, and once the shock and amazement wore off, he smiled softly at her.
Despite having his permission, Aloy hesitated, frozen by those icy-blue eyes locked on hers. Then he spoke again, in little more than a whisper, and it broke her.
“Thought you'd never ask.”
Aloy sprung up to her knees, throwing her arms over his shoulders and bringing her face within inches of his, all in one fluid motion.
She paused again, intentionally this time, before easing the tip of her nose towards his and finding the new familiarity of their foreheads pressed against each other. She smiled through an exhale as his hands easily found their place on her waist, hips, lower back, and lower still—a brush of gloved fingers dipping just below her waistband, tracking where her spine gave way to the rounded thickening of flesh, scouting new locations as he began to fill in a map of her body.
A sharp intake of breath indicated he wasn't the only one affected by the careful exploration of his hands. Still, Erend raised them ever so slightly, settling just above her hips.
Shivering under his touch, Aloy had half a mind to remove his gloves so she could feel the true girth of his Fireclaw grip. Or a Frostclaw? She was so out of sorts she found herself trying to remember which one was larger, if either, before a blissed-out brain cell woke itself up enough to jolt her back to the woven rug. She was kneeling before a seated Erend, slightly taller than him in this arrangement, nose-to-nose as he held her in his impossibly large hands.
Aloy felt herself lingering on a precipice, not unlike the moment before diving off a cliff into the icy depths of a sunken cavern. Unlike any of her past delves, however, she had no way of knowing she was about to discover a hidden treasure no amount of Greenshine could buy.
Tilting her head ever so slightly, she leaned further into him, closing the waste of space between their lips as she finally took the plunge—and kissed him.