Work Text:
Yor and Anya still weren't awake, even as Twilight carried them aboard the Lorelei. Its long ramp bowed under their combined weight. The sun, low and warm in a pinkened sky, glinted off the flyaways of their windswept hair. It gave the illusion of sparkles dancing around their heads.
This was just a fleeting observation, of course. Twilight's mind was fully occupied with the task of staying upright and pressing forward, his own body weary from the long day and night.
Through the cavernous entrance hall, echoing with the chatter of passengers recounting their excursions and discussing dinner plans, Yor and Anya continued to snooze in his arms. He expected at some point for Yor to wake up, apologize sleepily, and make her way to the cabin the City of Berlint had provided for her. But still, she slept as he turned away from the grand staircase toward the cramped elevator bay and its symphony of hollow pings. This bizarre woman, who'd felt the eyes of a highly trained spy that day they first met, who still flinched every time he looked at her, slept deeply even as the sights of every passenger pointed unabashedly at the spectacle that was the Forger family.
As one, they descended into the lower decks, and after several extra stops due to a fumbled attempt at pushing the button for their floor, emerged into the sacred stillness of the hallway.
Twilight's vision was narrowed by the brim of his hat and the cumbersome bundle in his arms. Unable to see the numbers on the cabin doors, he counted the identical door jambs as they passed by.
…two…three…four…five…
The repeating wallpaper pattern made the walk feel like some allegorical representation of his time in Strix thus far: endless, taxing, and somehow going nowhere. For all of his efforts, Anya had one Stella and one Tonitrus, effectively taking the mission one step forward and one step back. And Operation: Just Kiss Your Fucking Wife Already, as Handler last dubbed it, was at a standstill.
It was over a month ago that Yor approached him, red-faced and stuttering about the ladies at work and her own failing mission to be "normal", with the idea of kissing practice. Six weeks, three days to be precise. Yet, all he had to show for it was a growing collection of bruises.
They almost kissed in the kitchen one day two weeks ago (16 days ago, technically). But after that attempt had, like every other, ended in bloodshed (his, always his), Twilight proposed a break. That day, they agreed that they wouldn't resume "practice" until Yor was ready.
All Twilight had to do was wait. Easy.
But that break had drawn on much longer than anticipated, and Twilight was growing anxious. Not that he was particularly anxious to kiss Yor or anything… he was just unaccustomed to waiting on others. A man of action.
Plus, he didn't think he could bear to hear anymore of Handler's cute little nicknames for his failed operation.
Twilight adjusted his hold on Yor as she and Anya began to slip, counting all the while.
…eleven…twelve…thirteen...
An elderly couple passed by, the woman cooing affectionately at the sight while the man muttered something about "young people these days" and "wearing hats indoors". Noting the man's age and the way he carried himself, Twilight deduced the old man was likely a veteran of the first Unification War, and had probably committed far greater offenses than to break arbitrary social conventions concerning head wear.
He fantasized about dropping Yor and Anya at the old man's feet, apologizing profusely, and making an exaggerated show of taking his hat off. Let the old man deal with a crying Anya. Let him find out the hard way what happens when you take Yor by surprise…
Loid Forger greeted the old couple with an apologetic smile and a nod.
…nineteen…twenty…twenty-one...
God, he was tired.
The engine room, which had started out as a distant hum, was now a sonorous, metallic drone. He counted the twenty-sixth doorway, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth... and then finally, they were there.
Twilight shifted his weight, leaning on the wall as he dug the key out of his slacks. He brought a knee up to catch Yor and Anya before they slid down to the floor, teetering on one foot like a clumsy flamingo, feeling grateful for the briefest of moments that Yor wasn't awake to see it.
He pulled out the key. The lining of his pocket reached out after it, sand showering the floor. He managed to slip it into the lock on the third try with a pathetically victorious gasp. Eagerly, he turned the key, all while supporting his weight on the door—a mistake he didn't realize until it was too late.
Miraculously, he managed to stay upright as he stumbled through the doorway, Yor and Anya still in hand and out cold. He kicked the door shut behind him, staggered across the tiny room, then gracelessly dumped them onto the bottom bunk.
They stirred momentarily but continued to sleep.
Twilight came to a stand and leaned back, arms stretched overhead, spine crackling like the fireworks show from the night before. Even through the grand finale, two deep pops as he twisted his torso in search of relief, Yor and Anya slumbered deeply.
He released a heavy sigh. It was his turn to collapse from exhaustion, he thought… but he wasn't done being Loid Forger yet. He was never done being Loid Forger. And during this vacation (a term he applied to this whole experience with a heavy dose of irony) he didn't even have his own bedroom within which to drop the act. So, he carefully removed their sandals and placed them by the door; hung their hats on the polished, wooden pegs, because that's what Loid Forger would do. Mechanically, he drug his tired body to the sink, filled the electric kettle with water, then returned it to its base. With a plasticky click, he set it to boil.
His legs felt on the verge of giving out. With nowhere else to go, he dropped to a seat at a padded wooden stool before what the cruise line boldly referred to as a "desk" in the list of third class cabin amenities.
He turned away from Yor and Anya, knees butting up against the underside. As his fingers drummed an anxious staccato on the scarred wooden surface, his eyes came to a rest on the kettle.
Strange, how routine crept up on you. He hadn't even realized teatime was routine until the fourth or fifth time they'd sat in the living room together after Anya's bedtime. Yor had set a mug of tea down in front of him, not asked for but needed, and sat on the couch adjacent. As always, she'd switched off the overhead lights and clicked on a few lamps that cast the apartment in a dim, somnolent light. It made her seem softer, somehow. They would chat about the more mundane aspects of their days during teatime, growing warm from the drinks, and perhaps the company, until sleep (or, in his case, work) summoned them to their separate rooms.
He'd continued this ritual even in Yor's absence aboard the Princess Lorelei. Once the light of the world dimmed to that same soothing hue as their lamp-lit living room, he found his body calling for that nightly cup of tea.
The tea here wasn't as good as it was back at home (well, the apartment), which was strange, because the ship's tea bags were just a repackaged version of the Ostanian brand they kept stocked in their kitchen. But something about it just wasn't the same.
Maybe it was the water…
His mind wandered back to the tea from the night before, tepid and dilute; the empty seat at their table in the ship's dining room. How keenly he'd felt Yor's absence…
Yes, probably the water, he thought.
He continued to watch the kettle, ignoring conventional wisdom. It showed no change from one moment to the next.
Seconds dripped by, syrupy slow.
Inevitably, his mind, then his eyes, wandered back to Yor.
She had her back to the room, curled around Anya in a way that brought to mind a mother fox sleeping with her pup. Her eyelashes rested placidly on her cheeks, pink from their day in the sun despite her vigilance—she'd been more concerned with putting sun screen on Anya, always saving herself for last. Her arm was draped over the little girl, who was splayed gracelessly on her back, one leg slung over Yor's, a shiny trail of drool running down her chin.
He would have to move Anya—she could be quite the violent sleeper. But, he felt a reluctance to do so…
He felt a pang in his chest and wondered again about the potability of the ship's water.
Anya squirmed in her sleep, an elbow landing squarely in the middle of Yor's chest—Yor whimpered in her sleep, brows drawing together in pain. That wouldn't do. In one fluid movement, Twilight stood, stepped across the tiny room, plucked Anya out of Yor's arms, and placed her on the top bunk.
Yor, still unconscious, protested half-heartedly, fumbling around for Anya in the newly empty space. But she soon settled back into the bedding and sunk back into sleep herself. Above, Anya muttered something about assassin battles and flopped toward the opposite wall, emitting a quiet stream of snores.
Twilight let out an amused huff—an unfortunate habit of Loid Forger's that now infected Twilight. He quickly corrected with a scowl.
His eyes fell on the kettle again, clicking every so often as the internal mechanisms shifted to the slowly rising heat. His muscles tingled emptily with the promise that they would ache tomorrow. He so craved the warmth of a mug of tea, knowing he wouldn't have the relief of a warm bed just yet…
He shook his head, as if he could dislodge Loid Forger’s feeble presence from his mind.
You don't even like tea, he reminded himself. Scotch: neat. Coffee: black. Everything in Twilight's life was a challenge, so why should his drinks be any different? Little comforts were the first tentative steps on a slippery slope to total collapse. Too much was at stake for even little risks like that.
And yet…
His coffee had been growing lighter, mellowed by cream and sugar. He was throwing tea in the mix—chamomile, for fuck's sake. He'd been sleeping longer and longer, too. His latest average was four and a half hours per night. He was practically domesticated. Once accustomed to catching crumbs of sleep in whatever dirty, concrete corner of whatever abandoned warehouse he deemed safe enough to drop his guard, Twilight now had a bed.
Pathetic… he chided. Growing too soft for the floor.
Maybe that was why the bed looked so enticing…
His eyes wandered across the room and lingered on Yor for another long moment. Her form grew and shrunk with each long breath, steady and soothing like the sound of the ocean. A year ago, on that warehouse floor, Twilight slept to the soundtrack of skittering rats and dripping pipes. For all of his complaints about Strix, this was, objectively, an improvement…
With one last glance at the kettle, Twilight lowered himself to the floor. His creaky knees were slow to settle as he stretched out his legs, feet throbbing in overdue protest. He winced in pain as he sat back, finally settling against the bedside table.
The porthole above him glowed orange with the setting sun. It cast a faint circle against the opposite wall and bathed everything in a warm, ethereal glow. Cramped though it was, something about the cabin felt empty before. But now, with Yor's floppy sunhat hanging next to his and Anya's…
He drug his hand harshly across his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. He was so very tired...
Twilight sunk further down, stretching out on the floor. He allowed himself the luxury of Anya's nearby duffel as a makeshift pillow, then wriggled into a passably comfortable position, hands folded over his chest. Now, all he could see was the ceiling—a neutral subject, and one that didn't send his mind reeling. Maybe the blank expanse above him would remind him of who he was before Strix, before Loid. Maybe he could catch some tortured sleep on this unforgiving floor, just like old times…
His eyes traced the cracks in the plaster ceiling, followed each dizzying tributary to its crooked end. His pupils darted around like tadpoles under the surface of his eyes, jumping from one desultory line to the next. His vision blurred, then cleared, then blurred all over again. His chest rose and fell in longer and longer increments. He released an emptying sigh, the black veil of his eyelids falling, falling…
But the sound of movement had Twilight's eyes shooting open before they could fully close, hands flying up in a defensive stance as Yor's pale hand flopped into view. His whole body tensed, bracing himself for the brutal pain that always accompanied such close encounters with Yor's extremities...
But her hand just hovered limply in his vision. After a stunned second, Twilight exhaled a small sigh of relief.
Yor, it seemed, had just rolled over in her sleep.
He surrendered his eyes to her hand, perfectly centered in his vision. The cracks of the ceiling faded and bled together into the mottled background of a still life he couldn't look away from. Her hand, elegant fingers curled in on themselves like a flower mid-bloom, looked nothing like the sheathed weapon he knew it to be. It looked delicate, rather—like something plucked out of nature and placed behind glass, to be admired but never touched.
His mood soured again as his mind returned to the status of Strix—more precisely, of his and Yor's unofficial side mission.
Operation: Black and Blue ("black eyes, blue balls", Handler had gleefully elaborated without prompting) hadn't lapsed for a lack of trying on Twilight's part. Once it became clear that Yor wasn't going to make any moves to resume practice anytime soon, Twilight had been forced to take things into his own hands.
He wasn't trying to seduce Yor, per se… but, he figured, if Yor wanted to kiss him, it would certainly make things easier. Yes, the full-on love confession had been a bad idea—the dull ache in his chin was a constant reminder of that—but this awkward, stilted "practice" approach hadn't gotten them anywhere either. Perhaps it had been a mistake to take attraction out of the equation completely... It would be a waste not to utilize his hard-earned talents, really.
But most of his honeytrap training, it turned out, was absolutely useless when it came to Yor. He finally accepted this fact after burning through the better part of 862 date ideas in one baffling night. However, WISE had put him through a month of rigorous wilderness survival training back when he was a rookie, and some of the things he'd learned about bear encounters were helping…
He approached seducing Yor like one would approach taming a feral animal: slowly, consistently, cautiously... It wasn't about overt displays of romantic interest so much as slowly and methodically gaining trust. If his usual seduction style was a knife slipped cleanly between the ribs, this one was death by a million cuts—a million micro-gestures designed to wear down her defenses and lure her in.
He came up with more excuses to be around her alone; to touch her in seemingly innocuous ways... When he was feeling especially daring, he would make a favorable comment about her appearance—one that could be interpreted innocently, but still carried the carefully balanced possibility of something more. Sometimes, he would look at her a certain way that made a blush bloom across her cheeks. He was on constant alert for that same blush so he could analyze it and add to the growing profile on what Yor liked—all the better to lay the groundwork for that first kiss.
From there, he orchestrated the perfect opportunities for said kiss—little openings for her to make the first move, even borrowing horrible clichés from episodes of Berlint in Love. Late one night in the hallway of their apartment, he tried to recreate a classic scene from an early season. It was a scenario that had so firmly embedded itself into the female zeitgeist that she would fall into step automatically. It was foolproof, he thought:
He would bump into Yor and drop an armful of books and papers. She would help him pick them up—of course she would—and as she did, he would intentionally brush her fingers as they reached for the same book. He would meet Yor's eyes as he had been every day, but this time, he wouldn't look away...
He would be wearing his hair down, the way he knew she liked it (her blush had betrayed this intel). He would give her the heavy-lidded look he'd perfected over time—the look that spurred a hundred invitations back to "my place". One she couldn't look away from. He would make sure they were positioned in just such a way that all it would take for Yor kiss him would be a slight shift of her weight… and he would be so tempting that she would...
But that night, he hadn't even made it past step one before Yor, apologizing profusely, picked everything up with lightning speed and shoved it back into his arms. And, like with so many things, she interpreted the whole collision as a failure entirely on her part. Since then, she'd made sure to give him an outrageously wide berth whenever she passed him in the hallway, treating him more like a stranger with a contagious disease than a husband.
His plan for them to be trapped in the apartment elevator together one evening failed in a similar manner.
Still, every moment they were together, he was on the lookout for something. Anything to latch onto to create a moment—if not an opening for her to kiss him, one little interaction tipping the scales in his favor.
Yor was oblivious to these little efforts, of course—that was by design. But he was starting to think he was being too subtle, because Yor still showed no sign of breaking their dry spell. He had no idea if he was eroding her defenses or spinning his tires, because every night at teatime, she was the same Yor as always—pleasant, polite, slightly detached.
One thing he knew for sure, though, was that this approach was affecting him… it was training him to identify every single opportunity to touch Yor, whether he followed through or not; to always mentally measure the distance between his lips and hers (about 0.5 meters, currently). It was making it to where his every action involving Yor was part of a long prelude to a kiss—one that, with each mounting failure, felt further and further out of reach.
As his eyes traced the shape of her hand for the thousandth time, a heaviness settled in his chest.
Three months into Strix, the only thing that had changed was him.
His keen spy eyes caught onto something in the shadow of Yor's palm: a dark cut dividing it neatly in two. His mind, trained to hone in on potentially significant details, singled in on this.
He sat up with a frown, suddenly very awake. He glanced over at Yor's face for any sign of consciousness. She was out cold, her face pressed into the pillow, lips puckered in a way that prompted an inconvenient surge of affection. 33 centimeters, said a voice in his head. He scowled and shook it away.
He noted the swelling of her face again, and under the careful application of makeup, the discoloration of an unripe bruise. The furrow of his brows deepened as he remembered her rushed explanation: she'd gotten between a quarreling couple the night before. The story tracked—it seemed like Yor to jump in at the slightest whiff of injustice. But it felt equally like Yor to downplay her own suffering…
His eyes flicked back to the cut on her hand.
Was the encounter worse than she let on?
After another careful glance at her sleeping face, he weighed the risk of examining it more closely and forged ahead anyways.
He took her hand into his fingertips, eyes trained on her face for any sign of consciousness. Yor, against all odds, continued to sleep. So, with a level of control previously reserved for dismantling traps and handling explosives, he peeled open her fist, unfurling her fingers one by one…
Her index finger came easily, then her middle...
Another cautious glance at her face.
42 centimeters.
Twilight squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and focused in on her hand again.
Ring finger... pinky... her palm was revealed to him, but he still couldn't see much from this angle.
With his right hand, he steadied her wrist, angling her palm up to face him. Her pulse throbbed dully beneath his thumb, reassuringly calm. He gave it the faintest stroke without thinking. Her skin there was impossibly soft.
His left hand was next, fingertips landing on her palm as gentle as flies. To see if it was warm, he told himself, though he'd moved without thinking.
It probably looked an intimate gesture from the outside, face drawn in concern, his fingers tracing the dip of her palm, then trailing to the base of her fingers, slowly pressing them back under his. He disregarded the spark he felt as a fear response, much like his racing heart.
He observed how dainty her fingers looked next to his, how the pinkish-pale shade of her skin complemented his. Because that's what a spy did: observe.
He traced her fingers with his, from her palm toward the fingertips, further revealing the cut. The wound had looked deceptively shallow before, but that was because it was so clean. The shiny adhesive sealing her wound shut was possibly meant to be discreet—and it had been, for him to not notice it all day. But now, it allowed Twilight to see the cut clearly: deep, razor-thin, and running along the crease of her palm. Almost as if she'd grabbed onto a blade.
A professionally-maintained blade, his mind added with interest.
But that didn't make sense for a civilian. Such ridiculous hunches were a byproduct of being on the field for too long. The longer a spy was in service, the further removed he was from normal life experiences.
Last time, he reminded himself with faint amusement, it was secret cooking lessons.
He let out another amused huff and lessened the pressure of his fingers on hers. Still, the spy in him kept his eyes on that cut, filing it away just in case it wasn't nothing...
As Twilight made to release her fingers, white-hot pain shot up his arm. He bit down on his bottom lip to stop an outcry of pain.
Fuuuuuuck.
He went momentarily blind, but when his vision returned, slightly blurred at the edges, it was to Yor's fingers clamped tightly around his.
Tendons strained to a snapping point and bone ground against bone. He swore his fingers would never be the same shape again. Aside from this troubling new development, Yor hadn't changed at all. She was still in blissful, deep sleep except for her left hand, which seemed to be channeling the strength of her entire body.
As gently as he could in his present state, Twilight tried to remove his hand from hers. But it was like being caught in one of those woven finger trap toys sold at the penny stores of his childhood—when he tried to pull away, her grip only tightened.
He was trapped.
Twilight's heart hammered; Yor's grip remained firm. He tried again in vain to pull his hand away, but Yor only further tightened her hold on him.
His mind sped through every possible scenario—every one ending in a different variation of blunt force trauma. Within him warred the dual desires to wake Yor up so he could free himself from her grip, and to keep her asleep and nonviolent.
He gave his hand another hopeful tug and felt an equal tug in retaliation. Yor frowned grumpily in her sleep.
Easy, Twilight…
He sucked in a breath, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried again. Swifter, harder this time. Yor escalated her own unconscious response, pulling his hand into her chest. It reminded him remarkably of Anya when she didn't want to give up her favorite toy... except that the toy was his hand, and it was attached to the rest of him. (For now, anyways.)
His mind flashed forward an all-too-plausible outcome—Yor waking up in a strange room to find Loid Forger knelt next to her, holding her hand, which was, through no fault of his own, tucked snugly under her breasts. It would be just one of many humiliations he'd suffered in her presence, but one that would no doubt end violently—she'd swung at him over less.
So this is how I die, he thought without an ounce of humor. On the lowest note of my career…
Years from now, Twilight's name would not be immortalized in legend, but as some minuscule data point in future mission analyses: the amount of resources—time, money, medical supplies—expended on a honey trap versus the outcome. The Twilight Quotient, they would call it. Or maybe as record holder for furthest fall from grace. There would be a posthumous case study to figure out just how WISE's top agent became the first to die in a honey trap mission—a honey trap mission that should have been so easy.
Yor gave a muffled 'hmmph!' in her sleep and rolled toward the opposite wall, pulling Twilight helplessly along by the arm. He only just managed not to fall on top of her with an arm and a knee hurriedly braced to the mattress.
Now, every worst case scenario he'd just fretted over he now longed for, because THIS was so much worse. If Yor were to wake up now, it would be to the sight of him hovering over her while she slept, his body a brittle cage for this violent, untameable creature. The conclusions her sleep-addled brain would jump to… this was a textbook scenario she probably rehearsed a hundred times in that (very comprehensive, apparently) self defense course she'd taken. He may as well have approached her in a dark alley and lunged for her purse. She surely had a sequence of moves etched into her brain, ready to take him down the instant she woke up.
It's okay… he told himself, training his breath. She'll understand… when she wakes up, I'll explain everything, and she'll understand.
And she would. Yor was gracious like that. But only after her subconscious mind jumped to the worst possible conclusion and she pummeled him into a paste.
His muscles tensed as he tried to maintain as much space between his body and hers. His mind raced through plan after unfeasible escape plan, always circling back to how absolutely fucked he was. His back was starting to cramp from the awkward angle he was holding his body in. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his muscles trembled. He was rapidly approaching his physical limit...
Survivalist training kicked in. Yor was a great Nortican Grizzly, and Twilight was playing possum. He was a corpse. No—a blanket. Maybe if he was still enough, she would think he was a weighted blanket.
Yes… you are Twilight. A master of disguise. Acting the part of a blanket is child's play.
So, ever so slowly, he settled his elbow onto the mattress by Yor's head.
Yor, he noted with great relief, didn't move.
Next, his hip made contact with the bed, relieving the ache in his abdomen.
Still, she didn't stir.
Slowly, he let the side of his body fully make contact with the mattress, muscles tensing each time it shook, then releasing when he heard the confirmation of her gentle snores.
It wasn't over yet. His body tensed to steady itself precariously on the edge of the bed, desperate to maintain the gap between himself and the sleeping bear. His arm still hovered over her waist, anchored by her crushing grip on his hand—their lone point of contact. That would have to change. His shoulder muscles screamed for relief. He wouldn't be able to hold this up for long…
His muscles instinctively wanted to tense around his bones, brittle in the face of Yor's brute strength, but he willed them to relax. He let his legs settle into the backs of hers. Slowly, glacially, he let the long-held breath seep out of his lungs, breaching the scant space between their bodies. He stopped breathing again when his chest made contact with her back.
Miraculously, impossibly, Yor remained asleep.
He slackened his limbs, arm melting into the crook of her waist. He gave into gravity, settling into her body, letting himself fall into the little nooks and crannies until their bodies molded to each other.
Finally, finally, Yor's grip on his hand relaxed.
The relief Twilight felt was immediate, but short-lived. An unpleasant feeling soon rose in his chest—a familiar, contradictory feeling that his body wasn't his, but at the same time like he was trapped in it. It stole his breath the same way that loud, sudden noises sometimes did—the sounds that brought him back to his early years in the War.
This sensation brought him instead back to the bed of his last target.
She'd always wanted to cuddle after sex, Karen. And Robert was infatuated—had to be, to play to Karen's inflated ego. So, Robert complied. For anywhere from five to twenty-five minutes, he would hold her just like this, sieving through whatever useless information he'd attained that evening for promising, metallic flecks; praying in vain to an uncaring God that she would pass out so that he could scrub his dick clean and enjoy a fucking cigarette on the balcony in peace.
Time would move painfully slowly as Robert held Karen. Sex with her wasn't a walk in the park either, but at least when he was having sex with her, he had something to do. Cuddling was a different kind of hell, because his idle mind was left to wander…
Back in the present, outside of his head, Yor let out a distinctively un-Karen-like sigh.
Yor was soft. She was warm. So was Karen, but only in a strictly literal sense—like any other warm-blooded mammal. Yor's warmth was different, and even with the threat of violence, Twilight found he vastly preferred holding her.
He wondered if in some perverse way, he felt like he deserved to be punished by her…
Would Yor be a cuddler after sex? he thought.
Probably in the same way a boa constrictor is a cuddler…
She wriggled her back side into him, pulling him tighter over her in a way that told him the "act like a blanket" plan was working. The front of Twilight's body lit up with acute awareness.
Probably best not to think about sex right now.
Time would move painfully slowly as Robert held Karen. So, Twilight would shuffle through the work in his mind—anything to make the excruciating few minutes count for something. Now, on the Lorelei, Twilight's mind shifted to the report he would write.
Next on the docket was the mission report he'd have to type for Handler. Until last night, it read more like a travel itinerary. 2:00pm - Magic Show, 3:20pm - mini golf, et cetera. The latest addition would contain quite the plot twist: 9:02pm - a slightly delayed fireworks show, followed by a bomb deactivation at 9:26.
A relaxing vacation indeed, he thought bitterly. How lucky that Anya won that raffle.
A dreadful thought passed through his head, sapping the light from the room like a cloud passing over the sun.
Had Anya not won this cruise trip… had I not been here to disarm that bomb…
…what would have happened to Yor?
Twilight held his breath, waiting until he felt the swell of Yor's ribcage press into his chest—as if the mere thought could have killed her. When he breathed out with her, it was with paltry sense of relief.
It's fine… he reasoned. She's fine…
Yor further slackened her grip on Twilight's hand. His hold on her body tightened.
It all turned out fine in the end.
Thinking of such things is a waste of energy.
Yor wriggled again and sighed a happy sound, glaring in contrast to the gruesome thoughts passing through his head. It seemed preposterous that just moments ago, Yor was just a stand-in for Karen in Twilight's self-pitying jaunt down memory lane.
This wasn't Karen, wasn't just some target… This was Yor.
Sweet Yor. Selfless Yor. No-one-else-quite-like-her Yor.
Yor, whose absence was palpable at dinner every night, and whose loss from this world would surely be felt cosmically.
Twilight closed his eyes; willed the thoughts to abandon their grisly trajectory.
With his next inhale, he smelled coconut, sea salt, sunscreen, and sweat.
He felt the soft give of Yor's waist with the underlying twitch of powerful muscle; the slow, rhythmic press of her back into his chest as her lungs filled her body with life.
He felt the beat of her heart through his chest.
His mind automatically measured the distance between his heart and hers: Twenty-two centimeters, approximately.
He thought back to that feeling again; of seeing Yor's hat hanging next to his and Anya's. The rightness of it. He felt that rightness when he saw Yor hold Anya's hand for the first time. He felt it when she first visited the apartment and they decided she would move in. And again now, with Anya sleeping peacefully above, not a worry in the world… With Yor in his arms... safe, soft, warm, alive…
Impossibly, miraculously, Twilight felt the warm edges of sleep again.
He was so… so tired…
Above, he heard the muffled rustle of sheets as Anya flopped over again. He felt a soft vibration in his chest as Yor hummed out a sleepy sigh.
How funny, he thought—frustrating, yes, but funny—that after weeks of effort, he still hadn't kissed Yor, but he'd somehow managed to get her into his bed...
The thought tugged at the corner of his mouth. Another gentle Loid Forger huff escaped him, kicking up the little hairs at the nape of Yor's neck, tickling his nose.
"UNNNFF—"
What little air was left in his lungs was forced out as Yor's elbow landed a powerful, precise blow to his stomach.
Her name passed his lips soundlessly. "Y…or…"
Streaks of color blurred past, the room tumbling violently in his vision. It jolted to a stop as his back made a teeth-rattling collision with the floor.
Another blur of color—pale yellow with streaks of black—and Yor was on top of him. His body moved automatically in a trained response, but somehow, WISE's combat training was no match for Yor either. In the blink of an eye, she had his wrists in her powerful grip, his hips pinned to the ground under hers, all of his vitals presented to her like a buffet. He'd have tried to squirm his way out of it, but something about the position, of being trapped between her powerful thighs, had him frozen in place.That, and the look in her eyes... like they belonged to another person. A strange combination of sleepy and savage.
She didn't recognize him, he realized.
His stomach convulsed frantically to pull air into his empty lungs. Words failed him, passing his lips only as weak wheezes.
"Yor…" he finally managed weakly… "It's me... Loid..."
Recognition was slow to seep into her feral, red eyes. She blinked once, twice, and finally, she was Yor again.
"L-Loid!!"
Even in her sleepy state, it didn't take long for her to notice their compromising position. She scrambled off of him, crab-walking to the opposite wall (which, in this room, still wasn't very far away).
"G'morning," Twilight rasped with a weak attempt at a grin.
"Loid, are you alright?? Did I hurt you???"
"Fine, fine…" he wheezed, propping himself up on his elbows, trying to look as casual as possible while his body struggled for breath.
Yor finally eyed her surroundings, blinking sleepily. "Where are we?"
"This," he said hoarsely, gesturing to their humble surroundings, "is our cabin."
"I thought I was in jail…"
Yor's brows were knitted together in dense confusion, similar to how she looked when she was trying to explain a dream she'd just had. It always did take her a while to wake up (violent reflexes notwithstanding).
Twilight smiled crookedly. "Nope. Just third class."
1.3 meters.
Shut UP.
She backed off a few centimeters, looking somewhat horrified now.
"And you were… sleeping with me…??"
A dangerous blush crept up her neck. Twilight sat up further, freeing a hand in case he needed to block a punch.
"I-I can expl—"
"Miss Anya!!" Yor gasped, suddenly looking up.
A blur of pink passed between them and landed squarely on Twilight's stomach.
"HUUUUUUUU—"
He did explain. Eventually. After gaining the ability to speak and breath again, and after Anya was back on the top bunk, snoozing away as if she hadn't just taken a five-foot fall. Twilight caught Yor up on everything she slept through while steeping tea warmed their hands.
"I'm so sorry," Yor groaned, embarrassed, "I… I must have thought you were a blanket or something…"
I'll take the win. "It's really no problem, Yor."
Twilight was sitting on the edge of the bed—she'd insisted—and Yor was on the padded stool, feet propped up on the bed frame next to him, toes curling around the edge. Her hair cascaded softly over her shoulders. The loose linen of her clothes draped over her bent knees and billowed around her like jellyfish frills. Even with the mundanity of the moment, cheap tea steeping in a Styrofoam cup, there was an ethereal look to her. Like a sea nymph taking her fifteen-minute break from luring sailors to their deaths.
With elegant fingers, she dipped the tea bag in and out of the steaming water, a slightly forlorn look befalling her.
"I miss the tea at home," she sighed.
It is the tea at home, he thought of saying.
"It's not as good here, is it?"
"Do you think it's the water?" she asked. Her head tipped to the side quizzically, hair spilling over her arm.
"I had that though too." He smiled and checked his watch. "One more minute."
Yor inhaled the steam impatiently, then sighed. She rested her elbow on the bedside table next to her.
He could kiss her now, he thought.
He could tell her she still needs rest and insist she takes the bed in his place.
She would refuse, of course, the guilt from the earlier incident still lingering. So, he would gesture to the place next to him. And she would take it, blushing.
From here, it would get risky, but he would forge ahead as always, that strange thrill in his chest. He would set his arm down behind her. In the cramped space, it would be easy to write it off as a mistake when his arm came in contact with her back. He could now imagine in vivid detail the feel of it—the specific warmth of her body against his, the slight give of her soft flesh against his—but for her, it would be new.
She would startle and look up at him in surprise, and their lips would be so close.
He wouldn't speak, wouldn't move.
This would be the crucial moment. He would turn his head slightly, eyes on hers, then he would glance down at her lips for just a second. When his eyes met hers again, it would be with mutual understanding; a faint nod to give her encouragement. A warm, Loid Forger smile.
Then maybe... just maybe... she would find the courage this time to close the distance between them...
Her lips would be soft, like the rest of her.
She would smell like coconut and taste like the sea.
He could kiss her now, he thought.
But he was on vacation, and kissing Yor was technically work.
"What are you thinking about?" Yor asked, eyes sparkling. "You were smiling."
"Nothing interesting," he said.
He glanced at his watch and nodded, then pulled the tea bag out. He let it drip a few times over the now-amber liquid and then dropped it into the bin. Yor did the same. A part of their wordless ritual.
"So this is third class…" she hummed.
"Not as opulent as what you're accustomed to, I'm sure," he said with a teasing glint in his eye.
She craned her neck, eyes tracing the cracks of the ceiling, then trailing down the opposite wall. It lingered on their shoes, lined up by order of size.
"No, I like it…"
Twilight smiled and sipped his tea. It tasted just as good as at home, this time. How odd.