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slowd1ving · 4 months ago

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TALES OF A DISGRUNTLED CORVID ⁺ 　 . MOZE

Quite frankly, you've been assigned an absolute loser (unaffectionate) to work with after your dramatic exit from the Intelligentsia Guild. Whoever said this guy was too silent was wrong, as he verily proves himself as the bane of your existence with his ceaseless yapping. art credits to @code_tesseract on x!! and tagging @ilovechuuy4 as requested :3 pairings: moze + male cryptologist reader (will be part of a series methinks) warnings: male reader, mentions of assassination? may be a touch ooc since this is pre-release writing unfortunately, lowkey crack fic, pre relationship, business partnership of hating each other wc: 1.9k

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

There’s never a dull day when a certain Shadow Guard is your partner for an assignment. Truly, your life always sparkles brilliantly when the information pings on your Jade Abacus; without fail, everything gains just a bit more colour, a bit more vivaciousness. Pathetically fallacious, you might’ve described it as had you taken literature classes: mood hued with such dynamic chromaticity that you fear you might explode into little prismic rainbows. Always such a bundle of joy to be geminate with him.

“Must you be so… disorganised?”

Oh, who are you kidding.

It’s always a dull day when you’re paired with Moze.

“Get out.” A particularly rude gesture materialises in your open hand as you stare at the door he practically kicked down. Apartments in this particular sector of the Xianzhou Yaoqing do not come cheap, and you half-wonder whether he’d eke out coin to console your landlord. Then, with an especially sour, lemon-like expression, you realise he would fork out his own money just to make your life more difficult.

When you first got assigned work in the Yaoqing (read: kicked to the curb by the Intelligentsia Guild to gain real world experience), you really did expect your tenure to be plain office work. Letters, forms, public relations—these mundanities you anticipated. In fact, you would’ve relished such tedium; after decrypting endless scientific formulae and pondering your mysterious tomes, engaging in bureaucratic matters would be a piece of cake! A little treat for your weary eyes—if you closed them, you could still see faint imprints of equations in the theatre of your mind.

But what you hadn’t factored into your (ahem) calculations was just how sharp the Arbiter-General Feixiao was: just how passionate she was about pursuing Abominations and ruthlessly eliminating them, just how frank and swift the Madam General was. You also forgot that out of all the flagships, the Yaoqing were one of the most militarily driven. A blunder most fatal.

“Thy talents would be wasted in the mere administrative wing,” Feixiao gesticulated. ��Come, child, put thy brain and brawn to use and track down these villainous curs most evil.”

“Goodness, Madam General!” you’d cried out pitifully. “My heart is thine for the keeping!”

Or something like that. Actually, it may have not all been like that.

After all, you were kicked out (temporarily! temporarily!) partly due to your penchant for delivering heart-rendering performances to your professors to avoid taking on their extra work. Such moving renditions, that they had to let you go lest you broke their bleeding hearts. Had you known you’d be working in the shady corners of intelligence and decryption, you would’ve kowtowed to the Guild for utmost forgiveness. Probably.

When your path first overlapped with the Shadow Guards’, you honestly couldn’t give two hoots about the rumours that followed silently behind their own noiseless steps. Your ears had perked somewhat at the gossip your colleagues threw back and forth—though, who could blame you. The job was no fun!

Weirdo with the crow feathers, they’d murmured. He’s so quiet. What a reticent chap.

Of course, you’d disagree, and perhaps tack on a loser to the descriptions of Moze. You’d disagree not with the ‘weirdo’, but rather with the quiet and reticent adjectives—partly because he really does need to shut up more.

And he needs to stick to his rumours more. If this loner’s made it a point to not work with people, then why oh why did the honourable Madam General decide your ancient science and study complemented his shady skillset? And why oh why does he never refuse her request? (You’ve conveniently forgotten how you always fold when it comes to her.) You’ve always worked alone too, for as long as you can remember; decoding the ancient equations in ruins and solving their gimmicky puzzles using your boundless wits is a job for one.

As it stands, the people he investigates, the work he takes care of, sometimes intrudes into the realm of questionable rituals and summonings the Abominations and their ilk oft partake in. Thus do you find your career verging into some gruesome form of forensics as you stare down what would commonly be considered a murder scene: sigils and ancient alchemical algebra staring right back at you. He deals with the human aspect of intelligence: the psychology, the crime, the covert espionage. You deal with the technical fallout: the analysis of antique sciences is your specialty, after all. This has culminated in a begrudging partnership where both parties wish nothing more than to leave it.

A business relationship, of sorts, founded on the mutual dislike (a weak description) of each other.

“No.” He doesn’t budge from where he leans against the doorframe, but he does have the decency to swing the door closed behind him. Yet, it’s not out of any respect for the hallowed sanctity of your abode, but more because he’s sooo Mysterious and Aloof that none of your neighbours are allowed to view his visage.

“You are—” a quick glance at your watch proves your point. For someone obsessed with keeping tidy, he sure does have messy time management. “—eighteen minutes too early.”

“And you still aren’t ready,” he counters, pointedly eyeing the loose shirt and comfortable cotton trousers slung over your hips. You yawn, tired already from his yapping. He’s been compared to a crow for as long as you’ve been here—and perhaps far longer—but to you he’s always been more like a little dog. Yap. Yap. Yap.

This is precisely why I don’t work with others, you can almost taste his words—his thoughts.

“You are currently the biggest hindrance to my getting ready,” you grimace. Casting a quick glance over his intricate garb, it’s no wonder he feels getting ready is such a lengthy endeavour: all straps and buckles and tough layers that makes him the walking fortress he is. “I’ll be on time.”

He doesn’t reply: laconic only when he acknowledges your point as unequivocally right, which is seldom.

“Are you going to keep staring?” you snap as you sling the worn shirt from your body. Beneath the soft clothes is muscle hard-won through your frequent collaborations with the Armed Archaeologists in the Guild: days filled with more sparring and their stupid callisthenics than actually finding ruins.

“Do you have to dress right here?” he counters, but it’s a futile argument—this apartment is barely big enough for you as it stands. Currently, he’s situated by the doorway, but you’re on the unseen boundaries of the living room and the tiny kitchen. Beyond is your bedroom and miniscule bathroom, of which neither have enough space to move comfortably to change. And you certainly aren’t going to sacrifice your comfort to appease his poor eyes; he’s seen worse for sure. Though, you doubt he’s ever seen a naked body that wasn’t in the context of assassination and the anatomy classes you know he’s meticulously attended for his shady work. Surreptitiously, you snicker at the thought: that there aren’t any lovers lined up for this weirdo.

You toss the garment onto your couch, precisely because you know he’s grinding teeth over it; and there’s that tell-tale click of molar against molar. You even whistle a bit as you untie the neat bow holding your trousers to your hips; the fabric pools on the floor, and you don’t make any move to pick it up.

There it is. His glower—red-hot and piercing through the flesh and sinew of your back—is heavy in this small space. What you don’t see, however, is how his eyes flicker briefly across your body, down the firm step of your legs as you step out of the trousers. Out of context, watching muscle ripple and twist as you strip forces crimson to seep into his face. This is an implication he’s absolutely disgusted with—with you.

“If you have any more input as to what I do in my home, you’re welcome to pay my rent first,” you finally deign to reply, rummaging in the dresser in your hallway—which he knows has never been neat with all the clothes spilling from the edges. His eye twitches.

“You’re an incorrigible man,” he retorts, carmine flush now from irritation rather than anything else. Irritation from the beginning, because it was never anything else.

“Wow,” you blink, weighing your options between shirt A and shirt B. The cherry-red with straps, or the Prussian blue with straps, you muse, holding the shirts against your beloved grey cargoes. “You sound exactly like my professor. Same adjective and everything.”

When it comes to shameless people, there comes the very real risk of insults being nullified by the insulted through them simply agreeing.

“No wonder the Guild kicked you out.” As you’re pulling the scarlet fabric over your head, you pause—it seems he’s finally hit a nerve. There’s a rare smile toying with his lips at the victory: one he doesn’t notice, but ghosts across his face nonetheless.

Now, there are many things you could reply to that with. Such as, did your parents give you a reason when they abandoned you? Nay, that is too low of a blow. No wonder you don’t have any friends. But he probably grapples with that bitter reality each morning, gnashing his teeth and beating his chest.

“Bold of you to speak of being unwanted,” you comment matter-of-factly. Both insults it is then, wrapped neatly into an ambiguous tale of these eight words. His smile fades.

With a slight gasp, you finally wrangle the tight material on—it’s armour, after all, a specific textile development by the Yaoqing for the protection of civilians and tourists alike, though you aren’t considered a tourist by your special work-abacus-plaque. It fits snugly against you: straps for knives sit tight against your forearms, while the harness that provides extra support for your torso rests neatly beneath your chest. The garb’s almost like a compression shirt from your home planet, except the Yaoqing has far more violent uses for it.

“Didn’t Guard Zhí reject you?” He bites out, and it takes a minute for you to realise he’s talking about Zhí Hua, the best friend you’d made on the flagship—and your Shadow Guard drinking buddy.

“Huh?” Dumbfoundedly, you pause in doing the buckles on your trousers, losing far more time than you’d bargained for. “A-hua is my friend.”

The diminutive doesn’t go unnoticed, which rankles him far more than falling prey to the rumour about you and his fellow Guard. No, both rankle him—likely because hearing about a workplace romance about you just disgusts him in general.

“Pfft,” you snort out, finally done with the laborious task of adjusting the materiel and various other gadgets attached to your body. “I have got to tell her about this. Who knew your ability to gather information would be stopped by a rumour?”

The tightness in his chest lessens somewhat.

“Besides, everyone already knows my heart belongs to the Madam General,” you sigh, clasping your hands to your chest in a dreamy gesture. It’s an ongoing joke: you professing your deep adoration of Feixiao after she gives you a pay raise for putting up with the so-called ‘reticent’ Moze. “Woah, what’s with the sour look?”

“Gross,” he mutters.

As you step near the doorway to grab your boots, you lean into his space mockingly: and he recoils back in even more revulsion.

“Of course, you wouldn’t know.” You pat his shoulder once, condescendingly, then promptly slip your heavy boots off the shelf. “Since there’s no one who loves you.”

And his glare as you shuffle your shoes on is poignant.

₊ ⋆ ☾

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