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“—and then he said ‘see you around, sweetheart’ as he leapt off over a wall,” Gepard says over his plate of pancakes, gesticulating wildly with a fork in his grasp, “but not before scattering petals of roses in his wake.”
“Sounds romantic,” Pela replies nonchalantly, furiously typing on her phone. Whatever it is she deems so important to write over listening to her coworker’s gripes, Gepard pays it no mind, instead focusing on the incredulous response the small woman just gave him.
“Definitely not,” he huffs, “are you even listening? And I’m not even finished—you know what else Sampo left alongside that blatant littering?” With the way Gepard’s fork’s been moving all this while, it’s a miracle how the chunk of pancake impaled on it hasn’t flown off to the neighboring table.
Serval, graciously, humors him. “What?”
“A folded piece of paper,” Gepard starts with a mouthful, finally munching on the pancake slice after bringing the fork to his mouth, “it’s the wanted poster of himself that I drew, Serval. With a fucking kiss mark with red lipstick on it, and a handwritten note that says—I hate how I can recite it verbatim, but ahem—
“‘To my favorite Landau, my biggest fan: Oh, I’m flattered, how absolutely adorable of you to personally draw a wanted poster of me, Geppie! Like, what do you want me that much for? For you to hold, huh? Heheh, then I guess I can give you a little gift like the generous person I am. Autographs can be forged, easy peasy for a talented man such as myself, but a kiss mark? That’s how you know it’s the real deal!
—Love, Sampo Koski.
P.S.: It’s free of charge for my favorite person ;)’ ”
A brief yet very heavy moment of silence rings in the air around their brunch table. Serval gathers her slack jaw back in place, needing to do a double check to make sure that undeniably Sampo voice really came out of his brother’s mouth. Even Pela stops typing.
Gepard blushes with such force that he thinks can melt over the entire snow plains. “Please say something,” he squeaks out pathetically, and the two women in front of him burst into a fit of cackles.
“What the hell,” Serval manages between her laughs, and wheezes even more when Gepard glares at her with the intensity of an angry chipmunk, “that’s a solid Sampo impersonation if I’ve ever seen one. I can almost feel him in the room with us.”
Pela wipes a stray tear from her eyes, her laughter already dying down into a giggle. “Call that the devotion of a man obsessed.”
“I am not obsessed,” Gepard quips, almost in reflex. His mind is busy straying to their countless cat-and-mouse games around the city, to the swears unfit of coming out of a Landau’s mouth, to the ‘You’ll pay for this when I catch you next time, Koski!’ s he’s grumbled out hundreds of times before, and yet he never does get anything more than flying kisses, flying petals, or flying bombs along with the con man’s swift exits.
“No, honestly though. You know what I think, Geppie?” Serval adjusts her seating position, leaning forward on the table that strands of her hair almost fall into the cream of her parfait. Gepard’s hand is quick to swat them. “With how you’ve been chasing Sampo around for, what, four years now? And how you almost always consistently bring his name up in our conversations, I’m starting to think you have feelings for that guy!”
In the next few seconds, the only thing a passerby would hear from the trio’s table in that cafe is the sound of Serval noisily slurping her parfait through a ridiculous loopy straw. When she finally realizes that her two companions have gone quiet and that her statement was left unanswered, she looks up from her dessert to find Pela’s eyes widening in realization as both their gazes fall towards Gepard, who’s obviously blonde and very obviously red down to his neck, staring his plate down while chewing on his pancake very, very slowly.
“Oh my god,” Pela gasps in wonder of a true fiction enjoyer. “Slow burn, enemies to lovers, mutual pining.” She then adds under her breath, “all my favorite genres.”
Gepard groans into his open palm. Serval shifts, again, now reaching over to pat her baby brother sympathetically on his shoulder. “There, there,” she tuts, snickering all the while, “I mean, your big sis can understand. That old friend of mine, he—despite how exasperating he can be sometimes, he has all his charms in the right places, huh?”
Gepard still hasn’t stopped groaning. “He’s so hot,” he wails, “he’s so insufferable it’s unfair that he’s hot.” Serval just mutters I know, I know while rubbing her hands down his back.
Pela looks at the Landau siblings like they’ve each grown two heads. “Wh — okay, I’m starting to accept that this is as gay as Captain Gepard can get, but—”
“Hey!”
Pela ignores him. “—but how are you agreeing with this, Serval? That Sampo’s hot?” She sputters, “you don’t even like men!”
Serval just throws her an easy stare. “I don’t, but I have eyes, my dear Pela. Like if I were into men...” she gives Gepard a wink, “I might also be up for the challenge.”
Pela takes a moment to watch Gepard as he lifts his head to stare at her sister in wonder, as if he’s just found a comrade in arms.
“Alright,” Pela starts, “tell me one charming point about that damn fugitive that can make someone fall for him.”
A beat of silence. And then two. Somehow, the three came up with the same conclusion all at the same time.
Pela beats them to the punch. “It’s the hip windows, isn’t it.”
“The hip windows,” Gepard deadpans, but the dreamy look in his eyes betrays whatever hostile emotion he’s intended to muster.
“Definitely the hip windows,” Serval agrees.
“Who the hell dresses like that in the middle of the Eternal Freeze?” Gepard asks, incredulous. Serval, suddenly mindful of her off-shoulder dress and exposed belly, busies herself with her drink.
“W-well,” Serval pipes up, trying to change the topic, “I’m sure there are more merits to that guy other than his, uh, attire of choice, right? I heard he’s been volunteering in the Belobog museum lately. How’s that going, Pela?”
Pela hums. “Now that you mention it, I think the museum’s been getting quite a bit more traction lately since Sampo started volunteering as a guide.” Then she frowns. “It’s kind of disturbing how much he knows about Belobog’s ancient artifacts, really. He even knows some trivias that I wasn’t aware of.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe he knows that much because he’s attempted to steal them before?” Serval wonders out loud.
It’s Gepard’s turn to frown. “Stelle and her friends helped my guards to confiscate the stolen artifacts out of him before, and I made sure to give him a proper beating for it.” Both Serval and Pela’s eyebrows shoot up past their bangs.
Gepard coughs and scrambles at a futile attempt to correct his response. “Not that kind of beating, perverts.”
Pela snickers at how he’s so red to the tips of his ears. “Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night, Captain. Anyways, I guess I can kinda see it now. Sampo’s pretty talented with his words when they’re not used to scam people out of their credits.”
Remembering something, Serval straightens up with a giddy smile. “Speaking of talents, how could I forget! Pela, remember that one time Sampo subbed in as Mechanical Fever’s bassist? Ooooh, that show was something alright.”
Gepard’s fork clatters loudly to the floor as it falls out of his grasp. “He what?”
Pela gasps, seemingly remembering the same thing. “Oh yeah! For someone with little to no prior music background, Sampo actually killed it that night. Wasn’t it one of the loudest encores of our shows?”
“You bet,” Serval laughs, her eyes nostalgic. “A ton of people lined up after the show to get a picture with him, though I’m pretty sure almost half the girls in there were his past scam victims.”
She steals a glance towards Gepard, who’s blushing pathetically as the gears in his head visibly turn to envision Sampo in a rock band. Naturally, as the nice and supportive sister she is, she decides to give him a helping hand.
Slyly, she hums. “Well, I guess they didn’t recognize him because I did too good of a job on his makeup. Who would’ve thought that some smokey eyeshadow, mesh tank top and fake lip piercings could totally change Sampo from a wanted crook to a rockstar heartthrob?”
Serval feigns indifference to the long, heartfelt fuuuuuucking helllllllllllllll she hears from her brother.
“You’re so down bad, Captain,” Pela helpfully points out as if Gepard himself isn’t aware that he’s been suffering in lovesick agony with the torrent of Sampo information presented upon him.
“Shut the fuck up, Pela,” comes Gepard’s muffled grumble.
“I still have his pictures from that night.”
“You’re the best drummer, fiction writer, flower grower, intelligence officer, most capable woman on this entire planet and more, Pela.”
Pela snorts as she thumbs through her phone to send Gepard said pictures.
“Sooo, what are you gonna do about it, Geppie?” Serval asks next, watching her brother’s eyes light up as he saves Sampo’s pictures into his gallery. He’s not insane enough to make those pictures his phone wallpaper. Yet.
Gepard looks up from his phone a bit too nonchalantly for someone who looks like he’s about to combust. “About what?”
“About—” She gesticulates wildly in his general direction, “— this. I don’t suspect you can just sweep this hugeass crush of yours under a rug and go on with your life.”
Pela eyes him judgmentally, assessing him like he’s some kind of lab rat in the Architects’ laboratories. “Not when you have ‘I am in love with Sampo Koski’ written all over your face, you’re not. I’m afraid you fall under the severe category of people who wear their heart too much on their sleeve, Captain.”
Gepard squirms in his seat, uneasy. “What should I do, then?”
“What do you wanna do?” Serval challenges back. Her parfait, long forgotten, is starting to have water condensation pooling on the table underneath its tall glass. “Do you wanna date him?”
Another blush colors Gepard’s cheeks an impossible shade of red. It's almost pitifully hilarious how stark of a contrast the color of his face is now compared to his hair. “I guess...” he starts, the end of his sentence hangs as if he’s unsure how to finish it.
“But...?” Serval goads, leaning closer as she rests her chin on her hand.
It takes Gepard a few moments to finally straighten up, meeting both his brunch companions’ eyes looking somehow more resolute to have come up with a solid answer. “I do want to try pursuing a, uh, romantic relationship with Sampo, but...but—”
His expression falters before he visibly gives up, letting it morph into an irritated pout. “But I just can’t stand him sometimes, he—he thinks he’s hot shit throwing flirts and flustering me left and right, I just wanna shut him up and put him in his place for once!”
Serval slaps an open palm to his shoulder, not even trying to hide her laugh at his sudden outburst. “That’s the spirit! Go get his ass, Geppie!”
Now it’s Pela’s turn to lean in conspiratorially, pushing her huge glasses up the bridge of her nose. “So you need a game plan,” she says to Gepard, her voice dropping down into a whisper. Gepard’s kind enough not to point out that her glasses glare suspiciously like an evil cartoon character from this angle.
“I do?” He asks instead, belatedly realizing it’s pointless to argue with her at this point.
Serval flashes him a manic grin he hasn’t seen since they were kids. “We are not getting up from this brunch table before we come up with a plan.”
Pela nods, procuring a worn notebook from her purse. She opens it up to a blank page, quickly scrawling in big, bold letters the words ‘Operation: Sampard’.
Gepard blinks. “Sampard?”
“It’s your ship name,” Pela replies with an exceptional understanding of the vast world of fiction, waving a dismissive hand at Serval’s widening grin and Gepard’s clueless expression. “Don’t worry about it.”
Serval lets her grin dissolve into a quiet laugh as she leans back in her chair. She nudges Gepard with an elbow and a wink. “You might wanna order something, Geppie. We’ll be here a while.”
Gepard just shakes his head, sighing as he flags a waitress for yet another three cups of coffee.
+++
The game plan, Gepard realizes as he mulls over it a few days later, is far more easier said than done.
A few days later finds himself hot on Sampo’s tail—the criminally handsome, well, criminal, dashing his way through the maze of alleys in Backwater Pass, a suspicious bag of stolen relics clunking in rhythm with his footfalls. Gepard, like always, is closing in on him, with three or so guards trailing up behind him, weapons on the ready with the intent to finally catch the self-proclaimed Master Thief of Belobog once and for all.
Albeit today, the Silvermane Guards’ and Gepard’s definition of catch couldn’t be more different.
Mid-chase, Gepard’s brain flies back to the conversation on that brunch table. Passersby that day might have thought that two Silvermane members and one ex-Architect crowding around cups of coffee and strewn papers must mean devising something of importance to the safety of their bastion of a town. Gepard couldn’t help a small smile creeping upon his lips as the ridiculous thought of how gobsmacked people would be if they ever found out what actually transpired between him, Serval, and Pela on that table.
“Okay, so the plan is: Geppie will round Sampo into a dead-end corner, grab him by the collar and kiss him stupid,” Serval had said, a satisfied ring of finality in her voice as she leaned back in her chair.
The color on Gepard’s face turned a miserable shade between sheer mortification and unbidden intrigue. “Hold on,” Gepard put a hand up, because how in Qlipoth’s name is he going to do that?
“I think,” Pela supplied, brows furrowing in deep thought, “the Captain lifting Sampo’s chin up with a finger would be better in this scenario.”
Serval let out a scandalous gasp at the mental image. “Holy shit, Pela you’re a genius.”
“Wait,” Gepard’s cheeks were as warm as a Geomarrow heater at that point. The two girls pointedly ignored him.
“It’s decided,” Pela slammed her notebook closed after scribbling a few more things in it—Gepard could’ve sworn he saw a crudely drawn doodle of him and Sampo, the distance between them closed by cartoonishly long kissy lips meeting in the middle, with a heart drawn on top of their heads on the corner of the page. Gepard didn’t have the mental capacity to even comment on it.
“Operation: Sampard will commence the next time you chase him on the streets.”
“You’re not listening to me,” Gepard raised his voice, flustered at how it came out an octave higher in his panic. “What do you mean it’s decided—how the hell am I supposed to do that? Shouldn’t we discuss more about—” he coughed in a mere attempt to stop himself from showing how invested he was in this ridiculous plan. He knew it was futile the moment Serval all but laughed in his face. “—about the technicalities?”
Pela waved a dismissive hand at him the second time that day. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, again, and Gepard loathed how he felt like he’s the only one left in the dark. “I’ll give you a signal and kickstart the circumstances for you. And then you take the center stage, Captain.”
Signal? “What signal?” Gepard questioned out.
There was a glint in Pela’s eyes that Gepard, decidedly, did not like. “You’ll know when you get there.”
How the fuck would I know, Gepard grumble-thinks now, back in the present. He had sent a quick text to Pela saying that he’s chasing Sampo right now, in which Pela replied with a sticker of what seemed to be a distorted bear blissfully crying as it clutched a little cellphone to its chest. Gepard doesn’t think he wants to know what it means.
The footfalls in front of him seem to slow down slightly, and Gepard looks up to find Sampo turning his head back while maintaining his pace.
“My, aren’t you more persistent than usual, Captain! Did my week-long absence make you miss lil’ old me that much?” Sampo always talks with a sleazy smile apparent in his voice. It’s so royally fucked up how Gepard wants that voice to say things unthinkable to even cross his mind when he’s still clocked in and at work.
Sampo seems to take Gepard’s scowl as a response. He smiles even wider. “My deepest, most sincere apologies to you, dear Geppie, for I was busy with some Underworld affairs last week! You know, with me lending a hand for Nat and the Wildfire here and there, even Sampo Koski knows when not to push himself past his limits when he’s got his hands full!”
He turns a corner without breaking off eye contact with Gepard, still having his head turned towards him as if he knows the streets like the back of his hands. Maybe he does. “I don’t suppose my beautiful esteemed Captain would be so kind as to cut me some slack on the speed chase today? I’m kind of running a bit out of breath here since I’ve missed a whole week of our fun daily cardio.”
The man even has the gall to wink at him. Gepard hopes the blush on his cheeks isn’t that apparent.
“Not a chance, Koski,” Gepard manages to muster a stern tone, “our little cat-and-mouse game ends today.”
Sampo’s laugh rings shrill in the icy air around them, a confident sound despite being a bit breathless. “Well then,” he says next, voice dropping too flirtatiously low for Gepard’s unfortunate liking, “catch me if you can, Captain Landau.”
The blue-haired man then breaks into a full-on sprint, steps breezy yet impossibly faster than before. Gepard grunts, taking off even faster to match his pace, uncaring of his men who are lagging behind when his eyes are too focused on the prize.
They continue their chase that way, the twist and turns of Backwater Pass easily navigated by the both of them, Sampo’s blades whizzing away and slicing off the unfortunate Fragmentum monsters in their path. It should frighten Gepard how gifted his adversary was in terms of battle skills, but the only thing it makes him feel is unabashed excitement pooling in his stomach, mixed dangerously with adrenaline and the exhilaration of the chase.
Chasing Sampo is always so much fun.
A few more minutes into their chase finds them in a road fork, Sampo taking the path on the left and Gepard follows suit, and not even half a minute later Gepard hears a loud “shit” from the man in front of him, because he rounds another corner and finds himself in a dead-end.
Gepard feels his heart drop to his toes at the sight as he recalls the plan. Is this it? Is he really going to go for it?
For every step forward Gepard takes, Sampo inches further away until his back meets the freezing cold of Belobog’s godforsaken brick walls. He shivers, both at the sensation and at the looming shadow of Gepard closing in on him with nowhere to run.
Clutching the bag of relics closer to his person, Gepard watches the split-second fear flitting in those emerald green eyes as he pulls out a handcuff from his pocket, as per Silvermane protocol, for good measure.
Oh, if only Sampo knew that Gepard has no plan to actually use them today, that Gepard is just twirling the metallic item round his index finger so he has something to do with his hands to conceal his jittering nerves.
He takes another step closer, and Sampo lets out a disgraceful eep.
Scrambling not unlike a cornered rat, a nervous laugh puffs out from Sampo’s lips as he straightens himself in an attempt to make him look unfearing as he meets Gepard’s eyes.
“Geppie, Geppie, Captain, sweetheart,” he starts, the smarmy grin snaking its way back to his face.
“Koski,” he replies, with less than usual sternness that he hopes Sampo wouldn’t notice.
Sampo doesn’t. Instead, he raises one free hand up in the air in mock surrender. “As much as I love to be cornered by Belobog’s most charming-in-his-lack-of-charm Silvermane Guards Captain in an alleyway like this...”
Gepard can never understand how Sampo could just utter things like that without breaking into a blush mid-sentence. It takes every ounce of willpower in Gepard not to bristle as Sampo, boldly, daringly, enters his personal space with a playfully pleading look in his downturned eyes.
Cold fingertips touch Gepard’s ear as they tuck a stray windswept hair behind it. Gepard sincerely hopes Sampo doesn’t speak, not with his mouth alarmingly close to the reddening tips of his ears, because Qlipoth, he doesn’t think he could take it.
But of course, maybe The Amber Lord likes to see his pathstriders suffer sometimes—because Sampo does speak next, and only by the will of Preservation ingrained deep within his person that Gepard is still resolutely, stubbornly standing.
Sampo’s voice lilts, once again dropping into a low whisper, and a small part of Gepard revels traitorously as a delicious shiver threatens to wreck his entire body at the sheer sensation of Sampo’s breath ghosting the shell of his ear.
“Would you let me go if I graciously admit defeat to you in our little chase this time around, Captain?”
The steadiness in Gepard’s voice surprises even himself. “And let you roam free while threatening the safety of the city?” He steps back, just a little, so that he could meet Sampo’s eyes and make sure the other man sees the small smile on his lips. “Never.”
Sampo swoons, a hand on his forehead and another clutching his chest. “Oh, you wound me, my dearest! Not even the least bit charmed to just look the other way this time?”
Bro, Gepard thinks despite himself, you have no idea how fucking charmed I am.
Then, as if on cue, a young Silvermane recruit stumbles into view, rushing from the mouth of the alley towards him. Gepard’s brain idly supplies the fact that the guard approaching him, Calum, is one of his men following him earlier in the chase.
Calum gives him a full-bodied salute, proper posture and all, and Gepard waves a dismissive hand, gesturing him to continue. “Captain,” the recruit starts, “Officer Pela has requested your immediate assistance. She asked me to deliver this message in person and I rushed to find you.”
Gepard blinks. “But I’m currently in the middle of—” And then it hit him.
This is Pela’s signal.
“Thank you, soldier,” he says instead, “tell Officer Pela that I’ll be right there as soon as I wrap things up.”
Calum nods, shifting where he stands and Gepard realizes that he’s waiting to be dismissed. “You may go, soldier.” You wouldn’t want to see what your Captain is going to do next.
After giving Gepard another salute, Calum scurries away, leaving both Gepard and Sampo alone once again. Gepard takes a moment to take a deep breath and steel his nerves, before turning to face Sampo, who’s now grinning in both mischief and relief.
“Welp, duty calls, Captain,” Sampo shrugs, shifting the bag of relics onto his other shoulder. “Wouldn’t want to keep Miss Pela waiting now, would we?”
Gepard grits his teeth, mind split between thinking how he should act and to give Sampo a reply, and unfortunately draws a blank at the former. Shit, he curses inwardly, I can’t do it after all.
The dejectedness in his posture is barely a mere act. Scowling, he stares Sampo down, still looking for the sliver of chance he can grab on to keep the plan going.
He finds none.
As he turns away to walk the walk of shame back to his post, however, the universe finally takes mercy on him and decides to dangle him a low-hanging fruit.
“Aww, how cold,” he hears Sampo mock-whine behind his retreating back, “not even a goodbye kiss for your favorite inconvenience, Captain?”
Gepard stills, absolutely stopping in his tracks because what the fuck?
If that’s not what you call a golden chance, Gepard doesn’t know what is.
Well, it’s now or never, Landau.
He turns back so abruptly he barely registers Sampo jolting in shock. Long, resolute strides take him back to where Sampo is standing in under three seconds, before he grabs Sampo by the jaw and kisses him.
The kiss itself is short and chaste, more like Gepard just firmly planting his lips against Sampo’s. But in Gepard’s current state where his body is acting faster than his brain, this is the best that he could do without losing his mind.
His jumbled mess of a head barely has the capacity to register Sampo’s reaction, or lack thereof. Because the man, Gepard realizes with increasing concern, does not move at all beneath his ministrations.
Schooling his expression as neutral as possible as to not frown at the man he’s just clashed lips with, Gepard pulls back, just a little. He mentally prepares himself for the coming earful of dramatic swooning, the bodily theatrics of the other man as he goes on about ‘oh, how daring, my dear Captain, to have–’
His train of thoughts grinds into an abrupt halt with the loudly echoing CLANG of metal onto the cobbled ground.
Gepard watches as Sampo’s gloved hand, now free from the bag of stolen relics that all but crumpled to the ground, trembles as it makes its way to touch his lips very, very softly.
Gepard can’t find any other term fitting to describe Sampo’s expression other than utterly gobsmacked out of his mind, with how his usually gleaming eyes seem to dim in a clouded haze, and how his slightly reddened lips fall open into a soft ‘o’ .
And how Sampo’s face, Gepard notes, for once, seems to mirror his own usual shade of red all the way down to the sinful little opening on his chest, the color almost rivaling the rich wine of his jacket.
Holy shit.
Holy shit is the only damn thing Gepard’s brain can supply, because he realizes that his lips are still really close to Sampo’s to feel the man’s short puffs of breaths warming up the tip of his nose.
And that might just be the thing that propels Gepard forward, because he decides that this is a good look on Sampo Koski and he’s determined to keep him looking like so for as long as he possibly can.
Gepard leans forward again with his newly ignited courage, his chest burning warm with the euphoria of having the upper hand for once.
He makes sure that Sampo could feel his lips moving against his own, just the lightest butterfly touch.
“My apologies. Must’ve slipped my mind.”
For the first time in that long minute, Sampo lets out a ragged breath with a pathetic sound that sounds more like a squeak.
Gepard wants to leap out of his skin to jump in joy at the realization that he, Gepard Landau, managed to reduce Sampo Koski’s brain into nothing more than that of a shortcircuiting automaton.
How he manages to still have a placid expression on his face with no blush more than is necessary is beyond him, as Gepard takes a few more steps back to admire his handiwork.
Sampo is still rooted to his spot, but at least now he’s blinking.
Reaching out a tentative hand towards the bag of relics on the ground, Gepard’s eyes crinkle with mirth when Sampo doesn’t do anything to stop it. “I’ll take these with me, then,” he says to the blue-haired man with the blue-screened brain, to find no response coming from him whatsoever.
Gepard shrugs. Way too easy , he thinks, getting high and cocky at the sorry sight of Sampo he just created, and in a streak of devilish satisfaction, he lets himself revel in it.
Remembering that he still needs to pay Pela a visit, he turns on his heel to leave the way he came in. A thought comes to his mind midway, however, so instead he turns back to face Sampo once again.
The usual sweet, blushy upstanding citizen Gepard would probably never attempt to do this, but the current Gepard feels like he’s on top of the world, elated beyond belief over the fact that it turns out to be this simple to conquer the very man who’s guilty ten times over of occupying his mind much more that he should.
“I still have to arrest you, though,” Gepard muses out loud, taking another step closer. That finally elicits a solid response from Sampo, that’s if a slow shift of his diamond-shaped pupils to refocus and meet Gepard’s own, and a barely coherent “Awuh?” coming out of his mouth counts as a response anyway.
Adorable , Gepard thinks. He doesn't even try to stop the way his lips are curling up into a smile dangerously close to something predatory.
Who knew he had it in him, huh?
Sheer adrenaline guides his gauntlet-covered fingers to tuck under Sampo’s chin, before lifting it up so Gepard’s sure that Sampo hears what he says next, loud and clear.
“So would you be a dear and stay where you are for me, so I wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of chasing you again, hmm?”
Diamond pupils dilate, a breath hitches, and Gepard can see the exact moment where Sampo promptly shortcircuits again.
The color of Sampo’s cheeks grows impossibly redder it almost looks purple. “Ahuh,” he replies unintelligibly with a slow disjointed nod, brain probably too fried to perform more complicated mind-to-muscle commands.
Satisfied, Gepard lets his grasp fall away from Sampo’s chin. “Good boy.”
An honest-to-Aeons full-bodied shudder wrecks Sampo’s body at Gepard’s words. It makes Gepard gleefully think the man looks like he’s better off if the ground beneath him swallows him whole right there and then.
Smothering a grin in his palm, he promptly turns on his heel once again to leave the man with his thoughts. He likes to think that this is his version of a mic drop, as per Serval’s band lingo. His work here is done.
“See you later, Koski,” he says over his shoulder, and walks away without waiting for the other’s response.
He feels like he could ride on this high forever—his steps light yet purposefully punctuated to echo with his grand exit as he leaves that nondescript alley.
Only when he sees Pela’s head of blue hair peeking conspicuously behind a corner, some distance away from the scene, does his adrenaline leave his body altogether with a jolt.
Gepard feels like he’s been doused with ice-cold water over his head, all his actions from mere minutes before finally dawning on him.
The next bodily response of his, of course, is to flush from the crown of his head down to his toes because what in Qlipoth’s name did he just do to Sampo Koski?
His head snaps to Pela so fast he hears his neck cracking. “D-did you see all that?”
Oh, he’s so back to normal, alright.
Pela has half her face hidden behind a book, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that she’s trying to hide her grin so as to not openly offend her Captain right in his face. She still has the gall to fake think her answer, though, eyes crinkling in mirth when Gepard’s frown deepens at her obvious attempt to prolong his torture.
She finally relents. “Not the deed,” she says, making air quotes with her fingers, and Gepard thinks the phrasing makes it seem even worse than what actually happened. “But looking at the aftermath, I think I can deduce some pretty solid guesses.”
Gepard groans long and hard into his palms.
Pela risks another peek into the dead-end alley, and retracts her head back to stare at Gepard in wide-eyed amusement.
“Respectfully, Captain, I think you broke him.”
+++
It turns out that Pela really had something she needed his help with back in the Restricted Zone, so it’s well past sundown when Gepard finally clocks out, walking out of his post after storing his gauntlet and the rest of his uniform in the Silvermane Guards’ armory.
As he starts to make his trek back home, half his mind idly wonders if he should make a small detour to Backwater Pass to check the alley he’d left Sampo in. He knows the last thing he said to the man was to not go anywhere so he could resume his ki—arrest, mind you, but there’s no way a con man like him would still be there to keep his word, right?
Gepard’s brain unhelpfully supplies him with the mental image of Sampo, still waiting right where he left him, hopeful with that same dumbstruck look from this afternoon.
“Ugh,” Gepard clenches his fist, hoping to tamper down the memory and store it back in a mental folder that he shouldn’t probe into ever again. He turns around and starts walking away from where he was headed, to the general direction of Backwater Pass. It won’t hurt to check, Gepard supposes.
The trek back is shorter than expected with his brisk steps, and before long Gepard finds himself just less than a block away from the godforsaken alley. A traitorous bubble of hope rises in Gepard’s chest as every step brings him closer, but he quickly stumps it down. For all the years he’s grown to know Sampo Koski, he knows better than to get any hopes up for him and be left disappointed.
Not much to his surprise, he turns the corner to find the alley empty. That doesn’t dismiss the pang of dismay in his chest, though, as he huffs out a mirthless laugh that he hopes would alleviate the sinking feeling in his heart.
“What did you expect anyway, Gepard Landau?” he says to the empty alley, his voice shrill in Belobog’s uncaring silence.
A beat passes, and then two. The only thing he could hear is the buzz of the sole Geomarrow heater, lonely in front of a tall stack of crates. Gepard lets his feet take him forward into the alley, nearing the dead-end side of the wall while the damned scene from this afternoon unhelpfully playbacks in his head.
He recalls the way those green eyes dilated in surprise, how surprisingly soft Sampo’s lips were as he was finally able to kiss that stupidly endearing cupid’s bow that he has long grown attracted to. He recalls the hint of stubble he could feel on Sampo’s jaw, even under his gloves, and his finger itches at the sheer want of touching it directly the next time the opportunity presents itself.
There won’t be a next time, though, the logical part of his brain reminds. Look at this empty alley—he just ghosted you, Gepard.
Apparently his brain decides that an extra jab couldn't hurt him even more: You scared the poor man off.
Which honestly should be a relief to Gepard if he’s seeing this in the perspective of any normal upstanding Silvermane Guard. No more Sampo Koski wreaking havoc around the city means one thing off his already overflowing plate, right?
Too bad Gepard isn’t any other normal upstanding Silvermane Guard. No other normal upstanding Silvermane Guard would be staring pitifully at a random crack on the wall after getting his heart broken by the criminal he’s supposed to catch.
A sudden gust of freezing wind makes Gepard shiver, grounding him back to his senses. He’s not in the busy part of the city, so the Geomarrow heaters are only few and far in between. Being shaken out of his stupor makes him realize he’s not as warm as he wants to be, and he sighs.
“What am I even doing here? I should just go home.”
And that’s when he hears it—the rushed click-clacking on the cobbled streets, the quiet surroundings amplifying the echoes that bounce on the walls.
Gepard tenses. Civilians have no business in this part of town, even more so when their footsteps sound like they’re running for their life. Or did a Fragmentum monster slip out from under his squad’s patrol route, and is now roaming free?
Now on high alert, Gepard steps out from the streetlight he’s been standing under, and slinks into the shadows, crouching behind an unassuming pile of crates with his guitar case clenched on the ready. Straining his ears, he can make out the sound of the footsteps getting closer and closer, until it finally stops...at the mouth of this very dead-end alley.
Holding his own breath, Gepard silently listens to the ragged pants of whoever’s standing there, waiting as they catch their breath.
The harsh, unsteady breaths gradually slow down to near-silent huffs, and Gepard hesitates. Should he risk a peek now, and visually assess the situation? Or should he just wait a little longer to make sure he catches his opponent off guard?
And then he hears it again: the footsteps. They are slow and deliberate now, a stark difference from the pace they were set on earlier. Click, clack, click, clack...before stopping again just a few feet away from where Gepard is.
Gepard freezes. He expects a lot of things to happen in the next few seconds: an inhumane cry of recognition as the creature discovers his hiding spot, a searing halberd slicing the pile of crates in front of him in half...
What he didn’t expect, however, was a long, sad, very human-sounding groan that sounds an awful lot like Sampo Koski.
“Fuuuuuuck,” he hears Sampo say, the usual cadence in his voice now borderlining despair. “He went home already, didn’t he?”
Is he looking for someone?
Gepard hears rustling of something like paper and plastic, and the heavy stomps and steps of dress shoes on the pavement. “Fuck,” Sampo seems to be keen on that word at the moment, “it’s well past Gepard’s clock out hour already. I knew I shouldn't have made that stupid detour...”
A gasp practically claws its way out Gepard’s throat, and Gepard has to clamp his mouth shut to avoid making a sound. Oh Qlipoth above , Gepard can barely think over the thumping of his heart. Sampo’s here, and he’s looking for him.
He can’t help it. Gepard’s blue long coat rustles as he stands up, stepping out from his hiding place in an undignified kind of hurry. “Sampo,” the first name tumbling out unbidden before he can even stop himself.
Sampo turns his head so fast with a yelp of surprise, both hands swiftly move behind his back with another rustle of paper and plastic. “G-Geppie?! Huh?! W-where did you come from?”
The blue-haired man shortens the distance between them, almost tripping on his own shoe in the process. “How come I didn’t hear you coming? Man, poor ol’ Sampo is so off his game today—”
Gepard ignores his flurry of questions in favor of his own. “Sampo,” he breathes, disbelief and relief both bleeding into his voice. He realizes that this is the first time he’s ever called the man out loud with his first name, and he likes how the name rolls off his tongue. “You’re here.”
Sampo still looks visibly flustered, yet his mouth runs as if on autopilot. “Why yes, you’re a lucky man to have been graced by the presence of the Tall, Blue, and Handsome Sampo Koski in the flesh, why—” He suddenly stops mid-sentence, eyes widening in realization of something that Gepard does not yet know. He can only watch as Sampo brings out one empty hand from behind his back, lifting it up in the air in surrender.
“Okay wait, hold on, before you berate me about how you’re gonna add another charge of ‘running away from promised arrest’ to my extensive list of offenses, would my beloved Captain be so kind as to give your good pal some time to explain himself?”
Gepard blinks once in confusion. And then twice in bafflement. And then it dawns on him.
Serval and Pela often told him that he’s really terrible at facial expressions, so he’s not sure if the expression of relief he intends to show on his face can be translated as such or if it came out as a scowl instead but oh wow, Sampo’s totally perceiving this the wrong way, isn’t he?
He steals a glance at the other man, who flinches minutely at the sudden scrutiny, with a worried lift of his eyebrows and a guilty grin etched upon his lips. An alarmingly big part of Gepard wants to just close the remaining distance and kiss his worries stupid—but the mischievous streak inside him surges back forward, taunting him to keep the facade from earlier this afternoon, his nerves reminding him of the satisfaction of having Sampo Koski squirm by his words.
Naturally, Gepard opts for option two.
Internally struggling to keep to scowl on his face whilst hoping he doesn’t look too lovesick, Gepard graces Sampo with the best unamused look he could muster. “Fine. Then get to it.”
Sampo straightens up his posture not unlike a new Silvermane recruit that shrivels up at their Captain’s tone.
“Okay, um, well, so you see, Geppie, uh...you left me in a rather surprising situation this afternoon, didn’t you? You gave my poor little heart quite a shock, you know? What, ‘be a good boy and stay where you are?’ Why, Aeons be damned, who knew my little Captain Geppie can be so, so— ”
Sampo stops himself mid-sentence with a loud cough. Gepard can see a blush starting to color the other man’s cheeks, and with how embarrassingly warm his own face feels, Gepard knows that he himself isn’t faring any better.
“—ahem. Yeah. Uh, where was I?”
It’s so...endearing to see Sampo, who usually waxes praises and poetry out of his ass at any given moment, get tongue-tied and stumble on his own words, and Gepard relishes in the fact that he’s the reason for it, as much as he wishes the other man to just stop talking and get his tongue tied with Gepard’s own, instead.
He bites the inside of his cheeks to make himself stop thinking.
Gepard hears himself clear his throat. “The part where I told you to stay where you were, but you ran away nonetheless?”
“I have my reasons!!” Sampo scrambles to answer, wincing at how weirdly high-pitched his voice came out. “I was getting there. Patience, my good pal.
“While this may sound rather unbelievable coming from me, please remember that your old friend Sampo Koski is but an honest upstanding businessman at his core,” he starts, blatantly ignoring the twitch of Gepard’s eyebrows at his words. “So believe me when I say that I actually stayed here after you left for a better part of an hour.”
Gepard’s eyes widen at that, mouth rounding open to protest as Sampo cuts in again, “I swear, I even checked my phone for the time!”
Still unsatisfied by his answer, Gepard puts on an interrogatory air not unlike how he usually questions the man down when he catches him red-handed in his illegal activities.
“You could’ve bolted at any time like you always do,” he muses with a stifled sigh, remembering how impossibly slinky this man is, always escaping with just a hair's breadth away from his almost-arrests. “So why didn’t you?”
Sampo looks part offended, a hand to his chest. “Well, if a certain Captain hadn’t decided it was a good idea to leave little ol’ me with too much food for thoughts to unpack in one sitting, I would’ve already bolted my way into next month!”
Gepard could practically hear the pout in Sampo’s voice, before the latter sighs theatrically, his hand now dramatically rising to his forehead. “Oh, to be dropped a bomb and then be left hanging, I think Sampo Koski’s perfectly fine with just being on the usual giving side of such a predicament!”
Gepard’s mind flies to the countless smoke bombs thrown at him by the thief, stifling a snort as the dots connect in his head. Oh, how the tables have turned.
Apparently, Sampo is far from done. “ I’m supposed to be the one to leave you all flustered, not the other way around! Though Sampo Koski’s all for the art of improv, that thing you did, though? That’s straying too far from the script!”
Mouth twitching in amusement, Gepard holds back a quip or two, because he sees Sampo puffing out his chest again, and he knows better than to interrupt the dramatic man’s lengthy monologue.
“Apparently sitting with your ass on the stone-cold ground for an hour does wonders to clear your head, because only then did I came to the conclusion that there are really only two ways my beloved Captain could’ve reasoned doing the thing that he did:
Option one; that he kissed me completely by accident, he didn’t know what he was thinking, and after realizing what he’d done, he would take a week and half off work—because that’s the longest time you’d allow yourself to take a break, seriously Geppie, Belobog won’t die if you take some time off!—to avoid Sampo Koski like the plague.
Or option two; that the very subtle flirting-slash-courting I’ve been doing to him for the past few years has proven to be fruitful and Geppie’s starting to realize that he’s fallen for Sampo Koski’s many charms and talents, and so the kiss really came from his own kind and gentle and curious heart just to confirm what he feels about it and how I’m gonna react to it so he knows how to act on it next.”
Sampo inhales harshly, seemingly out of breath after spitting those out in rapid succession yet completely unaware of how Gepard is furiously blushing over how spot on the second guess was. But—
“—but as much as I wish option two were true, there’s no way the Captain would think that, right?” Sampo continues suddenly, and Gepard can only gape in shock, because huh???
Before he could open his mouth to retort, however, Sampo has already continued his wild tangent.
“Even I know when some wishful thinking sounds near impossible! So I was like, it’s gotta be option one—but eugh, option one scares me.” The cupid’s bow upon Sampo’s lips accentuates as his lips purse into a frown, and Gepard can’t help but be enamored by it.
“And then I thought to myself, hey! I don’t want Geppie to treat me as if I don’t exist! So I just. Ran. I ran back home down in the Underworld and locked myself in my room to wallow in the despairing thought of having to take ‘Daily Cardio: Have Geppie chase me around the city’ out of my schedule—oh Aeons guide me,” Sampo swoons dramatically, knees buckling and everything to match his theatrics, “that’s even worse than having Belobog go through a second wave of Eternal Freeze!”
A smile etches upon Gepard’s lips unbidden, hints of laughter already bubbling in his throat. “Literally nothing could be worse than a second wave of Eternal Freeze on Belobog, Sampo.”
If Sampo notices the first name basis Gepard’s apparently transitioned into now, he doesn’t show it. He pauses instead, shivering at the imagination of how Belobog’s ruthless climate would be like if it gets even colder. “Yeah, no, you’re right, but! To me the agony of not seeing my favorite Captain at least three times a week is practically comparable!”
Sampo gives him a dismissive wave, and Gepard has to bite back a genuine, toothy grin.
He’s really enjoying the way Sampo unravels his convoluted train of thoughts at the moment, because the way Sampo’s mind works has almost always been an enigma to him, a cumbersome puzzle he has yet to beat. Now that the opportunity presents itself, Gepard is definitely going to milk it for all its worth.
(Even though his prospective makeout session will have to wait a little longer.)
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Gepard says, goading him to continue, crossing his arms in front of his chest in an attempt to make himself look a bit more assertive and Silvermane Guard-like, but the small smile on his face betrays his posture.
“Well...” Sampo trails off, eyes traveling to look anywhere but Gepard’s. He shifts uncomfortably, the tip of his dress shoes scuffing the stony pavement.
“So I was thinking, right. If I’m not gonna see Captain Geppie anymore, rather than going with an unceremonious outcome where I just lay low out of your sight forever, might as well just go back to the alley, turn myself in and end things on a good note! Something about the fact that I can at least see you in prison brings me comfort more than knowing that poor lil’ old me is actively being avoided—or at least that’s what I thought a few hours ago.”
Gepard hums. “And now?”
And at this, as if on cue, Sampo’s entire body language changes—his usual stance that oozes confidence morphs into something more timid and bashful. The same blush from before welcomes itself onto his cheeks again, coloring them the same shade as the tip of his nose that has reddened from the cold.
“And now, uhh...so on the way here, I suddenly had this epiphany that hey, Sampo Koski’s still far too young to be rotting his life away in prison, and my skin doesn’t look good in shades of orange! So I just came up with an amazing plan, but that plan needed me to take a few detours, but then said detours turned out to take much longer than expected because apparently it’s—what, Friday night, and suddenly everyone lines up in front of Eversummer Florist to buy flowers for their dinner dates?”
Sampo shakes his head, timidness from before nowhere to be found, replaced with a brazen, almost comical incredulousness as he recounts his story with yet another dramatic pout.
“And then the Goethe Grand Hotel’s restaurant had a—get this, Geppie—a two and a half hour waitlist just to get in! Absolutely ridiculous! Not even offering complementary, I dunno, hot chocolate or something for the people in line? Like hello, people are freezing their asses out here!”
Sampo’s head snaps towards him all of a sudden. “Are you the type of person who’d be willing to wait out in the cold just for lavish decor with some overpriced, subpar food, Captain?”
Gepard needs to smother a grin with his palm. Does the man even realize what he’s just told him?
He kindly humors him with an answer. “I don’t think so, no.”
Sampo lights up at the affirmation. “Yeah, right? That’s why I was late, I needed to walk around the plaza to find a less-crowded establishment so I can make a dinner reserva—”
Green eyes widening in extremely belated realization, Sampo promptly clamps his mouth shut with a gloved hand. Tips of his ears are blazing red at this point.
“Uh,” comes a glove-muffled reply, “welp. There goes Sampo Koski’s grand plan, I guess!”
Gepard snorts.
It’s an ugly, ungraceful sound that makes Sampo bark a laughter in his surprise, that surprises even himself. And that’s all it takes for Gepard to finally double over in the laughter he’s been holding in his throat, cackles spilling boisterously into the echoey alley they’re standing in. He sees Sampo’s surprised expression visibly melt into that of relief, and laughs along with him as tenseness seeps away from his posture.
“So you’re telling me,” Gepard manages to wheeze out between his laughter, “that your so-called grand plan is to worm your way out of arrest by wooing me with flowers and dinner?”
With a sheepish smile and another rustle of paper and plastic, Sampo flourishes a bouquet of ball peonies from behind his back, tied neatly with a royal blue ribbon, some petals speckled with fresh snowdrop. A gloved hand gingerly takes one of Gepard’s by the fingertips in a featherlight touch, and Sampo bends down to meet it halfway as he brings it upon his lips.
“Yeah,” he says, looking up at Gepard from beneath his eyelashes, breath puffing against Gepard’s fingers in a ghost of a kiss. “Is it working?”
Oh, Gepard thinks. He feels a circuit in his brain shuts itself off. Oh, what the hell.
Retracting his hand from Sampo’s hold as if he just touched fire, he balls it into a fist before covering his mouth with it in hopes of tampering down the furious blush on his face. His eyes dart everywhere—anywhere except meeting the intense gaze of those green eyes, whose owner takes a step closer in his peripheral vision, closing the small distance between them.
He hears Sampo chuckle, a bittersweet sound so close to his ear. “Captain, my sweet,” he croons, “anyone ever told you that it’s rude not to look your conversation partner in the eyes? I’m a big boy, you know—Sampo Koski’s faced greater feats in his life, he's strong enough to take rejection to his face—”
“—jecting you.”
Sampo blinks. “I’m sorry?”
Gepard’s free hand snatches the bouquet from Sampo’s grasp so fast it almost falls from his own trembling grip. He gathers the flowers close to his chest, as if afraid that Sampo would change his mind halfway and take them away from him.
“I am not rejecting you, Sampo.”
It takes exactly three seconds for Sampo to process the words coming out of Gepard’s mouth, and by the time the realization kicks in, the man beams with a smile that Gepard thinks rivals the sun.
“Oh Aeons,” Sampo staggers backwards as he swoons, theatrics a telltale sign that he’s going to break into another dramatic tangent at any moment, “to think of the sleepless nights I’ve spent brainstorming ways to woo the ever-unmoving Captain of the Silvermane Guards, and for it to be finally working—”
Gepard cuts him off with a tug at the base of his hair, pulling the mercenary closer who lets out an ungraceful eep.
“Do you ever stop talking?” He asks a question he’s thrown time and time again to the man, but this time his voice is not laced with venom.
The grip he has on Sampo’s hair tightens, almost on reflex, and Sampo has this shit-eating grin on his face that Gepard unfortunately really likes. “Just shut up and kiss me already, dumbass.”
“I think you meant to say darling, sweetheart,” Sampo says, so close now the tips of their noses are touching. “But who am I to refuse such an enticing offer?”
Sampo doesn’t waste another second as he surges in to meet Gepard’s lips.
Sampo kisses him like a man parched, nimble fingers tangling themselves on blonde locks as if he’s wanted to for so long. Gepard relishes in the way their breaths mingle together, four long years of longing quickly melting away with every soft sigh and softer noises coming out of their throats.
Gepard finds his back propped against the cold of the stone wall, barely registering how they even maneuvered their way into that position from where they were standing in the middle of the street. No matter, who cares. His string of thoughts are barely coherent at best, and his spine tingles at the thought of being cornered as Sampo devours him as if he was born to do it.
He feels a tentative nip on his bottom lip, warm tongue prodding for permission, and Gepard allows him to just take, take, take. Sampo’s hand slides from his hair to the back of his neck, angling him into the kiss and oh, the feeling has him scrabbling for purchase on the sinful delve of Sampo’s hips, cold fingers finally touching the very view that’s always present on the forefront of his mind.
A delicious shiver wrecks Sampo’s figure as Gepard lets his hands roam under the offensive part of his revealing attire, the hip windows easily giving him free access to Sampo’s toned sides. Some fingers brush the bumps of old scars littered on the other man’s lithe body, and Gepard files it away for another day, preferring to occupy his mind with the task in hand.
Suddenly his coat is being slid off his shoulders, and Gepard sighs as Sampo trails off to pepper open-mouthed kisses to his jawline, and the sliver of skin his turtleneck doesn’t cover.
“Ngh,” he manages, and Sampo greedily swallows the moan back with his lips upon his.
Then Sampo laughs into the kiss, his gloved palm on Gepard’s cheeks a tad bit clammy, before he leans back to drink in the sight of Gepard’s disheveled, dazed expression. He must be quite a sight, really, because Sampo all but leans in again to give him another peck.
“My sweet, beautiful, sweetheart of a Captain,” he whispers to the space between them. Gepard’s cheeks grow hot at the onslaught of pet names—they apparently hit different after you’re kissed stupid—under Sampo’s palms. “If this is what I get for turning myself in, I would’ve let you catch me sooner.”
“That’s not how it works,” Gepard snarls, but laughs into his smile nonetheless.
They stay like that for a moment, Gepard’s icy blue eyes meeting Sampo’s emerald ones, Gepard nuzzling his cheek into Sampo’s gentle touch, before Sampo finally breaks eye contact with a melodramatic wail.
“Okay, stop, stop giving me bedroom eyes, Geppie,” he groans, “have some mercy on my poor little heart, would you?”
Suddenly remembering something, he fishes his phone out of his pocket. “And we’re running late to our dinner reservation!”
He says that, but his words teeter off as he feels Gepard’s thumbs circling the bare skin under his hip windows in slow, languid motion, the so-called bedroom eyes on full blast and he makes sure Sampo is watching.
“Um,” Sampo squeaks, “unless you wanna skip it and go somewhere else?”
Gepard puts on an expression as if deep in thought, his hands unfaltering in their movements. “Hmm, it depends. What are we having?”
“Steak,” Sampo says in a half gasp, because Gepard’s thumb tucks itself snugly on the hem of Sampo’s pants.
So easy to rile up, Gepard muses, embracing the mean streak that comes back to his mind for the third time that day. How fun.
The blue-haired man blubbers, brain-to-mouth function temporarily disrupted under Gepard’s ministrations. “We’re having steak, and some wine, and then– ah , um, I think the place’s famous for their panna cotta, if you want dessert, as a treat. I know you like sweet things, Geppie.”
Gepard drinks in the sight of the man in front of him—all flustered, lips red and swollen and so, so sweet.
Sweet things? He sure likes them, alright.
In lieu of an answer, Gepard leans forward to plant a butterfly kiss on Sampo’s cheekbone, feeling the man’s eyelashes flutter close at the sensation, before moving in to whisper low in his ear.
“Well,” Gepard pauses, a shit-eating grin on his face this time, “lead the way, then, sweetheart. The steaks aren’t going to order themselves.”
He then untangles himself from Sampo’s hold to walk away, bouquet in hand, once again leaving the poor guy dumbfounded like did this afternoon.
Sampo gasps, scrambling on his feet to catch up with Gepard, who’s laughing so hard his cheeks start to hurt.
“Oh, Captain!” Sampo whines, and Gepard laughs even harder. “Who knew you could be such a tease!”
+++
Far into the night, long after dinner and after some sinful endeavors later, Gepard finds himself in bed, head propped up against his regal blue headboard. Sampo is splayed on his chest, all soft snores and softer tufts of hair—very surprisingly so when you wash out the absurd amount of styling gel in it—with one arm thrown across Gepard’s torso.
A sliver of moonlight trickles in from beneath the curtains, casting silver shadows on Sampo’s sleeping face, and Gepard gently chases it with his fingers. Sampo melts into the touch in his sleep as a lithe, callused hand runs softly down his cheek.
Gepard feels his phone buzz beside his pillow. Frowning, because usually late-night texts are never a good sign in his line of work, he reaches out for it with his free hand that isn’t carding through Sampo’s hair.
operation: sampard
(You, The Better Landau™, Pelageya)
The Better Landau™: sooooo
The Better Landau™: how did it go?
Pelageya: 👀
You: All good
You: Had steak for dinner
Pelageya: Is the sex good?
You: ????????
The Better Landau™: PELA?????
Pelageya: *STEAK sorry
The Better Landau™: an oddly specific timing for autocorrect to kick in
Pelageya: This is too good of a fic fodder
Pelageya: You can’t blame me
The Better Landau™: LMAOOOOO
You: It was nice
You: *****The steak
You: I still have to arrest him tomorrow, though
The Better Landau™: WHAT?
Pelageya: WHAT?
The Better Landau™: what did he do this time
You: A very serious theft
You: The worst one so far that even I can’t turn a blind eye on, I’m afraid
Pelageya: Oh god
Pelageya: Even worse than the Belobog Museum’s ancient artifacts?
You: By far
The Better Landau™: qlipoth guide me or i swear i will Strangle that man
The Better Landau™: tell him to sleep with his eyes open tonight
The Better Landau™: say it geppie, what do you have to arrest him for?????
Gepard bites back a snort as he stops typing for a dramatic pause. He can almost picture Serval near-crushing her phone in her hands in suspense, and Pela worrying her bottom lip as she waits for Gepard’s reply with bated breaths.
You: For stealing my heart
The response was instantaneous.
[Pelageya left the group]
You: No? :(
You: [Sticker: Sad PomPom]
The Better Landau™: FJEGSKBFJBS
The Better Landau™: scratch that
The Better Landau™: stop by the workshop tomorrow morning so i can strangle you both and smack you across the head
The Better Landau™: DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN YOU TRAUMATIZED POOR LITTLE PELA
Gepard’s shoulders shake with laughter, the jostling movement stirring Sampo awake from his slumber.
“Mmngh, Geppie?” He rasps, a hand coming up to rub his eyes. “What’s so funny?”
Blearily squinting at the Gepard’s phone screen, Sampo’s eyebrows knit as he reads the first thing he sees on it.
“Geppie,” he starts, now shifting so he’s on eye level with Gepard’s chin, “what’s Sampard?”
Gepard’s phone almost jumps out of his hand in his embarrassment.
Making quick work of locking the screen and throwing it haphazardly under his pile of pillows, he ignores Sampo’s whines of protest and pulls him into a, hopefully, distracting kiss.
He pulls away after a moment, and Sampo smiles, blinking sleepily at him in question.
In the midst of his internal panic as he fights the mortified blush coloring his face, Gepard recalls what Pela had said to him in response to that same question a few days ago on that brunch table.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Sampo just kisses him again.