Work Text:
It had been years since the war, Grado had sunk into the sea and the people who’d survived relocated to what was left of the once expansive empire or emigrated to other countries. Vanessa had been one of the knights at the border, mounted on Titania and watching tattered, exhausted survivors flee the destruction.
It had been horrible, to see so many without home and without a royal family to guide them. Prince Ephraim of Renais had done his best for the Empire of Grado, and the surviving generals, Fluorspar, Sunstone, and Obsidian, had done their best to take what slack they could from him. There had been nothing they could do to erase the coming quake.
And then the world moved on, trying to function its best around the new sea where most of Grado had been. She received a promotion, got a squadron and control of an outpost to go with her newfound rank, and met the Fluorspar in person. That had been an accident, chasing a group of bandits with her fellow aerial knights to and alongside the border. Fluorspar had been leading her own knights to do the same, chasing after a splinter of the same group.
Together they’d ended the threat, and Vanessa had finally looked at her professional role model, the Fluorspar herself, and seen someone she might someday soon be an equal with. A woman who was beautiful and powerful and kind. Who still wore the repaired chest plate that had saved her life, back during the war, because her deceased Emperor had gifted it to her upon making her his general.
It was dented where it had taken and rebuffed an enemy’s attack, that chest plate, and there were arcs of soot racing across the surface where excess energy from her Bolting had danced across the surface. Vanessa approached her, feeling nervous, and wrapped her own callused fingers around the Fluorspar’s wrist.
Murmured words, an open invitation. Vanessa took her knights home to their outpost and daydreamed about her fingers’ calluses catching on the leather ties to Selena’s armor, slowly removing it and baring the clothing underneath. Easing gloves, which extended to the mage knight’s elbows, down and down and slowly drawing the last bit away from fingers that curled so easily around a tome’s binding.
Drawing off pauldrons, lightening the shoulders that carried so much responsibility. And then maybe Vanessa would dream of taking off her own armor. Or of Selena taking it off for her, Selena’s finger lacking the calluses of a lifetime of working with steel moving smoothly over gloves. There’s no hitch in the process, save for the hitch of breath Vanessa gives when Selena’s fingers might ghost over the pegasis knight’s bare upper arm.
Then Selena would take off Vanessa’s shoulder guards, and would use a warm thumb to rub along her jawline. And then her own chest plate, that would go next, go last. And maybe, left so vulnerable, so undressed, they might move to other activities. But the important part, to Vanessa’s mind at least, was removing the armor.
The girl on the top bunk rolled over, shaking the bunks and jostling Vanessa from her half-asleep daydream. Face warm, shoulders warm, she called for lights out and resolved to write Selena in the morning. And invite her to lunch, and maybe leave out the part about wanting to slowly unwrap her from all the armor and trappings that signaled and protected her life as a soldier and general. Yeah, definitely leave that part out.
Dear General Fluorspar,
I hope this letter finds you in good health, after parting ways earlier this week near the Grado/Frelia border...