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starres-stuff · 4 months ago

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Day 1-Steer FFXIV Writes 2024

Steer: a piece of advice or information concerning the development of a situation

The whole way home Vi had fumed, there were even points where it sounded like she was stomping her feet and others where rocks could be heard bouncing off every surface, one clipping her right in the arm which resulted in her yelping so loud that flocks of birds scattered thinking they were in danger.

What had started the mood was Xixa making a snide remark as they locked up the Bakery for the night. “Maybe tomorrow you'll remember that we start baking at five in the morning and be here on time so I don't have to do it all alone?” Just thinking about it again made Vi grit her teeth. It was her bakery after all and she could start when she wanted! She was well aware that the Viera was trying to steer her down the path of responsibility and she was grateful that the woman came to help her bake, but Vi paid her to work for her, which was a handsome sum.

Thankfully once she made it home her husbands’ managed to whisk away Xixa's burst, replacing it with good food, lovely conversation, and an early bedtime, which was often one of her favorite things when work had been trying; though sleep would not be on the dossier for hours to come yet. Eventually, they would wear each other out and sleep would become a must. This particular night before Vi drifted off to sleep she set the alarm on her Chronometer for four and a half bells believing the noise alone would get her out of bed and at the bakery on time.

It was such a sound plan to the Elezen that she fell asleep rather easily on this specific night, and she slept through it without a single awakening, a true rarity for her, and just as was expected the alarm on her Chronometer sounded at four and a half bell. It was terrible to wake up that early, though she did have a few protests in her mind about pulling back the warm blankets and getting out of the comfortable bed where one of her husbands was still sleeping, and for a long moment, she stared at his face, a small smile appearing on her own at how adorable he looked. Vi hated leaving him this early in the morning but eventually, she forced herself to move, her feet just about to touch the floor when she felt strong arms go around her waist.

“Not yet” a sleepy voice murmured, still rich with the accent of the Corethas Highlands but tempered by Gridania undertones from the time he had spent living there. “Too early.”

Vi felt her heart sink, this was what she was weak to. Both of her husbands had this sway with her and she found herself looking back over her shoulder hoping that this one would fall back to sleep. Alas, she would find a pair of mismatched eyes, one as bright as the sun and the other as bright as the moon, gazing back at her with an impish grin on her face. The impish grin he wore told her he was wide awake and likely woke up with her alarm.

“You are such a brat, Clement.” she couldn’t help but laugh at the second tug that came at her waist.

“Come back to bed, it is too early for work.” He protested, his arms growing tighter around her “I haven’t even had a proper chance to bid you a good morning yet.” Those stunning eyes of his took on the look of what Xixa called ‘puppy dog eyes’ and Vi felt her resolve melt away a little bit more.

“I have to go beloved” She shook her head and tried to pull away from his arms, but he tightened them again this time succeeding in moving her backward when he tugged at her waist.

“No, you don’t it is too early” He protested again, placing a few kisses on her back rising upwards to leave further kisses on her shoulder, her neck, and then finally her lips.

At this point, Vi had lost the ‘get out of bed early’ battle, and all the work she had put into being to the bakery on time to help Xixa with the list they had made before closing was lost to Clement’s eyes and his kisses. The next thing she knew her normal eight bells alarm went off, and Clement gave her a wink.

“It is time to get up beloved, you will be late for work.” This was one of those mornings that Vi punched him in the shoulder and rightfully so.

#ffxivwrite2024 #3 Years for me #my oc: viviane #others oc: Clement #Day 1: Steer #This years goal stay under 1000 words per post

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mercurygray · 2 months ago

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Ooooh, build-a-fic! How about "here, let’s get you warmed up" + contentment + the bedside of someone who doesn’t want you there :)

I find it very, very funny that no less than three people gave me the dialogue prompt to warm up, and I think just that many gave the location prompt about bedsides.

I took the wild-card option on characters here as an excuse to do a little thought experiment - the threatened Vivian/Doctor Huston fic.

It's a bit whumpy.

---

It was the nightmares again.

Adam rolled over in bed and tried to control his breathing, focusing on the sloped, white ceiling of his room. It had been a while since he'd had one. He thought he'd been getting better. It was always the same dream, or similar - the siren announcing the need for ambulances on the airstrip, the thrumming wind from a still-beating engine, and then the orderlies were pulling everyone he'd ever loved from out of the plane in bits and bloody pieces, and the bodies never stopped at ten.

He closed his eyes, hand splayed over his heart like somehow the weight would slow down the muscle. Your name is Adam Huston. You're a doctor with the 8th Air Force. You're at Coombe House, in Dorset. You're here for a few weeks away from your unit, just like everyone else here. You are good at your job. You will try your hardest to make sure they all get well. You will try your best to make sure you get well.

Get well - a high order. Who was the doctor here, and who the patient? The line seemed indistinct sometimes. It'll be an easy posting, Adam. Observe and evaluate. They just need a little time away from it all - get a chance to get their feet back under them. If you see anything serious, you can mark it in the file. Big house, plenty of fresh air - and half a dozen pretty girls to keep you on your toes.

Pretty girls - offered like they'd stopped making them in England when the war started and the beauty of women were somehow also rationed. Francy, in charge of everyone, as well as Susan, Julia, Peggy, Caro, and Vivian - smiling, shaking hands, welcoming him in like they did to everyone who arrived here, the all-American girls from next door, if next door was an extremely selective women's college.

The last woman, Vivian, had looked a little pale next to the others, her lipstick somehow too bright for her face. "Everything all right?" he'd asked, duffel in one hand and raincoat in the other. The urge to reach out and take her pulse was tangible, and the fact that his hands were full was suddenly unsettling. He adjusted his grip on the suitcase instead.

"Just a little under the weather, is all." She gave him a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'll be right as rain when it blows over. Can I show you upstairs to your room?"

Coombe House was a country estate, built for shooting weekends and house parties, with bedrooms and corridors that went for miles. The airmen were downstairs in the guest rooms, and the staff, along with the hostesses and him, were upstairs in the servants corridor, with sloping ceilings and threadbare runners in the hallway to deafen the noise. "Your own, of course," she'd said, opening the door for him and letting him step inside. “We couldn’t have our doctor bunking. Butler’s down at this end, and we’re at the other, with the maids. Just how it was before the war.” Somehow the sparseness of the room didn't bother him. It's only temporary, this place. She watched him set down his coat and duffel on the bed. "They've opened up a wall a little way down for a little kitchenette - a sink and a gas burner for tea or reheating a cup of soup. Sometimes we keep strange hours." He nodded in agreement, glanced out the window at the grounds below, taking in the garden, the hedges and the curve of the river, everything still green and growing. "I'll leave you to get settled then. Dinner's at seven - dress uniforms." And then with a brief smile she was gone.

He wandered through the house, getting a feel for the corridors and the rooms - the library, the games room, the sitting room filled with ping pong tables, the ballroom with its badminton nets. An office, too, white cabinets, a desk, and a chair across, so someone could sit. No lights, no exam chair - a consulting room. A file drawer, too, standing in the corner, full of other men's secrets.

He turned off the light and left that for another day.

The rhythm of the house took some getting used to, after months on the flight line. Breakfast was at 9 am, not six, and everyone slept in. There was no review of the ward, no supply stock take, no white coat and stethoscope...no late afternoon flight return to manage. He took walks, watched birds, tried to ride a horse. Mainly he talked to the men. Theirs were quick stays, six or seven days, long enough to watch them uncurl a little, unclench their jaws and slide their shoulders down from their ears. Easy enough to understand - how many men back in Norfolk with the 96th were just the same as they?

The hostesses, too, were easy to read - Peggy with her bicycle and her loud laugh, Susan with her easy knowledge of the whole library, leading her book group like she didn't know that it was her smile and her black curls that made them all come to talk about things they hadn't read. Francy, effortlessly in charge of everything, everyone's sister and everyone's friend. Always first names, with the girls, and never Miss, while the boys were Patterson and Johnson and Reed, last names and nicknames and inside jokes. And he was Doc, as though they'd always known him thus, stamped from the same plate as every other doctor on every other base, the kind and concerned uncle asking obliquely how they were doing, whether they'd gotten the game scores, how they were sleeping, whether the dream had come back.

But Vivian remained aloof, somehow. The ashen look from her first day retreated, but she was still different from the others, somehow set apart. He found out that she was from Massachusetts, that she had two siblings and a ginger cat. It felt like the others saw it, too - she was the older woman, somehow a better prize where attention was concerned. One night after dinner he caught her singing at the piano while Susan played - a children's song in French. She played tennis like a champion, danced beautifully, never got a man's rank wrong - but what she'd done before the war she never said.

Finally his curiosity got the better of him one afternoon, listening to Caro call for her twice before she answered, as though she didn't know her own name. The filing cabinet beckoned. He sat down and found the stack of medical records for the Red Cross.

He'd made good headway through the cabinet when the gong rang for dinner (After a week here, it still sounded silly to hear it) and he rushed upstairs to quickly change into his better uniform, comb his hair and make sure his tie was straight.

In the dining room he made a beeline for Vivian, smiling away the lieutenant she was talking to by clearing his throat and flashing his captain's bars. (The younger man took the hint, given in so many officer's clubs, and beat it.) "How are you feeling today?"

She didn't look pleased to be asked. "I told you I would be fine in a few days."

He stepped in, pitched his voice lower. "And are you expecting to recover from recurring malaria overnight, Lieutenant?" He pronounced the rank with special emphasis and watched her eyes flash in recognition. The Red Cross certainly didn't make them officers, but the Nurse Corps did - and Vivian Arsenault hadn't started her time with the Army passing out donuts and coffee in England. In fact, she hadn't started in England at all - and that was just the trouble with tropical climates, wasn't it - that they had different diseases there? Such a lot of trouble from such a little insect.

"You read my file." It was an accusation - almost a disappointment.

"I'm a doctor. I needed to know who I was working with. And I was wondering why you never seem to hear your name when anyone calls you. It's because you're still not expecting to hear it." He looked at her daring her to disagree - she didn't. Yes, First Lieutenant Arsenault, joined in '38, three years abroad in Manila, invalided out of the Nurse Corps in June of 1941 for recurrent malignant malaria. A lucky thing, since the Rock fell in January of 42 - if you thought about luck that way, anyway. "I expect this is quite the change from Fort Mills," he offered, glancing around the room.

"Not really," she replied. "Soldiers are soldiers. But you're right. I was Arsenault for so long that Vivian sounds wrong, or ...insubordinate." She sniffed. "Francy knows, but please don't tell the others. They know I'm a nurse, but not - not that."

"And as a nurse, I didn't think I'd have to tell you that you ought to be in bed if you're having an episode."

"I've told you," she said, fixing him with a look that would not be crossed or questioned, "I'm fine. It passes quicker if I'm busy."

"We're not going to win the war by you working yourself to death," he said, a little more strongly than he meant. "It's not the end of the world if someone doesn't have a tennis partner."

"But how will I feel if he goes down next week?" She looked at him with a grim smile. "They only have the time they have."

It was an argument he could see he was not going to win, and he let her move away, down the table to another group of soldiers. And what about you, he'd wanted to ask. What about your time? Somehow silence seemed wiser.

Days passed - men came and went. Outside the estate the war went on regardless. This being England, sunshine was cause for celebration, and a cloudless day practically cause for a parade. Huston opened the windows in his office to watch the men on the pond trying to tip their boats, and decided to try and squeeze in a walk before the day took a turn. He paused at the house’s great front door and considered his options, hands in pockets - the gardens? The lake? The stables?

He made his way to the back of the house, passing a few fellows on bicycles, one of the groundsmen with a dirty shovel, the kitchen maids putting out the rubbish bins for someone to move and collect. The bicyclists waved as he went by, but most everyone else out here ignored him, too caught up in the world of their own making. And that was fine by him. Responsibility sat differently outside - here he was neither doctor nor parent, only a fellow traveler, out to enjoy the air. The gravel of the house’s footpath opened up to the lawn, lined with trees that some pair of jokesters were making a contest out of trying to climb, egged on by a crowd, the tennis court, air filled with laughter, the rhythmic thwack of a tennis ball, going back and forth. Adam stood and watched the game for a minute, watching Vivian set and serve with the abandon of someone who did this far too often to be considered merely ‘good’.

And then a great crack, a cry of pain - the tree limb behind the tennis court had broken and sent its traveler down to earth. It was all instinct, what that sound woke in him- Adam picked up and ran.

It had been weeks since he’d treated a broken limb, felt like months since he’d seen blood - it didn’t matter. The measures of command came back like water. You’re a doctor in the 8th Air Force, and you’re good at your job. “Easy there, Carl, easy does it. I’ve got you. Sit up with me now, you’ve had a bit of a shock. Can someone run back to the house for Francy? We’ll get you inside in a minute, Carl, just sit and catch your breath. That’s just the adrenaline kicking in. Can you move your fingers for me? Good. Stand up, easy now, there’s a good chap, we’ll wait just a moment here…”

Suddenly there was Vivian in her tennis whites, murmuring something about helping, about not needing Francy, and the two of them took Carl inside to the consulting room and Vivian went for bandages and alcohol and Francy turned up regardless to manage the curious crowd outside the door.

Palpate, clean, numb, set, bandage. All the same steps in the same cadence, just the same as he’d been doing for years. And at every movement there she was - swab, syringe, bandage. It would keep Carl Nolan off the flight roster for a few weeks, but he’d manage. Young men always did. He looked up from tying off the bandage and saw that Vivian was watching him closely, her expression hard to read.

He finished setting his instruments back on his tray and rose from his chair to go and wash his hands. “That was good work,” he said, as blandly as he could. She wasn’t the type who took a compliment easily, and if you were too effusive, he’d observed, she’d assume you were lying. (Had she learned that in the Army, at officer’s club dances and the tennis court? Or was it before then, back home in Haverhill? He had such a lot of questions for her and he didn’t think she’d ever answer one.)

“And you.”

He bit back a smile over the washbasin and turned back to look at her. “You sound surprised.”

Was that a smile? But just as quickly as it had appeared it fled. “Maybe I am,” she replied, leaving to change her clothes or return to her game, he didn’t know which. He snorted and set it aside. It had been good work, small though the service might have been. An arm broken falling out of a tree wasn’t an arm broken on a bombing run getting thrown against a wall while your pilot dove to avoid a flak field - injured, rather than wounded. Still, it was good to feel useful - some days he felt like he was hardly doing anything at all.

The end of one crop of soldiers meant the arrival of another - Adam watched the hostesses dash outside in the mornings to make introductions as the van rolled up, letting out another group of airmen all with that slightly dazed look in their eyes, glancing up at the house’s grand facade like they still weren’t sure this was real. Three…four…five. Five.

He stepped out into the hallway, counting shadows on the drive outside again. Five. Hm.

Adam retreated back to his office as Francy brought the new group inside and showed them the stairs and the door to her office, the lavatory on this floor and the way they could get to the dining room, and waited until the coast was clear before opening his door. "Hey, Francy.” She stopped, clipboard in hand. “Where's Vivian?"

"She's upstairs," Francy said, extremely unconcerned in a way that Adam found hard to interpret. Was she being calm for the benefit of the airmen, or was there really no cause for alarm? But then, perhaps she didn't know about the malaria, and thought only that Vivian was the kind of person who got a stuffy nose a little more often than most. "It's just a cold. She said she'd be down tomorrow."

Adam nodded and tried to follow Francy's calm, wondering if he ought to cross to the women's side of the house and check the room under the eaves with ‘Vivian’ chalked on the door. She won’t want that, he told himself. She’s a grown woman - she knows herself. You can give her that respect. It’s a cold - nothing more.

Day came, and day went - and still no Vivian. Susan left a tray at her door, but no one saw her take it in.

It wasn’t a cold that woke him up the following night - and it wasn’t one of his nightmares, either. He rolled over in bed, wondering what it was that had roused him, and heard a clatter in the kitchenette down the hall, a low moan. Adam blinked in the dark, swinging his legs over the side of the bed searching for his slippers and fumbling for his dressing gown, belting it against the nighttime chill. (It was always cold here, under the eaves. Warm air was supposed to rise but somehow it never seemed to reach their rooms.)

His eyes adjusted to the relative dark, moonlight peeking in from the window at the end of the corridor, and made his way down the hall, somehow already knowing who and what he’d find.

There was Vivian, yellowed out and chattering, wrapped in her bathrobe with her blanket around her shoulders and her hand feverishly knocking against the counter, looking at the spilled kettle on the floor with bleary eyes. A deflated hot water bottle sat on the sideboard, waiting to be filled. How hard had it been for her to find the kettle and fill it in the dark, when her hands were as bad as they were?

"Jesus, Vivian.” In two moments he was next to her, picking up the kettle and its lid and setting them on the sideboard, grabbing a towel from the rack to mop up the floor. “Why didn't you say anything?”

"Don't send me home." Her voice struggled through chattering teeth. "I don't want to go home."

"No one's sending you home, I just want you to be warm." It was the most honest he'd been all day. “You're shaking. Let's get you back to bed."

“I have work to do.”

“Yes, you do,” he agreed wholeheartedly, steadying her back down the hall to her room. “And so do I.” It was all too easy to steer her back down the hall, back into her bed and to tuck the covers around her. “You’re going to stay in this bed until that water boils, and I will bring the hot water bottle back to you,” he said, in a tone that said he would not be taking no for an answer here. “There’s no sense in the two of us freezing here.”

How long it was, to wait in the dim light of the kitchen impatiently anxious for the kettle. She’d been left for the last 48 hours, but who was to say it hadn’t started sooner? Without antimalarials she needed the shivers to come down as soon as possible, or there was a risk of febrile -

He darted back to his room for aspirin and came back just as the kettle was starting to boil.

“Take these,” he ordered, handing her the tablets and a glass of water, the now full bottle under his arm. She palmed the pills and drained the glass, teeth still chattering. “And then let’s get you warmed up.”

“What are you doing?” she asked, as he tucked the now-hot bottle in between her and her blankets, and then left his slippers at the side of the bed and slipped in between the sheets with her.

“Making sure you stay in this bed and sleep,” he said, as if this were the most normal thing in the world, to climb into a woman’s bed. (No one could complain - she was still in her dressing gown and he was still in his.)

“I’ll be warmer than a hot water bottle, in this icebox.”

Her body felt strange next to his own, hot and cold all at once, and there was the familiar urge to do what one did with a woman in bed, wrap your arms around her and pull her closer than law and manners would allow. But that was for another time and another place. You need care just like any of those men downstairs do - but it’s not your arm that’s broken, Vivian Arsenault, and you don’t need someone to talk to. And I care, even if you don’t want me to, even if you want the world to think you don’t need caring. A little distance was required - but not much. His arm was loose around her body, outside the folds of her bathrobe.

He thought she’d make more noise about it, but nothing came. “And here I thought you might protest a little more, Lieutenant.”

A pause. “You’re the only one who read the files,” she managed, quietly. “ All of the others were too worn through to care.” Another pause. “And If you were really going to try something you’d have done it by now. First week, maybe. First night.” She hugged the hot water bottle closer. “You saw I was sick and asked if I was feeling alright.” Another pause, longer this time. “And I don’t…mind it so much, from you.”

Something in him was in freefall. I feel…something for you, Vivian Arsenault, and I thought for a while it was simple fascination but I think it’s more than that. “I may kiss you,” he warned, perfectly serious about it. Make me useful to you, Vivian.

“I may let you,” came the reply, gently tucking her body closer to his. Her hand closed around his and he shut his eyes feeling finally content, knowing that tonight, at least, there would be no dreams except of her.

#asked and answered #catbusloki #i have written a thing #mercurygraypresents #tds cinematic universe #vivian arsenault #huston x oc #yes this is maybe trash but it's my trash

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