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gloomstalkertav · 4 months ago

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Summary: In which all of Act II is summed up in one angst-riddled chapter, and no tieflings are spared the horrors of canon.

Part 6 of 10

Warnings: Slaps roof of chapter: This bad boy can fit so much angst! TW: trauma flashbacks, semi-graphic descriptions of canon character deaths and not exactly canon but not not canon character deaths, and super unhappy sad times pretty much all the way around.

Word Count: ~8.2k

View story masterpost | Read on Ao3

“Listen —”

But instead of saying anything more, Alfira snatches up her tankard and takes her first real drink of the interview: a long, slow, fortifying draught. When she sets it down, her cheeks are flushed, her eyes overbright, but her voice is strong and steady as she resumes:

“Listen —”

“I know this part will be hard. For me, too. I don’t like to think of the Shadow-Cursed lands any more than I can help, but … it’s an important part of the story. Tav’s story. Personally, I think it’s where she sort of … came into her own as a hero. I saw a lot of her at Last Light and she was … different, somehow, than she was at the druids’ grove. Older, almost. More sure of herself. Like she knew what she was doing now. In fact, the only time I think I ever saw her panicked was when she found out you were missing.”

Alfira’s eyes flit to Zevlor’s, but his are fixed on his tankard — the contents of which he's barely sampled, nor does he allow himself to do so now: penance for the little shiver of satisfied pleasure he feels at hearing of Tav’s concern. Not that a few sips of weak ale will make a difference. Zevlor knows there’s not enough alcohol in the Elfsong to dull the pain of what he must remember next.

“Anyway,” concludes Alfira, shrugging on a brisk, business-like tone, “none of us would have made it out of that place alive if it weren’t for Tav, and we’re doing this for her, so…” The bard reclaims her quill, dips it in ink, and shakes her parchment out in front of her: her sword and shield against the trial ahead. “So, all I really need to hear is her part: how she rescued you from Moonrise. You don't have to talk about what happened when we … when you were captured. Or about being tortured or whatever else that cult did.”

The privacy curtain ripples. Alfira starts, but the dusky tail and leather boots visible beneath the velvet hem are already hurrying past. She jumps again at a sound from across the table: Zevlor clearing his throat to speak.

“Torture—”

But his voice fails. He swallows hard and closes his eyes. And when he starts again, it is not for Tav, though it is Alfira's picture of the hero she became at Last Light that lends him strength. It is for Alfira herself, and every other tiefling outcast he betrayed: another sort of penance, and one long overdue.

“Torture,” says Zevlor at last, “would have been a blessing I did not deserve.”

Yet he longed for it. For whips or racks or needles or knives. An enemy to fight, a punishment against which to rage. But his tomb-like prison was too narrow for Zevlor to lift his arms any significant degree, let alone assault its translucent sides, and the shrouded figures that occasionally wandered across his limited field of vision did not spare him even a passing taunt.

His was the suffering of utter stillness. The hell of frozen inaction. A doom befitting his crime...

… Screams. A spray of red, bright in the darkness. The metallic scent of blood. The thud of falling bodies all around while he stood passive and unmoving, hypnotised by the voice caressing his mind: promising power, purpose, a place in Baldur’s Gate, the realisation of every fantastic possibility he craved—

Zevlor ripped his mind free of the unbearable memory, and, in a futile effort to keep it at bay, shook his head until his neck ought to have ached. But sensation did not exist inside his prison. He felt neither hunger nor thirst, heat nor cold; his body registered no physical pain. How long had he been trapped here, fading in and out of nightmare? It felt like an age — like a lifetime had passed since he’d made the decision to lead his people through the fringes of the Shadow-Cursed Lands, since the cultists had ambushed them, since he’d heard his own voice command their surrender — but it might only have been years, perhaps mere tendays. The dim, red light outside his prison never changed. There was no way for Zevlor to mark the passage of time. Avernus had been the same...

…The blood-red sky broken only by the crackling lightning of the black Companion. Elturel’s clock tower toppled - time another blessing the gods had revoked. Life reduced to short bouts of restless sleep between the swinging of his sword, the bracing of his shield, the holding of the line against demons and devils and the risen corpses of his own fallen friends. A fight for survival he feared would never end. Perhaps it hadn’t. Perhaps the ascent and all that followed were nothing more than fevered dreams: his exile from Elturel, the road to Baldur’s Gate, the struggles at the grove, the fight against the goblins, Tav—

Zevlor’s mind resurfaced blearily. He could not guess at how long he’d been under. But outside his prison, shadows shifted in the weak, red light and muffled echoes filtered through.

“… those without the tadpoles?”

“Let them rot. The Bonedaughter wants more bodies.”

“Surely a few more wouldn’t go amiss? In case the Harpers and those bloody rogue True Souls find their way down here?”

“General Ketheric says not to worry, they’re no longer a threat. He has the Duke and the Nightsong, and he’ll be…”

The voices drifted away, leaving Zevlor once more at the mercy of stillness and silence and stewing madness, his only small comfort the knowledge he would, at least, be permitted to die. He wished it would come soon. Death would be infinitely better than the hells inside his head. He tried vainly to rally his thoughts, to pick through what he had heard — minutes, hours ago? — for useful meaning, but the words drifted anchorless through his brain, swallowed into the roiling sea of distorted memory…

“…wants more bodies...” But there were too many bodies already: his platoon of Hellriders, the soldiers for whose lives he was responsible, lay dead in heaps at his feet. Or were they his fellow refugees? Blank faces blended. The lifeless eyes all looked the same. He no longer knew which hell he was in. “…bloody rogue true souls…” True Soul. That’s what the Absolute offered him. Her honeyed voice enveloped the sounds of people — his people? — fighting and falling; her visions subsumed his sight. He saw himself entering Baldur’s Gate not a beggar, but a leader, a conqueror, a paladin once more; toppling that godless city by the river and rebuilding it in her holy image: a second, better Elturel, a home for his displaced people, and a worthy offering to any beautiful, raven-haired tieflings who would one day make their way there. Until the voice slithered away and the golden vision vanished, leaving him to cruel hands and cold chains and dying screams that rent his soul as he was dragged into the dark. “…said not to worry…” Tav’s face smiled up at him, silhouetted in the grove’s flickering torchlight, her hand warm on his arm. “We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry. Zevlor?”

Even in memory, her voice carried a tangible clarity. Zevlor blinked back to hazy consciousness again. But Tav’s voice remained.

“Zevlor? Zevlor!”

The roll of his name in her accent, strangely muffled though it was, was an undeserved comfort. As was the vision of Tav that swam into focus before his eyes: slightly wavering, but distinct, like a reflection seen through water. Was he dreaming again? He must be. Only this was not a memory of Tav he could place. She wore armour Zevlor did not recognise, her dark hair held off her face by many intricate plaits, and, though she still carried her rapier, a short sword dangled at her other hip. The steel of the two mismatched blades glinted in the dim, red light. She stretched out a hand to touch him and hit translucent barrier instead.

Tav was standing outside his prison.

Which meant madness had claimed Zevlor at last. Or death. Perhaps the gods had conjured an image of her to guide him to whatever plane waited beyond. Charitable of them, he supposed, though they might have made her look less horrified. Unfamiliar lines of fear and anguish broke like lightning across her storm-coloured face as she pounded with both fists on the barrier between them.

“Zevlor! Can you hear me?”

The thuds reverberated around Zevlor like rolls of thunder, disrupting his precarious mind’s attempts to grasp her words. One thing alone was clear: Tav could not get to him, divine emissary though she must be. Was the prison preventing his soul escaping his body, somehow? Zevlor tried to relax, to release, to follow her voice, but both it and her reflection were fading back into red shadows. Panic rattled in his brain. Little though he deserved even the sight of Tav, he could not stand to lose it. But new figures were parading past his prison now: another, taller tiefling; a slight, pale elf; two men, one sporting purple robes, the other curling horns Zevlor thought he must once have seen. The man turned his head towards the prison, and Zevlor recognised the stone eye: the Blade of Frontiers.

These were Tav’s companions, he realised, or some of them at least. Was it ... was it possible they were truly here? Had she come to rescue him yet again? Or had his sanity finally shattered? Zevlor’s vision flickered as the dark maw of delirium tugged at the edges of his mind, threatening to drag him under. He struggled against it. Muffled voices overlapped in argument — but were they real or in his head? — until Tav’s rose above them—

“I don’t give a tuppenny fuck how many mind flayers there are, Astarion, I am not going to let him die!”

—and all Zevlor's fragmented thoughts were extinguished by a hideous crush of sound. Pressure engulfed him. White steam obscured his sight. He toppled forward, his arms abruptly free but too slow to break his fall, and hit the ground face first. Pain radiated from the base of his horns to the back of his skull. Heartbeats he could once more count pulsed loud in his ears. He lay still for several of them, un-thinking, simply breathing in and out, lungs greedily accepting his ragged gasps of rank air. Then someone tripped over his prone legs. Zevlor grunted in discomfort, automatically lifting his head. And the world outside his body impressed itself upon his newly-woken senses.

It was chaos.

Shouts, the twang and hiss of arrows, a sulphurous smell of what must be some infernal magic, and the unmistakable thunks of steel striking flesh filled Zevlor’s mind. No. His ears. This fight was not a memory. It was happening here, now.

On instinct, he rolled to his side — clumsily; his body more cumbersome than he remembered — in time to see four taloned feet attached to a something his brain could not name scuttling straight for his face. He braced his hands against squelchy ground to push himself up and away, but his arms refused to bear weight. He threw one across his eyes, steeling himself for the gouge of claws that never came. A light splat of liquid hit Zevlor’s vambrace instead. He lowered it, and watched a thin rapier retracted from the top of what his eyes insisted was a four-legged brain. Then boots he did not recognise kicked the thing aside, and a tail he did brushed the limp end of his own as Tav lowered her weapons and crouched next to his face.

“Zevlor! Can you move?” she yelled over the clamour — a bellow, the breaking of glass, and the crackle of flames, close enough for sweat to bead on the back of Zevlor’s neck. “Come on, you've got to get u-ah!”

The word ended in a cry. Tav dropped hard to her knees, both blades tumbling to the ground. The edge of the short sword missed Zevlor's bare hand by a breath, and only because he succeeded in struggling to a seat: some hidden vestige of strength igniting within him at Tav’s distress. Her eyes were squeezed shut; she clutched her head as if struck from behind by a pommel. But the enemy levitating slowly towards her wielded no weapons, apart from whip-like tentacles and the razor-sharp nails of its outstretched hand.

A mind flayer. Zevlor knew the monster instantly, though he’d never seen one before; nor would it have held any particular terror for him — he'd met plenty worse in Avernus — were it not for the tentacles wriggling purposefully towards the back of Tav’s bent head. Zevlor found himself suddenly on his feet, the fallen short sword in his hand, with no idea how he'd accomplished either and no time to think of it now. He swung. Tav’s sword, sharp — but slighter than he was accustomed to — missed the meat of the tentacles and sliced the outstretched tip of one instead. Distraction enough. The mind flayer stumbled as its feet touched ground. Its small, orange eyes locked on Zevlor’s, shrieking its indignant rage — not into the shrouded air between them but directly into Zevlor’s head. He could feel the creature’s consciousness grate against his, then twist and contort, becoming less a shriek than a song: an enticing stream of notes that wrapped themselves tenderly around his thoughts, coaxing, cajoling, commanding him to lower his blade.

"Enough!" Zevlor heard himself shout, voice cracking with long disuse. "My mind is my own!"

He gripped the pommel of the sword until his knuckles popped, lifted it over his head, and brought it down on the creature’s neck where it erupted in a fury of radiant sparks — a ghost of the holy power Zevlor once commanded — and passed cleanly through rubbery flesh. The mind flayer's body toppled first. Its severed head followed, tentacles still twitching. Zevlor merely adjusted his stance and swung again. And again and again, riding the surge of familiar power until the last sparks of divine wrath were gone, and there was no coherent form left to aim at, and the silver blade of the borrowed sword was black with alien innards. Blinking drops of the same noxious fluid from his eyes, Zevlor swivelled, searching for more enemies to smite, but the battle around him was dying an equally swift and bloody death.

A few paces away, a second mind flayer corpse lay charred and smoking. A third hung pinned by arrows to a wall, uneven and spongy as the chamber’s ground. Near this violent tableau, the pale elf was bent double, tugging salvageable arrows from more fallen, oozing brains; while across from him, just visible through the smoke and dim, red light, the Blade of Frontiers and the other tiefling — Karlach, Zevlor’s brain belatedly prompted — helped another figure clamber from an eerily steaming pod. Zevlor blinked at this, his sword arm faltering as his brain made another connection, then whirled in place. An identical pod loomed behind him. His prison. The narrow, sensation-less, time-less tomb he'd been trapped in for who knew how long, where he had been so sure he would die. Where he would have died, if not for...

Zevlor let the short sword fall from his fingers as his eyes sought Tav, but she was already on her feet, tripping over bits of pulverised mind flayer to meet him. Her cobalt eyes sparkled with tears that might have been lingering headache or joy; for she was smiling: the exact smile she'd offered Zevlor in his every memory of her. A wave of dizzy unreality shuddered through him. He wet his blood-flecked lips, almost afraid to ask:

“Are you real?”

His voice was a croak he barely recognised. Tav's, too, was unusually distorted as she answered through what sounded like both laughter and a wild sob.

“Yes!” She tore frantically at her fingerless leather gloves to cup Zevlor’s gore-streaked face in clean, bare hands. “Yes, I'm real. I'm here. And you're here. You're alive. You're alive,” she repeated, as if she, too, found this miracle hard to grasp, and ran her fingers desperately over his face to prove it: her thumbs tracing the sharp, infernal ridges of his cheeks, the base of his horns, the outline of his ears, her long nails tangling in the loose, unkempt strands of his hair.

“Alive,” Zevlor echoed, hardly aware of his words or anything else that wasn’t the blissful feel of Tav’s skin against his. “Hells. I - I didn't think I was going to make it. But how did you … how—”

“They told me you were taken.” Tav's face was so close to Zevlor's he could taste each of her rapid, shallow breaths. “But when we rescued the other prisoners in Moonrise, you weren't with them, and none of them knew where you’d gone. I looked everywhere, all over the shadowlands and that whole bloody tower and I couldn't find you. I was afraid—”

She broke off: whether unwilling to name her fear or because she, like Zevlor, had become aware of footsteps behind her, he wasn't sure. Careful to do nothing that would dislodge Tav’s mindlessly stroking hands, he threw a glance over her shoulder and watched her companions tromp into view: the pale elf and the wizard from one direction, Karlach and Wyll from the other, supporting between them two new figures whose grimy, tattered tabards proclaimed the insignia of the Flaming Fist. Hope welled in Zevlor’s parched throat. If Tav had rescued prisoners, and more were alive down here, then surely that meant there was a chance…

“The others. The ambush,” he whispered against the skin of her wrist, unable to look her in the eye as he asked, “Did you find them? Did they survive?”

It took Tav a second too long to respond.

“Don't - don't worry about that now,” she stuttered, her hands sliding slowly from his face. “There’ll be time for stories and - and explanations later. First, we need to get you out of here. All of you,” she added, turning to the two new arrivals; and the loss of her warmth and her ominous non-answer left Zevlor abruptly shrunken and cold.

Battle, and the ecstasy of reuniting with Tav, had driven the memories which had haunted his imprisonment temporarily from Zevlor’s mind. They caught him up in a breathless rush — screams; that spray of wet red, bright in the living shadows; the sickening scent of spilled blood — and escorting them was a new, unconsidered horror: how Tav would react when she found him out. What would she say, how would she look at him, when she realised she had spent all that time searching for, not a victim of the cult, but a villain every bit as much to blame? Guilt, grief, and pure selfish panic washed over Zevlor so palpably he swayed. Voices rose and fell around him, but they sounded strangely distant, as if he were once again a prisoner in a pod.

“I’m sorry — you want us to climb back up that wretched hole we just spent an hour climbing down? And what — leave a note with one of those brain things asking Ketheric to pretty please pause whatever he’s planning with the Nightsong until we get back?”

“Astarion’s not wrong. Finding and stopping Ketheric has got to be our first priority, surely?”

“I’d say destroying the Absolute deserves a slight precedence.”

“And finding Zariel’s asset. Wyll’s not becoming Kyton food on my watch, soldier.”

“And we are - mmph - we’re not going anywhere till we find the Duke. I heard one of those cultists saying Ketheric’s got him somewhere below. If I can just - arrgh - borrow a sword...”

“Not to rub proverbial salt in a very literal wound, but as you can barely lift yourself, I’m not sure how you expect to lift a sword.”

“It’s that or fall on one when we return without our - urgh - charge!”

“Enough.”

Tav’s command was quiet, almost careless, and all that was needed to snuff out the other voices. Including those in Zevlor’s head. He blinked away the intrusive visions and refocused on Tav, who had reined in her frantic joy and replaced it with an authoritative calm: comfortable on her face, and as inherently comforting to see as the first hint of wisteria sunrise after an endless-seeming stretch of night.

“Gale’s right.” She addressed the unhappy female Fist doing her damnedest not to lean on Karlach. “Neither of you is in any condition to go running after Ketheric. But that’s where we were headed before we found all of you, and,” - her eyes drifted in Zevlor’s direction before snapping back - “finding him is the priority right now. If the Duke is really down there, you have my word, we’ll do everything you would have done and more to bring him back.”

Tav held the Fist’s gaze until the woman grudgingly relented, or was simply unable to stand any longer — she nodded once, then slumped against Karlach’s arm. That settled, Tav turned to Zevlor.

“Can you help them out of here if I tell you the way?”

A task. A mission. An actionable item to occupy his body and distract his mind.

“Of course,” he agreed without hesitation, and threw himself immediately into the job at hand.

While Tav and her companions collected themselves and their gear, Zevlor picked a careful path across oozing pieces of mind flayer to Karlach, and helped her transfer the Fist’s arm across his shoulders. His own muscles, no longer cushioned by adrenaline, wept at the added weight. He ignored them; his body deserved far worse punishment than this. He waited only for the second Fist to gather his comparatively steady feet underneath him, then set a laborious pace across the oddly fleshy ground. Tav hurried ahead of him, ordering her companions on in the opposite direction while she herself showed Zevlor the way out.

“Through there. Stay to the right,” — she indicated a passage every bit as dim and unpleasant as the room he was to quit — “and you’ll come to a dead end. You’ll have to climb for a bit, but Shadowheart and Lae’zel are standing by at the top. Call up, and as soon as they can hear you, they’ll help. And here. Take this.” She tucked her short sword, hastily wiped clean of ichor, carefully into Zevlor’s belt. “Just in case.”

Zevlor paused, resting the Fist’s dead weight against the ground, and shook his head. Loose hair fell past his horns, tickling his face; he swiped his free hand uselessly across it as he protested:

“You’ll need that more than I.”

“It won’t make a difference,” Tav insisted, fumbling something from around her wrist Zevlor could not see in the darkness; but he understood what it must be when she closed the short space between them, stretched on her toes and gathered the limp strands of hair from his face, fastening them behind his head. “We threw all the steel we had at Ketheric before and barely scratched his armor. I don’t think swords are going to win us this fight. It’ll have to be speeches.” Her lips twitched as she dropped her hands. “I’ll get it back from you if I manage to pull it off.”

Tav's tone was light, but, as she leaned back to inspect her handiwork, her calm assurance flickered. And for a moment, she was simply staring at him: her cobalt eyes wandering his face, as if memorising its every sharp angle; clearly worried she was seeing it, all of him, for the last time. In a way, Zevlor thought, she was.

“You will,” he said in lieu of farewell, and it rang with bittersweet surety.

For he had no doubts whatsoever. Tav and her companions would defeat the General, the cult, perhaps the Absolute itself — nothing seemed beyond her anymore. But when she returned and discovered the part he had played in his people's destruction, Zevlor was equally certain she would never again look at him like that: with such tender care and concern and, he'd once allowed himself to hope, love.

Ale dribbles down Zevlor’s constricted throat as he takes a few clumsy gulps. But this draught seems less fortifying than the first. On the contrary, he feels distinctly ill. His fingers tremble again as he replaces the tankard on the table. He wonders if Lakrissa can have put something in his drink. He’s noticed her colourful hair bob by the privacy curtain more often than strictly warranted while he's talked.

“So,” prompts Alfira, “I… assume you stayed at Moonrise after that? I mean, none of us ever saw you at Last Light.”

Despite her efforts to sound gentle, unpressing, Zevlor can tell the bard is eager to move the story on; to put the Shadow-Cursed lands behind her for good. But the awful memories he's already been forced to relive and the ones still ahead, not to mention the ale now churning his stomach, have shaken Zevlor's resolve. He imagines refusing to speak; leaving the interview here. Simply rising from the rickety wooden chair and walking out of the Elfsong's open doors into the night. Even with Lakrissa's help, Alfira could hardly stop him.

But something does. An innate sense of duty, an ingrained commitment to justice, the almost physical need to atone for his failures in some real if negligible way, keeps Zevlor bound to his seat; just as it had at Moonrise Towers those many months ago.

“Yes,” he sighs, “I stayed at Moonrise. At least, until Tav returned.”

“Zevlor?”

A voice he knew without thinking roused Zevlor instantly from a slumped and unrestful doze. Harder to identify were his surroundings.

He was seated at a long wooden table, a sword that wasn’t his laid out on the bench at his side, in a room that, in spite of its expensive windows and intricate tapestries and paintings obscuring the stone walls, had the cramped spartan beds and unmistakable stale odour of military barracks. And the memory came sidling reluctantly back. This was the cult's barracks in Moonrise, where the githyanki, Lae'zel, had assigned him to sit after leading the three rescued prisoners from the top of the ruined tower. Zevlor uncurled his spine, and hissed in discomfort. His back was stiffer than he could ever remember it being, every muscle in his body fiercely cramped. The result of tendays of disuse, followed by battle and a painstaking climb out of that mind flayer hell. And he supposed sitting hunched over and unsupported for the last few hours had not helped.

He shifted on the bench again, more gingerly, and the blanket one of the Harpers had thrown over the sticky, gore-slick armor he'd refused to remove slipped down his arms. Zevlor snatched at it automatically, but faster hands beat him there. They arranged the itchy wool more securely over his shoulders, then removed the empty plate and tin cup he’d knocked over in his doze to a spot further down the table. He dropped his eyes to the ground and watched as boots still splattered with blood and worse stepped around him to retrieve a fallen chair. It was lifted and set right at the head of the table beside him, and a creak of old wood informed Zevlor that Tav had sat down.

Neither spoke. Zevlor did not know for how long; he was out of the habit of counting time. Nor could he interpret Tav’s silence with his eyes still locked on the smooth stone floor. He contemplated asking how her mission had fared, but if she was here she had obviously succeeded, and pleasantries only delayed the inevitable: the moment she would broach the subject, and he would have no choice but to explain and to watch her wisteria face grow stormy with disappointment and disgust. He dreaded it more than he had his own death in that pod.

But when Tav did speak, it was only to ask, “Have you slept at all? I mean, actually slept? Laid down? You can’t get a real rest like that. If you don’t fancy any of the cots, you could try Ketheric’s bed. I’ve seen it, it’s quite grand. And he won’t be needing it anymore.”

Zevlor knew the younger woman well enough by now to recognise her babble for what it was: nerves. Though what she had to be nervous about, he could not fathom.

“Or, if you’d rather, I can have someone draw you a bath? Or find you something else to wear, at least, if you want to get out of—”

Unable to bear another second of sweet considerations he did not deserve and could not accept, Zevlor interrupted, his voice a hopeless rasp, “I know I don't deserve to ask, but ... will you tell me if the others … if any of them survived?”

Tav hesitated: one second, then two. Then—

“Some of them,” she admitted. “Rolan kept the children safe, and they and a few others managed to escape and find refuge with the Harpers. A few more were captured and brought here to Moonrise Towers where we rescued them. They’re all at Last Light Inn together. I can take you there. Now, if you like.”

Zevlor winced, tail spasming under the blanket, at this offer, but did not bother it with a response. Instead, he asked, “Who didn't?”

Her pause was longer this time. Too long. After a minute, Zevlor raised his eyes enough to watch Tav’s bare hands twist together in her lap. She had shed her unfamiliar armor, but, he assumed by the sweat stains and the distinctive wear on the knees of the dark cloth trousers, was still in the soft kit she had worn underneath.

“I … I don't know if that’s the best… or if this is the right time for…” Her hands flexed convulsively as she struggled for words. “I mean … does that really matter right now?”

Zevlor sat up, letting the blanket rustle to the floor, and, at last, looked Tav in the face. It was thinner, he noticed in the candlelight, the infernal ridges of her cheekbones more prominent than when they had first met in the grove. Her modest horns, too, were more obvious now her wild hair was plaited down. What had her own road here been like? Had supplies run short in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, or had tendays of battles and the worry she had wasted on him carved those hollows in her cheeks, drawn those new lines along her brow? He wished he could ask. He wished they could have a different conversation — the sort of heart-to-hearts they’d had what felt like a lifetime ago. But Tav’s heart no longer belonged anywhere near his.

And when Zevlor opened his mouth, his words were not for the friend he was soon to lose or the lover he would never have, but the leader he knew would understand:

“Would it matter to you? If it were your companions, the people you were responsible for — would you need to know?”

Tav had no argument for this. She held Zevlor’s gaze a few seconds more, then swallowed hard, nodded once, and began to recite:

“Asharak … Elegis … Kaldani … Ikaron …Okta … Guex…”

She said each name alone, giving every abruptly-ended life the same solemn space and weight. Zevlor set his shoulders and received them all, stoically. Until Tav came to, “Tilses,” when a guttural noise bubbled horribly in his throat and hot tears appeared fully formed and without warning in the corners of his eyes. He covered his face with a hand, motioning Tav on with the other. He could hear the hint of tears in her own voice as she continued, but she did not stop until she finished her list with, “Locke … Komira,” then, after a beat of sober silence, added:

“I went back for the … their bodies after we, well, neutralised the Shadow Curse — that part’s hard to explain and it isn’t important right now. Anyway. Halsin helped me, and we brought them to Last Light and … and buried them properly. So there’s a place to pay respects, if … if that’s important, too.”

Gratitude enveloped Zevlor: a more substantial blanket than the one crumpled at his feet. He had no intentions of insulting the dead by intruding on their resting place, but there seemed little point saying this to Tav; she would understand soon enough.

“Thank you,” was all he croaked into his hand.

Tav did not reply in words, but the shuffle of boots and a groan of wood sliding over smooth stone indicated she had moved her chair closer. Zevlor knew without looking what she was going to do — the same thing she had always done — and also knew how abominable of him it would be to accept her comfort. But his will had been weakened by sorrow and tears, and the memory of Tav’s frantic hands on his face, in his hair, burned bright in his mind — and other parts of him over which he had even less control. He could not move. He could not abstain from the feel of her fingers: warm, soft, and blessedly, in spite of everything, alive. But they had only just brushed the back of his hand when a rap of knuckles on wood and the creak of the door behind him brought Zevlor’s moral dilemma to an end.

He sat up. Tav, too, straightened, and let her outstretched hand fall to her knee as she peered around Zevlor to the door.

“Tav — oh, you found him, then,” came a vaguely familiar voice that sounded almost as dismal and lost as Zevlor felt. “Good for you. But do you know where the Nightsong went?”

“I think she’s still, uh … catching up with Isobel somewhere.” Tav’s eyes flicked to Zevlor’s as she said this, and, for reasons mysterious to him, a blotchy, storm-cloud blush crept across her cheeks. She returned her attention hastily to the visitor. “I know you need to speak with her, I haven’t forgotten. If she’s not back in a bit, we’ll go look for her together. Alright?”

The voice made some murmur of subdued agreement, but Zevlor was no longer listening to it. He pressed his fingers to the inner corners of his eyes to clear them, then rolled his sore shoulders and steadied himself for the debrief he could put off no longer. Tav had her own people to attend to. He had already wasted far too much of her time.

“I owe you an explanation,” Zevlor began hoarsely the moment he heard the creak and snap of the re-fastened door. “You’ve heard some of it already, I’m sure, from the others. That I … froze, or broke, or some other lie, that is kinder than the truth.”

“Cerys said you surrendered,” Tav inserted, expressionless, into Zevlor’s pause for breath.

His eyes squeezed shut of their own accord, but he wrenched them open and fixed his gaze determinedly on Tav — or, at least, a point on the stone wall beyond her left ear.

“We were ambushed by cultists,” he explained: a flat and efficient report. “We had little hope of defeating them in that damned darkness, but then ... then I heard her. The Absolute. Their false god. Whispering promises in my mind. I would be a paladin again. With a god’s purpose, a god’s power. Everything I needed to protect my people. Everything I needed to—” He stopped short. He would not downplay his failures for Tav, but she did not need the sordid details of the Absolute’s temptation, surely. He cleared his throat and resumed, “And all the while, the cult tortured them: the very people I fancied I could save. They fought and ran and died around me, while I imagined myself their saviour. By the time I regained my senses, it was too late.

“So,” he concluded miserably, “Cerys is only partially right. I did not just surrender to the Absolute. For a moment… I welcomed it.”

His final confession echoed off the room’s stark stone walls and high ceiling, then faded slowly away. And still Zevlor sat, awaiting Tav’s verdict, tail flicking in increasing agitation. He could not bring himself to look at her directly. Instead, his mind raced with visions of the form her building outburst would take: her pretty face screwed up in righteous anger … or soured in subtle revulsion … a babble of unrestrained distress spewed between tears … or her voice sharpened to a knife point as she delivered some scathing rebuke...

Zevlor flinched at the justified fury of his imagined Tav, until the one across from him said at last, all quiet, cautious sympathy:

“It sounds like you were being enthralled. You can hardly blame yourself for that.”

And her defence of him was so unexpected, so ludicrous, he laughed. Or almost laughed. The sound crawled from his throat raw and flayed.

“It would be nice to think so,” he said bitterly. “But whatever these monsters twist us into, I believe it begins in us.”

“Alright, but … don’t you think it says more about you that when you were back in your right mind you chose not to join the Absolute, whatever it offered?”

Tav’s voice remained infuriatingly gentle and measured. Her head was cocked very slightly, hands open on her knees, as if approaching a skittish colt, or a small, stubborn child. Zevlor frowned at her. But was saved from attempting any sort of response by the frenzied creaking of the door and a bang as it hit the stone wall.

“Tav, are you in — yes, you are! Ah, and Zevlor too. Glad to see you made it out.” Zevlor gave a very slight nod of acknowledgment at this, but did not turn round. “I do apologise for such an ill-mannered interruption, but, Tav, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. It is essential I speak with you at once.”

“Gale, is this life or death essential, or a really great story essential?”

“Both.”

The word practically vibrated with the wizard’s clear excitement; one which Tav just as clearly did not share. Her mouth worked in poorly-repressed frustration for a moment, then, apparently deciding it would take longer not to humour him, she sighed through her nose and pushed from her chair, bending to murmur, “Two minutes, I promise,” in Zevlor’s ear as she passed.

He did not reply. For once, Zevlor was grateful for Tav’s departure. He waited until he heard the door swing shut and the wizard’s energetic monologue start up behind it, then slumped forward onto the table, and dropped his head into his hands. He closed his eyes: grief-sick and aching, confused and, somehow, more unhappy than if Tav had just hit him.

It had never occurred to Zevlor that Tav might make excuses for his failure. Could her fondness for him stretch so far as to be willing to overlook such heinous crimes? Or was she in denial? He had considered her a pragmatic, highly competent leader, and impolitic loyalty was not a quality such a leader could afford. But, as memories of Tav at the grove played out across his eyelids, the obvious thought struck Zevlor’s admittedly debilitated brain that while Tav was a leader, she was not a military commander, or any sort of soldier at all. She was, he supposed, more than anything else, a bard. A lover of tales, and the people who inspired them. A hero who preferred speeches to swords. A magician who, when outcomes appeared immutable, pulled new possibilities from thin air — or private trunks. A musician who found the hidden notes of good in nearly everyone she met — violent gith, hot-headed apprentice wizards, archdruids seduced by shadows — and plucked them to the forefront of their individual songs.

That's what she was doing now, with him, Zevlor realised: spinning his failures, the truth of his baser nature, into a story with which he could live. And he loved her for it. Affection and admiration for Tav swelled, warm and invigorating as a bonfire, in his chest…

…and was extinguished the next second by a cold, dark wave of guilt and grief.

The metallic scent of blood. The bodies at his feet. Their last living sights their own leader, unmoved by their pitiful screams—

Zevlor's head shot up from the table. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, but the scene was seared across his mind, not his eyes. He knew he would never escape it, nor should he. His peoples' deaths would weigh forever on his conscience, their blood permanently stain his hands. Nothing even Tav said could absolve him of that.

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice made Zevlor jump; her words, press his hand to his mouth, worried he might have been speaking his thoughts out loud. If he had, Tav did not acknowledge them further, only transferred her short sword from the bench to the table, then took its previous place. Beside Zevlor. She perched on the edge of the bench, one leg curled underneath her.

“I suppose this means you don’t want to go Last Light, then? Find the others and lead them on to Baldur’s Gate?”

Her sudden brisk tone, and the now multiple voices issuing from under the firmly closed door, led Zevlor to guess Tav expected additional interruptions at any time. He eased his sore body around on the bench to face her.

“Would any of them trust me to?”

It was a rhetorical question. Even Tav could not argue in its favour. Which did not stop her trying.

“Of course they would. I mean, they will. When they understand what really happened. When you explain—”

“No,” and Zevlor himself was surprised at the steel in his voice. “I won’t make excuses. I cannot make amends. It would be foolishness for any of them to trust me again, when I’ve let them down so many times.”

“Alright,” Tav conceded unexpectedly. “I still think many of those points are debatable, but if it’s too much for you now, I understand. So… will you come with me, then? With us?” It bore all the trappings of a casual, throwaway question, but Zevlor did not think he was mistaking the nervous excitement that whispered underneath. “I can't pretend it won't be dangerous. Even with Ketheric dead, we've got more enemies than ever, not to speak of the Absolute itself which is what we’re truly after, but … I could use another blade for what's ahead.”

“Only if you can trust it won’t be buried in your back,” retorted Zevlor grimly. “If it comes to a fight with the Absolute, I would be less than useless to you. Its already swayed me once before.”

“Well, actually,” said Tav, with the air of a Three-Dragon Ante player revealing their winning hand, “we've got a sort of protection against that. It's hard to explain. Gods, everything is now, when did it all get so complicated? But anyway, if that's what you're worried about, you'll definitely be safer with us.”

Tav's mouth curled, anticipating its own smile, so sure she would hear the answer she wanted; the answer Zevlor wanted to give. It would be so easy to say yes … to accept Tav's amnesty, her forgiveness … to join her cause: his new purpose the Absolute’s destruction, his new place at her side.

Everything the Absolute had tempted him with in the first place.

Zevlor closed his eyes again, and, this time, sought that wretched memory out. He forced himself to watch the bodies fall, bodies he could now name. Asharak. Okta. Guex. Tilses. He had entertained temptation before, and it was they who had paid the price. He had failed them. He could not let himself fail Tav.

“No,” said Zevlor, loud enough for the word to bounce off the stone walls; a hundred refusals in his voice. “I can't risk it. I won’t risk it happening again.”

An odd hush made the room seem larger and emptier than before. Zevlor realised the voices outside had fallen silent. As had Tav. He could not even hear her breathing. His eyes found her face without his permission, and she could not have looked more surprised or devastated if he had spat in it. Her tail drooped to the floor.

“Zevlor.” Her voice was delicate and trembling as the fingers she reached out and rested tentatively along the edge of his jaw. “I trust you.”

It took every ounce of Zevlor's self-control, and more he did not know he possessed, to turn his head, dislodging Tav's hand.

“I wish I shared your faith.”

For seconds that recalled the timelessness of his prison, the two of them sat in the dissonant wake of this exchange; together, but, it felt to Zevlor at least, wholly separate, disconnected, for the first time since they had met. Then another importunate rap at the door knocked a groan from Tav. There was a pain in it Zevlor thought too visceral to stem from the interruption alone.

“Yes, alright, I'm coming,” she called, and her words, too, contained a disproportionate grief. She uncurled slowly from the bench, then stood for a moment, as if unable to tear herself away. From the corner of his eye, Zevlor could see her face flit around the room, searching for something: a new angle or untried manoeuvre, perhaps. “Look,” she said at last, “you’ve been through something unspeakably awful. Months worth of awful, in fact. You need to sleep, really sleep, and … we can talk more about what to do when you've had some rest.”

Zevlor knew it was useless to argue. Nor did he have the energy left. To deny Tav — to deny himself of Tav — had drained the last of his strength. He could barely lift his arm to grip the hilt of the short sword and slide it along the table towards her.

“Here,” he said simply, then, “Thank you,” when Tav's slight wince made his heart ache.

“Keep it,” she said just as baldly. “You left your sword at the grove. I’ve got to go deal with … everything. But if I don’t see you before, I’ll come find you in the morning.”

Two abrupt and equally bemusing questions furrowed Zevlor’s brow. But Tav had already walked away. He had time to call out only one of them after her:

“Is there a morning in this place?”

Her hand on the doorknob, Tav turned as she wrenched it open, and offered Zevlor one last smile.

“There will be.”

“And there was, of course,” Zevlor finishes. “I saw it from the ruins of the town beyond Moonrise. I waited until most in the tower had settled to sleep, then slipped out around the side. I stayed there until - until I saw Tav and the others leave.”

He stares into his tankard, light-headed and slightly nauseous: from its contents, or the memory of watching Tav and her companions trek across the ruined road. He had recognised the pale elf lifting his arms to embrace the newborn sunlight, and Karlach's boisterous laugh, and Tav, walking alone, slightly ahead of the rest of her party; and though he could not make out details of her face, he had thought her aspect unusually sober.

“If I'd only followed her then,” Zevlor laments, “or listened to her before, perhaps things would have been ... well...” He sighs heavily. “It doesn't matter now. I thought I was finally doing the right thing. I didn't understand I was really doing what I'd always done: running from my shame ... indulging my own pride.”

“But you do … you do understand now, don't you?” Alfira ventures tentatively. “I mean, that none of it — what happened to us — was your fault?”

Zevlor shakes his head. Which isn't an answer.

“Some strategies work in theory,” he muses after a minute's contemplation, “but fail when enacted in actual battle.”

Which is hardly more of one.

“Yes, well,” interjects Lakrissa's voice as the privacy curtain suddenly parts, “strategies and battle plans are all well and good, but you can't win a fight without food. Armies marching on their stomachs, and that,” and she pushes a bowl in front of Zevlor. “Roveer's closing up the kitchen for the night, but he had a bit of pudding left over.”

Zevlor stares into the bowl. It's filled to the brim with generous slices of some sweet-smelling loaf soaked in syrup and dusted with sliced almonds, almost too decorous-looking to eat. Nonplussed, he catches Alfira's eye. By her blank expression, she's every bit as bewildered as he. Zevlor lifts his gaze at last to Lakrissa. But all she says by way of explanation is:

“Alan's ale on an empty stomach's enough to make anyone sick. And, I reckon you've suffered enough.”

#zevlor #zevlor x tav #zevnation #bg3 #fanfiction #alfira #bg3 zevlor #tav #fem!tav #tiefling #ao3 author #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fanfic writers

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milknette · 4 years ago

Text

day 01 - cafe

i'll make a cup of coffee, with the right amount of sugar.

tumblr month: @auyeahaugust

links: ao3 | ff.net

MARINETTE doesn't exactly know what makes her answer yes.

Maybe it's from all the overnight shifts she's been taking, or the coffee fumes she's been inhaling daily finally taking a toll on her brain— or maybe it's because he's the most handsome man she's ever seen walk into her cafe (fact: it's most definitely the third reason), but Marinette can't bring herself to say no to him.

And as things always come with her, a well-intentioned yes easily snowballs into a mess of epically huge proportions. (Though in her defense, she doesn't know that yet.)

Marinette plasters on a smile directed at the customer. "Of course we do!" She replies, noticing a little too late that her voice is a notch higher than usual. "It's just that we don't— uh, have it now! Out of stock, haha, y'know how restaurants go… well, maybe you don't, but there's this thing called supply and demand, and… I mean, I don't want to assume you're dumb or anything— in fact, you're probably a lot smarter than me I went to a fashion university, can you believe that? Like, I went abroad and everything. I learned a lot then, but—"

Horrified that she was tripping over her words, Marinette inhales deeply, then wills herself to stop talking. "— so, anyway! We'll probably have it in stock some time soon, so come back then, okay? I'll have a piping hot coffee ready for you to drink with those pretty lips of y— I mean! Maybe I could call you when you can stop by?"

Marinette only has a moment to reflect on how suggestive that may sound before the customer laughs, effectively breaking her thoughts from spiralling any deeper than they already were.

"Sure," he says, and Marinette briefly wonders if love at first sight has more truth to it than others may believe. "Can I have your phone? I'll put in my number."

His voice is smooth and confident, and Marinette feels the burning need to disappear into a puddle. She hands over her phone gingerly, and takes a moment to appreciate his arms as they type away at the screen.

He returns her phone and smiles. "I'm really lucky I stopped by your cafe. I didn't think there was any place in Paris that had it available," the stranger explains. "Even when I was in America, it was already hard to get a hold of. So thank you…"

The stranger pauses, then looks down at her nametag. "Marinette." He nods his head toward her as a gesture of appreciation, then disappears out the door.

The moment he steps out of her cafe, Marinette feels her knees give out and falls to the floor.

And as she always does when she makes a mess of things, she calls her business partner.

"Alya, I may have messed up… again."

ii.

"What the hell is Kopi Luwak coffee?"

It's a valid question, and Marinette has no idea how to answer. After all, she doesn't actually know what it is either. "His order?" She answers back (completely unhelpfully).

Alya sighs, then pinches her forehead. She's the more level-headed one from the two of them, and therefore the one who always has to fix whatever mess Marinette had gotten into at the time. They're at her office— Alya usually handles the more managerial parts of running the business, whereas Marinette is more on the production of food and drinks side — as she inputs the term into the search bar.

The results are quick to show up:

KOPI LUWAK: THE MOST EXPENSIVE COFFEE IN THE WORLD!

Their faces consequently morph into ones of expectant horror. Alya clicks on the link, and has to visibly stop the sudden gasp that escapes her throat. The cost of one cup of coffee ranges from $35 to $100, with a single kilogram of beans worth almost $700.

Marinette almost snatches the mouse from her hand as she quickly scrolls through the article, clinging onto the (very likely futile) hope that it's probably someone's terrible idea for a joke.

Unfortunately, it isn't.

Alya's the first to speak up, and it's a simple question. "Was our customer a millionaire or something?!"

"I don't know!" Marinette responds, panicked. "I mean, if he were it'd make sense why he's so attractive but he never said anything!"

"Why did you say we provided this?! We can't serve hundred-dollar coffee, we're barely paying rent as it is!"

"I know, I know!" Marinette repeats, pulling at her hairs in stress. "I just thought it was some other kind of regular coffee! How was I supposed to know he wanted that?!" She extends both her arms to point at the computer screen, then shakes her head. "Only an insane person would pay that much for a drink!"

Then, a pause. And in a quieter tone: "Why can't I meet normal guys? Is a cute boy too much to ask for?"

Alya rolls her eyes, then suddenly puts her hands on the table. One returns to massaging her forehead. "Okay, Marinette. We can't serve this to him. You'll just have to tell him the truth."

"But I can't do that!" Marinette frowns, as if the very notion of telling the truth is impossible. "He'll find out that I lied to him and he'll hate me and start going to another cafe instead!"

"— then you shouldn't have lied in the first place!" Alya points out, wagging her finger. "It's better to tell him now before he comes here again and finds out for himself!"

Marinette shifts in place, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. "Maybe we can find cheaper alternatives somewhere else?" She asks. "I bet if we ask our suppliers, someone's bound to grow those beans—"

"Afraid not, girl," Alya says, turning to look at the computer. "These aren't regular beans. Apparently they're made by—," she suddenly pauses, as her face contorts into one of pure disgust. "Ew!"

"What?" Marinette walks toward the computer and leans over, only to feel the need to gag upon reading what came next: Coffee beans are digested by a civet cat. Their excretions are sold as the rare Kopi Luwak.

"So you mean…" Marinette begins, shivering. "That this coffee is basically… cat poop?"

Alya looks at her solemnly, then nods. "Yup."

At that, they finally burst into laughter— though whether it's from entertainment, the absurdity of the situation, or the realization that she's helpless in securing a date with the stranger, or all of the above, Marinette can't tell at all.

iii.

They agree that Marinette tell the truth to the Cute (And Apparently Rich) Coffee Stranger even though it'll very likely ruin all her chances with him. Nothing is, as Alya says, worth spending hundreds of dollars on cat poop for.

Except that Marinette Dupain-Cheng cannot follow directions.

Instead, she contacts a special supplier internationally and pays almost a thousand dollars total to have a kilogram of the beans at her doorstep not more than a week later. (Marinette finds comfort in knowing that the coffee doesn't smell like actual feces.)

She messages the stranger, who left his contact name as a single coffee emoji:

hey we restocked and are ready to serve tomorrow! can you drop by? :)

The reply is almost instantaneous:

That's great! I'll stop by in the morning. Thank you so much!

Marinette reads and rereads that message until she finally falls asleep.

iv.

For the first time since the history of her business, Marinette doesn't arrive to work late.

She doesn't know exactly what time the Coffee Stranger will arrive, but she knows that she doesn't want to miss when he does. Marinette takes the morning shift (something that all her co-workers were understandably surprised by), and she waits.

Coffee Stranger arrives an hour later.

He greets her good morning, and Marinette short-circuits. She reaches out her hand. “Hi! I'm Marinette!"

He laughs. "I know," he says. "Maybe you don't remember me? I gave you my number. I'm the one who asked for the Kopi Luwak?"

"Sorry. Of course I remember! I could never forget you," she replies— blurting it out, to her complete horror.

Coffee Stranger, thankfully, doesn't look all that bothered. In fact, he looks entertained, more so than anything else. "Great," he responds, the smile still on his face. "Then I'll have that."

Marinette nods, and she gets to work on his coffee. She gets it done quickly (Marinette had practiced making it at home; pleasantly surprised to find that it tasted wonderful), and hands him a perfectly hot cup of coffee. "That'll be… eighty dollars."

She cringes at the cost, but the Coffee Stranger pulls out a hundred dollar bill without hesitance. "Keep the change," he tells her, as he takes a sip. "This is even better than what I've had before! Definitely worth more."

The barista blinks in disbelief. "You really think so?" She asks, to which the stranger enthusiastically nods. Marinette feels her body buzz with joy from the sudden compliment, then she points at the macarons on the counter. "Here," she begins. "It's on the house."

The stranger looks up in surprise. "Are you sure?"

Marinette smiles. "It goes great with the coffee," she explains. "I think you'll like the passionfruit flavor. It mixes well with the cat po— the Kopi Luwak."

"Perfect," the stranger responds. "Passionfruit's my favourite flavor!" He grins, then pauses. "And… it's Adrien."

"What?"

Coffee Stranger's eyes go up to meet hers. Green. A forest of green she wouldn't mind getting lost in forever. "My name's Adrien," he says, reaching out his hand to hers. "Nice to meet you.."

Marinette suddenly feels her throat dry. She suddenly forgets that she spent a thousand dollars just to make him happy. It feels worth it.

"Nice to meet you too."

Adrien quickly becomes a regular.

He makes it a point to stop by whenever she's working, sometimes having his coffee to go, and other times staying in to do his work at the cafe. Marinette likes those times the most— and she almost always sneaks in a little macaron or some other snack to help him get through the day. It's small and short exchanges, but they learn more about each other and that's more than enough to make her happy.

She finds out a lot about him. He's kind. He has a sweet tooth. He lives with his best friend, a DJ. He owns a cat. (He clarified, however, that all he does with Plagg's feces is throw it away.) He's rich, but it mostly came as savings from his younger years. He was a teenage model, but nowadays he prefers being the one behind it. (A waste, Marinette thinks, but she respects his decision.) His mom's gone, and he doesn't speak much with his dad. He treasures his friendships more than anything.

Adrien tells her that he treasures their friendship. Marinette's smile doesn't quite reach her eyes when she thinks about how that's all they'll probably be.

She willfully ignores Alya's unimpressed looks and how her bank funds steadily drain into the danger zone.

vi.

At some point, Marinette can't ignore it.

The bank tells her that she can't withdraw anymore, because her funds are almost completely depleted. She paces back and forth her room, visibly stressed. Her current bag of coffee beans would likely last her a few more days— but afterwards, it'll no longer be an option.

Alya says that it's easier to tell the truth.

As per usual, she's right. Marinette promises to herself to talk to Adrien when the coffee's gone completely.

vii.

"I was lying to you."

Marinette decides to be upfront, delivering the statement along with his final cup of coffee.

"What do you mean?" His look is serious, and it's a complete change of pace from how he usually is. It makes her stomach so uncomfortable turns and her knees buckle together in fear.

She sighs. "I was… lying about the coffee." She says it quickly and in one breath, and Adrien's eyebrows knitting together makes it clear that he understood none of it.

"About what?"

"The coffee!" Marinette basically shouts, then pulls him aside as they notice the customers pile in line. Another co-worker takes over, and throws them a concerned glance before focusing on their task completely.

Marinette brings Adrien to one of the empty storerooms, and when they settle, he speaks up. "What do you mean you lied about the coffee?"

"We never sold Kopi Luwak," she explains.

"No," Adrien argues. "That's definitely what I've been drinking, though?"

"Yeah," she replies, shaking her head. "But the cafe doesn't officially sell it. I was taking from my savings to buy the coffee abroad and make it for you." As Marinette says the words aloud, she begins to realise how outlandish the very idea was.

"What did you do that for?"

Marinette frowns to herself. "I guess I just didn't want to disappoint you… or something." Her cheeks redden, and she looks down. "I wanted to see you again too… I didn't want our only meeting to be that one time."

Marinette thinks she hears a hint of laughter, but it disappears so quickly she may have imagined it. "You know," Adrien begins. "If you wanted to see me again, you could've just asked." He smiles at her, but it looks almost sheepish. Adrien scratches his head. "I mean, I was really only ordering coffee so I could keep meeting up with you."

What?

Marinette fumbles over her words. "You… me… meet up?"

Adrien laughs, full-blown now. "Yeah. I thought you were cute. And when I got to know you better, it was just… I couldn't stop myself. I might have caffeine overdose, but I think it's worth it." He turns toward her and wraps his arms around her waist, and Marinette finds a laugh escaping her throat.

"Been having trouble sleeping, then?”

"Haven't slept since the day I met you," he replies. "But I don't mind, because you're a dream come true."

Marinette rolls her eyes at how silly it all is. "That's corny."

"I like to think of myself as a corny jokes and puns connoisseur," he explains teasingly. "Maybe you'll let me tell you more over dinner?"

"How forward of you," Marinette laughs, but nods all the same. "I just have to warn you, I'm broke from all the coffee beans you made me buy."

He smiles. "Then I guess I'll have to pay for all our dates from now on?"

Marinette hums, then grins lightly. "I wouldn't be against that."

"Then it's a deal." He replies, suddenly looking at her directly. "Want to seal it?"

She has a vague idea of where he's going with this, and the smile practically blooms on her face. "Yes."

It doesn't take anymore waiting until he kisses her.

(And she's glad to say that he tastes like roasted coffee beans and a warm fire; not at all like cats or feces or anything of that sort.)

#auyeah2020 #mlauyeahaugust2020 #auyeahaugust #auyeah august #adrinette #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #ml #miraculous ladybug #milk writes #ml fic #ml fanfic

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