#just so we're clear. i am not my character. neato? neato
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house of grief and sunlight
fandom: wayfarer ship: cassander/aisanne characters: cassander inteus, aisanne bjornsdottir rating: gen words: 1625 note: this is my entry for @idrellegames' three year anniversary event! prompt i'd chosen is paramour - expected of me, i know - but i've hardly written about cass' bisexuality and i felt like it needed to be written about! excuse the ya-sounding title lmao i could not resist also, aisanne is a gw2 oc that i've ported to wayfarer. she lives over on @i-mybrunettelady most of the time :) divider credit
I am tired of grief.Ā I donāt know if it ever goes away, but for fuckās sake, Iām so tired of it. Itās summer, though, and a part of me feels like the sun will chase it away, if only for a day or two. Our house needs the sun right now. Grief hangs over it like a veil, and we donāt speak of it, but maybe the rays that come through our window each morning help.Ā
Or so I hope. Hopeās a stupid thing by and large, because every time I hope something happens it decidedly doesnāt, as if the gods above or whoever sits and watches this farce of an existence keeps laughing at me and says, āAdd more!ā But I canāt help but wish, in my heart of hearts, that sometimes, maybe one day in this lifespan thatās entirely too long for one guy, I donāt feel like a tossed out, crapped on kitten on the streets.Ā
Itās summer. That feels important to repeat to self. I am feeling a little less grief. The room around me is loud and messy and sounds jump from one place to another like rabbits, in a cacophony ruled over by the harmonious noise of music. Sanneās the one behind the harp, golden under the candlelight, and if she was a different woman, sheād be singing in a Meissandic temple.Ā
She cares little for the traditional rites, though. She cares little for the chants Iād attended once or twice when I was a kid. She looked at me all confused when I told her how courtly, Vestran services happen, and said, in a strange tone, āI donāt understand how people like that.ā I donāt understand either, and thank fuck Iām not a Vestran aristocrat anymore.Ā
Her place is telling stories of heroes and events long gone, to be a musical wayfarer. Sheās doing that tonight. I was drunk when we first met here and she had to hold my hair while I was throwing up, apparently. Canāt say I remember that attractive trait about myself. Iām not drunk right now, however, sitting near the small wooden stage, taking small sips of my cider. The drink is irrelevant; she captures my attention more than any alcohol could.Ā
Sheās radiant and shiny, half covered in shadows, which makes her golden crest stand out. The bright sheen of her golden hair disappears and reappears after the movements of her head. I canāt see her freckles clearly from here, but I can see the ink on her neck, the roundness of her full lips, an occasional yellow in the blues of her eyes when the candlelight reflects off them. Iām not blind to beauty, but thereās beauty in a way a finely made building is beautiful, and a way a person is beautiful.Ā
You donāt wanna fuck buildings, do you? And if you do, what the actual fuck is wrong with you?
Others are looking at her too. That doesnāt matter, because itās my bed who she comes to tonight. Or is it me coming to hers? Not fucking important.Ā
These feelings are new. For most of my life, interest like this fell to men. Part of me wonders if Iām just that desperate for any kind of tenderness in my life that my head would start making up attraction; but the way this feels canāt be anything but a solid fucking reality. Women were always beautiful the way buildings were, but now theyāre flesh and bone and soul and personality and thereās something so weirdly appealing about that that it catches me off guard.Ā
Not all women are your mother, you dumb fuck.Ā
I know, but women have never been.. This. I think about Sanne when sheās away. I watch her practice for the performances, mesmerized. Thereās peace and blood rushing to my face when weāre laughing in bed, or making lunch, or eating, or just existing in the same space. My insides get all twisted up, like Iām a kid again crushing on older Wayfarers. Itās like Senna again, and I simply forgot how it feels like to be crushing on someone this bad.Ā
Nothing will ever happen between us, however. It would be so crappy to prey on a widowās feelings. She rarely speaks of her dead husband, but heās not even that cold as far as dead people go; maybe a little more than us Wayfarers, but not by much. Our living together is a result of loneliness, desperation, not a desire to find a partner again. But I was dumb enough to pretend I didn't see it.Ā
Sheās cooking, some days after her performance. Sun is shining through the window, leaving her figure in semi-shadows and catching on the ends of her shiny, metallic hair. Sheās not as glamorous as she was at the show; right here is a Sanne thatās more down to earth, more solid, dressed comfortably, not worried about how sheās perceived. Iām folding clothes nearby and doing a half-assed job of it, too. Itās hard to concentrate some days over the deafening noise of all this fucking attraction confusion business.Ā
Every so often she turns back to look at me with a strange smile on her face. āThatās what I wore to Kiaranās funeral,ā she says suddenly. I jerk and drop my gaze to the dress in my hands. Sunlight washes away its dark color in places. There are little holes in it that I want to sew shut, but I donāt have her consent to. Sheās weirdly sentimental about it.Ā
My Spire didnāt have a funeral, and us survivors only have ashes as funerary garb.Ā
āWhatās this stain again?ā I ask, raising the dress and jerking my head in the direction of the big, grayish blob on the skirt. āI keep forgetting!āĀ
She sighs and throws a full, peeled onion at me. It hits me right in the forehead and the poor plant, already under threat, pricks my eyes. āYouāre horrible,ā I say in mock offense. āYou donāt want your dress to stink, do you?āĀ
āIām not burying anyone anytime soon,ā she says lowly, in a tone that implies Iām hitting a boundary. I wince and put the dress down, careful of the location of the onion.Ā
āIām sorry,ā I whisper as I approach, gently placing the vegetable on the table. She gives me a hard look. āI shouldnāt have joked about the dress. It means a lot to you and I tend to joke around, right, about the things that Iām sensitive about so people donāt attack me for it first? Offense is the best defense kinda thing? And I forget that sometimes - a lot of the time - people donāt function the way my fucked up head does?ā
Shut up, Cassander. Youāre making it worse.
Something tightens my throat, like hands choking me from the inside out. I grip the table and swallow thickly. My stomach twists up, and the smell and feel of onion fills the kitchen and I can only focus on the dents in the dark wood beneath my fingers and the uneven pattern freckles of my hand.Ā
āCassander,ā Sanne says. Her tone is too much for me to analyze right now, try as I might. āCass.āĀ
āWhat?āĀ
āYouāre doing it again.ā
āDoing what?āĀ
āPicking at your scar. Stop it.āĀ
I lower my hand from my face and grip the edges of my tunic. The edges of my braid - I need to take care of those ugly fucking ends one of these days - tickles my hand. Youāre scaring people. Enjoy your lifetime of solitude, whether youāre actually into women or not. Who would want someone as shaky and deranged as you are?Ā
Vestra shouldāve killed you, if you were so determined to go back.Ā
āIām sorry,ā I murmur to my feet.Ā
āIām not angry. If you pushed, I wouldāve been, greatly so. But you didnāt. Stop shaking like a leaf.ā Thereās something in her tone that feels like cold water to the face. I breathe out and blink away a small selection of tears. Saltiest one always drops first! Iām imagining a little tear race now, little tear spectators cheering the racers on, tear savants testing the levels of salt in each one. The thought makes me giggle and I bury my head in my hands as I laugh.Ā
āIām not angry with you,ā she repeats, gentler than before. Her voice is still as steely, though. āGo finish the laundry while I make lunch.ā
Without a word, I retreat to my location at the corner of the room, where still wet clothes wait to be sorted and hung to dry. I put the dress to the side and continue sorting through the clothes; sometimes, I look at her, her back turned to me, and the shaking of my hands grows for a split second.Ā
I try my best not to cry. Better save that energy for the worst of the shitshow that I know is yet to come.
Iāve forgotten that this is a house of grief and no sunlight can fix it. And Iāve walked over her grief in the same way I would walk over my own, but where Iām used to it, she isnāt. And even when we go to the same bed that night, seemingly forgetting what happened, and even when the sun rises the morning after, this is still a place where two grieving people decided to seek comfort because being broken together is somehow better than being broken alone.Ā
No summer nor new kinds of sex can fix the holes in your heart.Ā
I am tired of grief.Ā I donāt know if it ever goes away, but for fuckās everloving and everlasting sake, Iām so tired of it.
#wayfarer#wayfarer if#wayfarer mc#inspo birb has come to town#cassander inteus#aisanne bjornsdottir#elf oc#my writing#wayfarer fic#wayfarer writing#wanted bisexuality.. got bisexuality and anxiety#two for the price of one!#also opinions written about here are not mine! i am not my characters!#just so we're clear. i am not my character. neato? neato#i know y'all are nice about it but i feel like it needs to be here#also i will cheat and use my europe timezone to post this now bc it's the 9th <3#wfr anniversary
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