Work Text:
Hunter had always been a man of precision and order, becoming almost impossibly focused on achieving his end goal (whatever that may be at any given time) in the most thorough and efficient manner. This young man never cut corners or missed details. As a younger Hunter, the grimwalker’s determination had not been fueled by innate enjoyment so much as anxiety and the insatiable hunger for approval. However, sitting here in the present, his hands delicately sliding a carving tool over the hunk of palistrom wood in his palm, that hunger was still there, but viewed under a different light.
It wasn’t for the approval of the haunting black ooze that still pricked the back of his consciousness late at night, but instead out of the genuine happiness and passion of feeling his purpose was finally his own. At sixteen years old, Hunter would never have been able to fathom the idea of living the life of the twenty year old man he was today.
He smiled down at the developing shape in his hands, eyes squinting slightly, no longer dark and weighed down by eye bags. There was a sort of cathartic duty he felt toward every life he carved out of the wood. There was kinship between him and palismen, even beyond the simple yet symbolic fact that both he and they were made from the same material he was lovingly chiseling away at. When he himself was chiseled out of the wood, the world he was introduced to was dark, and his purpose was streamlined and cemented from the moment his borrowed lungs took their first inhale of air. However, when Hunter carved out the form of each palisman, their futures were their own. He would make sure each one came into the world crafted with love and inspiration, so that they would never have to feel as if they existed only to serve others.
He wanted them to feel not as though they had a debt to pay to the hands that made them, but that the hands which would receive them would do so in a way that elevated and guided them toward the lives and personalities that they would develop on their own. To put it plainly, Hunter wanted each of them to come into the world feeling the way he had felt when he had been selflessly accepted into a family of people who truly cherished him for what he could be, and not what he was told to be.
As if on cue, summoned by the shifting subject of his thoughts, the soft pressure of a chin had welcomed itself to his right shoulder, accompanied by the smell of mixed herbs and earth. He didn’t even need to lift his gaze from his work to know who was watching his hands move with her characteristically fond enthusiasm, but how could he not pause to look back at her anyways? It didn’t matter how many moments, weeks, years passed, he simply couldn’t help but look at Willow Park.
Hunter placed the developing palisman, as well as his chisel, at his side on the tree stump he had decided was today’s work station. He preferred to work out in the palistrom grove as opposed to in a workshop or at a man-made desk; it provided more inspiration and felt more natural. More spontaneous, even, which was something the grimwalker had worked very hard to learn how to be.
“Who are ya working on today?” Chirped the voice beside Hunter’s ear.
“I’m not sure just yet, but I’m already feeling like this little guy is going to be a rascal,” the blonde replied, smiling as he gently caressed his thumb over the crude shape of the palisman’s head.
“Hmmmm, I wonder where that personality trait could be coming from?” Willow teased, leaning her head back a bit to loop her arms around his chest, clasping them together over his heart.
The tips of Hunter’s ears warmed at the comment, though his grin only widened and he rolled his eyes, the warm brown colour of them almost sparkling at the sound of her voice. She just had that aura about her. Everything she touched simply sparkled, no need for magic. Unless Willow herself simply was her own magic. Magic or not, Hunter was absolutely enchanted.
“How do you know I’m simply not mused by somebody else?” He teased back in a hum, gently tipping his body backwards to lean into her chest. Close to her heart, exactly where he wanted to be.
“Who, me?” She scoffed playfully, mossy green eyes glittering with mischief as she cocked a brow.
“You made that assumption yourself,” retorted a cheeky Hunter, raising his hand to place it over hers and squeeze gently. Her hands were so soft under his calloused palms.
She only hummed affectionately in response, knowing that not dignifying a response would still leave the plant witch with a winner’s satisfaction. She somehow found a way to lean even closer to him, which Hunter didn’t even think was possible with how much her warmth already enveloped him. But hey, of course he wasn’t complaining. Willow was the one and only witch in the whole of the Boiling Isles that he’d let completely smother him in physical touch. As a kid, hugs used to intimidate the young grimwalker. He already wasn’t used to physical acts of affection, but even below that was the instinctual discomfort of being detained. It had taken him two or three times before his soldier’s instincts didn’t prompt him to throw one of his friends to the dirt in an attempt to free himself from the clear and imminent danger of capture. Which of course was totally what was happening. Yeah. Totally.
Thankfully, he’d never seemed to react in that way when Willow wove her arms around him. Or, well, it would still make him nervous, but in a different way. He didn’t know what to make of that feeling as a teenager, when she’d hug him or speak to him or, Titan forbid, suddenly smile at him. Every single thing she did seemed to shoot a hot bolt of lighting all the way through his body, the heat settling quickly across his cheeks and his ears. Now, after the years he’s had to grow accustomed to the mysterious art of physical contact, he still feels the tickling of those nerves when she’s near. It isn’t so incapacitating anymore that he feels dizzy or struggles to breathe, but just the sight of those round, kind eyes and her soft obsidian hair made the galdorstone heart in his chest tighten. Kind of like it was doing now, as she rested her cheek against his.
“May I watch you work for a little while?” Willow’s voice gently coaxed him back out of his thoughts.
He hummed and smiled in response. “Of course, though it might be hard in this position, as much as I’m enjoying it.”
Willow giggled, the sound never ceasing to overwhelm Hunter with a warm wave of fondness. Cheesy, but he’s aware of that already. He learned to accept it years ago. He could still be a tough, organized, assertive soldier type while at the same time embracing the energy of unconditional love and dreaminess that the flyer derby champion instilled in him. If you asked Hunter, he’d argue it made him even more manly. A gentleman, he’d insist! If you asked Gus or Luz, they’d probably have categorized him somewhere along the lines of ‘drooling idiot’ or ‘swooning softie.’ He tolerated those names. If you asked Willow, though? She called him Dandelion once, and then more than once, and maybe it happened more than once because the girl had noticed how it made Hunter’s features widen into a smile that showed off his little tooth gap. He hasn’t gone soft, though! Or, well, in most cases, at least.
By the time Hunter had recovered from Willow’s giggling, she had (unfortunately, he thought) removed her arms from around him and instead taken up a new spot in the grass beside the stump he himself was seated on, shimmying to angle her body toward him. The grimwalker would have offered for them to swap places, but he’d learned after many attempts to offer her the ‘more comfortable’ spot that the only place the green-eyed athlete would prefer to be than in the gentle company of grass and plants, was draped across Hunter’s back or his lap. In this case, unfortunately both of those locations wouldn’t be ideal for carving palismen (though Hunter would love to see if he could figure out how to do both at once), the red grass would have to do. Besides, it wasn’t too bad being able to enjoy how green her eyes and the streak in her hair looked against the deep maroon of the grass beneath her.
The blonde boy straightened his posture, reaching over to carefully scoop back up his work in progress. He picked up his whittling tool in his free hand. Holding both items securely, forearms braced down against his knees, his eyes scanned over what he had thus far carved in order to fall back into the rhythm of how he would continue. Once the spark had lit once again behind his eyes, he fell seamlessly back into his process of carving away curves and angles from the wood.
“I think I can guess now what you’re carving,” Willow’s voice came back in gently, her chin propped up on her knees, arms wrapped around her shins to pull her legs up toward her chest.
Making conversation with Willow never distracted him too much from his work, thankfully, because then he could engage in two of his favorite things at once: carving palismen, and talking to Willow Park. “Yeah? What’s your current theory?”
“Hmmmm let’s see… little pointed ears, a bushy tail, and a slender snout,” she thought out loud. Then she grinned, bringing her fingers up to her ears as if to mimic the pointed ears of the carving, tipping her head back to make a playful howling noise. “Awoooo! A wolf!”
Hunter had to pause his work momentarily in order to attend to the heavy laugh that burst from his chest, all the while making Willow grin wider as she admired his adorable gap tooth and the way his brows knit tightly toward his scrunched-closed eyes. Making Hunter laugh was Willow’s specialty; a job that she dutifully tended to at any and all opportunities. She had secretly decided to herself that she needed to make sure he caught up on all the laughs he missed in the first fifteen years of his life.
“Well, Captain, I should’ve known your sharp eye would catch on so quickly,” he cooed, his chestnut eyes blinking back open to smile warmly aside to her. “I’d expect nothing less from the smartest, strongest, most wonderful witch across all realms.”
“You’ve gotten pretty good at this whole smooth talking thing, haven’t you?” The dark haired girl beamed at him, her own cheeks dusted with pinkness from his flattery.
Since Hunter had met and ultimately joined the Hexsquad, he had very quickly realized that there were many common sayings and analogies that he was seriously either behind on or completely unaware of. ‘Smooth talking’ was one of these, he learned a few years ago. Gus had explained it to him patiently after Hunter simply could not wrap his head around the idea of words having texture. Besides, he was a tough talker if anything! He was the Golden Guard, respected head of the Emperor’s Coven! His voice was one that commanded respect and authority, and that was totally not annoying nor squeaky!
“I guess I’ve picked it up from you,” his eyes met hers for a moment of sweet direct connection, before he then steadied himself and again continued to carve into the wolf palisman. Subconsciously, he had begun to carve in the indents of little vines and leaves into the creature’s tail.
The idea of her perceiving his words as ‘smooth’ ruffled him with satisfaction. He reminisced again about his teenage self, who stumbled over his words or awkwardly squawked whenever he felt embarrassed or insecure about what he was trying to communicate. Gus still likes to jab him in the ribs every now and then, teasing in a singsong voice about the memories of Hunter’s confession to Willow. Willow will say it was sweet and charming. Hunter would tell you that it was possibly the most mortifying moment of his life, sitting there with her, words slurring out in a jumbled mess of apologies and corrections in his intent. When Hunter gets particularly flustered or nervous, he lets out a strained exhale that whistles through the gap in his teeth. That’s one of Willow’s favorite things, though she knows he would begin digging his own grave and writing his own obituary the second she said that out loud to him.
Truly though, Hunter had mellowed out a lot in the years since his life finally began changing for the better, however stressful that was at first. He found it easier to sleep and relax in the present days, and he smiled a lot more. He would still struggle with post traumatic stress and anxiety at times, though he had accrued quite a few successful strategies through his months of therapy which helped to keep him grounded. Besides that, waking up in the middle of the night to a horrible dream or memory always ended in Willow pulling a shaking Hunter into her strong arms, and him almost immediately melting back into reality, and then into her presence. He wasn’t afraid to be afraid around her.
Even more importantly, however, he wasn’t afraid to be happy around her, either. She was the very first person in his life he had a genuine respect for. The fallen emperor didn’t count in Hunter’s mind, since that respect quickly fizzled as soon as he learned what real respect felt like. When it came to Belos, it wasn’t so much respect as simply a need to feel validated by the man who (as far as Hunter knew at that time) was the most powerful being in the Boiling Isles, as well as his supposed kin. It was expected of him from birth to hold ‘respect’ for the corrupt ruler. But Willow? When she’d first yanked him from the sky with well-controlled and powerful vines and dragged him literally through the ground to her, honestly he had no idea in that moment that he would come to respect, trust, and love the aspiring flyer derby player. Willow was the first to earn his respect. And she didn’t do so through punishment, fear, or judgment. He wanted to earn her praise because it felt good when she would compliment him, or smile at him, or make him feel like even ‘slacking off’ was acceptable. He went out into Bonesborough that day on a mission to recruit witches for the Emperor’s Coven, but instead recruited his first ever friends. This was the one achievement that Hunter would always place above all others.
“There,” Hunter mumbled in satisfaction, using his thumb to gently wipe off any loose fibers from the surface of the newborn Palisman statue. He inspected them in his hands carefully, checking for any unrefined spots he may have missed. “What do you think?”
Willow unwrapped herself from her sitting position and rolled forward onto her knees, leaning over to admire Hunter’s work. Her eyes traced over the silhouette of the wolf palisman, from the attentive perkiness of the pointed ears, over the curve of its upright sitting position, to the neat curl of his tail around and over the suggestion of paws. The plant witch felt her heart squeeze a little as she noticed the lovingly etched foliage over the wolf’s tail and back. It was as if the little canid carried a garden on its back.
“Plants?” She teased fondly, reaching up to squeeze his knee affectionately through his thick carpenter's apron.
Hunter’s cheeks warmed, something that she undoubtedly noticed every time. “Well—It’s uh-“ he stumbled a little, all of his previous ‘smooth talker’ cred’ totally flying out the window. “It's like a reflection of both of us, since you helped me make him.”
“Come on, Hunter, you brought this guy to life all yourself! What did I do to help?” She raised one brow and smiled.
“You did!” He insisted, eyes widening to indicate his seriousness, “It’s like uh—er—you uhm. You inspire me, a lot. And maybe if this little guy has even a piece of you as a part of them, they could possibly turn out to be the sweetest, smartest, coolest palisman any witch has ever seen,” his mouth was a little dryer by the end of his statement, with every word his eyes seemed to grow wider while Willow’s sparkled and shone with wonder.
“You,” she began, taking a dramatic pause before continuing, “are the most monumentally sweet, adorable dweeb I’ve ever met .” She erupted into giggles and leaned over to lay her arms and head in his lap, looking up to him with those gorgeous eyes.
“H-hey! I’m not adorable! Unless you mean that as in uh—totally wise and rugged and handsome and-“
Her position in his lap wasn’t held for long, since she had instead decided the blonde was in quick need of hushing. With a swiftness that seemed to rival Hunter’s own literal ability to teleport , Willow was on her feet, one hand brushing his signature forelock away from his face, the other hand cupping his cheek. He could no longer defend himself with words, since his mouth was now occupied by sweet lips pressed to his own. He melted. Fast. It felt as though they were frozen there in time for years. Honestly, it wasn’t long enough.
She delicately pulled away and gently thumbed over his cheek. “Just take the compliment, Dandelion.” There’s that word again. She did it again.
All Hunter could muster as a response was a pathetic little noise somewhere between a whine and a grunt. Somehow, Willow knew that this meant she had been successful in the point she was trying to make.
“How much longer do you plan to work?” She continued, wrapping his loose strand of hair around one of her fingers. “I’d love to take you out to dinner tonight, if you can spare a moment of your time.”
“You can have every moment of my time,” he breathed, that whistling noise coming through his teeth. After realizing that he had, in fact, said that out loud , his face simply blanked and he gaped at her.
She gave him a wickedly sweet little grin. “In that case, how about I steal your time in about three hours? So we can both have time to clean up a little?”
“Erm—where should we-?”
“Outside my house? We can walk together into town and do some window shopping before we decide on somewhere to get dinner?”
“Y-yeah! I’ll be there!” He finally managed to blurt out, electricity dancing across his skin. This wasn’t the first time they’d gone out together, but every time they did still felt as magical as the first time. He hoped she would never stop wanting to steal his time.
“See you in a few hours?”
“Absolutely.”