Work Text:
“Was that Mr. Daryun?”
“Ah, yeah,” Arslan replies as he places his cellphone down on the coffee table. “I told him he should take tonight off and go have fun with his friends. It was a hard-won battle, let me tell you.”
“Sounds like it,” she says, her soft laugh like trills of a tinkling bell. “And what about Elam?”
“Said he’s already got plans,” Arslan hands her a steaming mug, which she accepts gratefully, and he places his own down before walking over to their television set to pop in a DVD and dimming the lights. “He sounds a bit irritated when he told me that though.”
Scattered messily all over the coffee table are the DVDs they are planning to go through this evening; having a Harry Potter movie marathon on the last day of the year seems to have become a small tradition for the couple since this is the third New Year’s Eve they’ve spent together.
Friends had urged them to join in their – mostly alcohol-fuelled – festivities, but Arslan had experienced in his first year of university that being a rambling and emotional drunk in public was a terrible idea when you are a prince of a small principality in Europe whose identity is being kept secret with an intimidating and over-protective bodyguard like Daryun. Nobody ever talks about what really happened in that particular New Year’s Eve party, but the rumors had snowballed into something more and more ridiculous each time Arslan happened to hear it even after a month into the new year.
Conclusion: Arslan just wishes to spend a peaceful evening with his close friends, sober, on the last day of each year.
“Alfreed?” The blond-haired woman raises an eyebrow, a small knowing smile lighting up the topaz of her eyes.
“Probably,” Arslan laughs as he settles beside his girlfriend on the couch and draws his legs up close to his chest, his head laying lightly against her slender shoulder. “How long did their ‘break-up’ last this time? A month?”
“Three weeks,” she replies without pause. “Alfreed has Elam wrapped around her little finger though, so it’s really only a matter of time.”
When the title of the film appears on the screen, they fall quiet upon silent agreement. The sumptuous, saccharine scent of hot chocolate wafts through the air, the steam from their mugs drifting up languidly before them, warming their cheeks, melting away the stiffness of their cold fingers as they seek out each other’s hand under the nest of blankets.
By the middle of the second movie in the series, hot chocolate has been consumed, and they’ve moved on from sour cream and onion chips to home-made sugar cookies Elam had baked for them over Christmas break.
It’s when Hermione starts concocting the Polyjuice Potion in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom that Estelle feels a set of fingers combing through her hair in soothing strokes.
“Aren’t you going to watch the movie?” She scoots back a little closer, releasing a contented sigh as she feels Arslan winding a protective arm around her waist.
“I am,” Arslan says, his fingers continuing their ministrations of sifting through Estelle’s golden curls, and he leans in to place a gentle kiss on the curve of her ear after tucking a stray lock of hair behind it. “I’m multitasking.”
Estelle snorts softly though she doesn’t complain, but her concentration is slowly disintegrating as Arslan continues to play with her hair – twirling strands of it between his fingers, or braiding it loosely in complicated patterns. It’s something that Estelle learns from the years they’ve been together to be one of Arslan’s queer little habit when they’re in the privacy of their own home.
Her pulse flutters and thrums like a hummingbird’s wings when Arslan’s fingertips linger a bit too long on the nape of her neck and trace random paths along her shoulder, slightly exposed when her knitted cardigan slips lopsided to reveal the strap of her tank-top and an expanse of creamy skin. Arslan has swept her messy locks over her other shoulder before he starts to pepper light kisses along the elegant line of her bare shoulder, occasionally interrupting the soft touches with playful nips that are more wet, insistent sucking than pressure of his teeth lining her tender flesh.
“A-Arslan…” There’s a hint of breathlessness and unspoken want in the palpable waver of her whisper that Estelle is unable to hide, and her face flushes deeply at how needy she must have sounded.
“Don’t mind me,” he huffs out a chuckle, hot breaths tickling the skin that’s turned a rosy pink with his constant kisses.
“Unlike you, I’m really bad at multitasking,” Estelle admits with a pout, and she can’t stop shivering – impossible when Arslan is touching her the way he is right now: gentle like she’s made of glass, but quietly reverent like she’s a miracle, something to be kept close to heart.
“Mm, that’s true.” Estelle feels her boyfriend smiling into her skin and leaving one last, fleeting kiss just under the curve of her ear before he settles, resting his chin over her shoulder. “I’ll stop distracting you from the movie then.”
True to his word, Arslan returns his attention to the film until the end of The Goblet of Fire.
It’s about ten minutes to midnight by then, and Estelle feels a slight weight on the side of her arm. She turns, taking care to move as little as possible so as to not jostle the slumbering man, and shifts his slight body so that he can lay down more comfortably with his head on her lap instead. Arslan barely stirs, his breathing deep and relaxed, causing a stray piece of hair that has fallen to the corner of his mouth to flutter.
The darkened living-room is filled with the lush instrumental music and frail spots of lights as the credits roll down the television screen.
Arslan’s fair skin glows a strange white-blue from the television’s luminosity, sometimes casted in absolute shadow. When the movie automatically replays itself, Estelle doesn’t move to turn it off.
She considers waking him up anyway because the New Years fireworks display will start soon, and from the small balcony of their apartment, they have quite a decent view of the show without having to venture into the suffocating crowds near the harbor. Yet when her glance falls on to Arslan’s sleeping face, Estelle finds herself staring at his long lashes, like twin crescent moons, and the delicate curve of his lips, a hint of a soft smile, almost child-like, as if he’s having a sweet dream, visible even in his sleep.
With careful fingers, Estelle brushes the lock of hair away, and when the white lights hit his hair at just the right angle, the silver strands gleam like starlight in the dark.
Her hand hesitates, shivering with the desire to touch, but only just for a brief moment, before Estelle sinks her fingers into the man’s thick locks, so silky and soft to the touch it should be a crime.
Arslan lets out a small sigh, moves his arm up to his torso to scratch at an invisible itch but remains still otherwise.
Estelle, who has frozen up at Arslan’s movements, releases a bated breath she doesn’t realize she has been holding. Usually this would have been enough to startle her into stopping, but perhaps exhaustion has caught up to her body, too, for her mind is fogged with the single-minded craving to play with Arslan’s stardust hair.
So against her better judgment, Estelle picks up a few strands of Arslan’s locks, like catching trails of glimmering stars between her fingers, and begins to braid it like Arslan would usually do with her own hair.
She can see how the repetitive motion of placing one strand of hair over another can be calming, and Estelle’s attention has been entirely drawn to braiding her boyfriend’s hair that she hasn’t even noticed the hands of the clock are both pointing directly at the number twelve.
The first burst of fireworks is as blinding and dizzying as the Catatumbo Lightning – all silver and golden streaks bursting into stunning flowers that dissipates into the violet-black of the sky accompanied by cracks of thunder that make Estelle shake.
Arslan moans at the noise and blearily blinks his eyes open. Midnight blue of a clear night sky that embraces and compliments starlight of the universe stares straight at the startled topaz that brightens into a gold as brilliant as the sun itself, the brightest star in Arslan’s eyes.
“Happy new year, Estelle.” His voice, always soft and tender as spring rain, is almost veiled by the blurred cheers of the crowd outside and the bursts of rumbling, but the smile he gives her in return is dazzling.
“Happy new year,” she murmurs with a timid smile of her own, fingers moving on their own to rake through Arslan’s locks.
It is precisely at that moment when Estelle realizes her hand is still in Arslan’s hair, and that her boyfriend is now giving her an uncharacteristically sly grin that borders on mischievous, an expression that’s rarely seen on the usually mild-mannered prince so that when it does appear without a warning, it always causes Estelle’s heart to go overdrive.
“Caught you,” Arslan grins up at her, eyes lighted up with mirth.
Even as she denies with cheeks flushed red and stuttering excuses, even as Arslan rolls off the couch, laughing, only to crawl back in to gather her in his arms, even as she hears him whisper the words (so many times but each time burning a degree deeper) “I love you” against the crook of her neck, Estelle has a feeling that 2016 is going to start off beautifully.