RELATIONSHIPS: Lunya/G'raha
ERA: The 7th Astral Era - Crystal Tower quests & Post-Shadowbringers
WARNINGS: None
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 09/17/19
DETAILS: Written for ffxivwrite2019. Prompt: "jitter".
"I think I'm in love with you," G'raha blurts out over lunch and he immediately thinks about writing a letter back to Krile to ask her if Eorzean stews are known to have ‘stupidening' properties.
The scholar in him, carrying years of Sharlayan rationality and intellect, asks him why in Thaliak's name did he do that? What's wrong with him? Did his mother, bless her soul, birth him in a barn? If he had to impulsively drop a confession on his best friend like this then why couldn't he have done it somewhere nice instead of the floor of their tent in the middle of a crystal wasteland?
Lunya stares at him, mouth agape and spoon hovering over her stew until it falls from between her fingers and broth and chunks of popotoes splosh over the edge. With a slowness that makes him both terrified and thrilled, her face visibly warms, cheeks staining dark with an adorable blush as she carefully puts down her bowl.
"Um." She covers her face with her hands, peeking at him through the gaps between her fingers. G'raha's heart is fit to burst with adoration—or an anxiety attack, whichever comes first. "Raha, I—"
The flap of the tent swings open and the historian nearly lunges for Rammbroes' middle to throw him into Lake Silvertear. The Roegadyn clearly has no idea just what he walked into, because with no delay he announces they finally have a breakthrough for getting into the World of Darkness. As much as he wishes he didn't have to, G'raha leaps up to follow him back down the path to the Tower, all thoughts and consequences of his sudden confession set aside until after they get Doga and Unei back.
Lunya stays in the tent for another forty ticks of a chronometer after they're gone, trying to cool down her face and steady her heart before the Sons can start to wonder what's got the Warrior of Light so flustered.
(She never gets a chance, in the end, to tell him that she might be in love with him too before he leaves her for what they both think is forever.)
"I think I'm in love with you," G'raha blurts out over lunch.
The part of him that is the Exarch, leader of the Crystarium and steward of the Crystal Tower, rebukes him. He's a man who's lived through three hundred turns of the sun and still he's like this? He could have at least gotten her flowers—though there wasn't really a shortage of them around the Inviolate Witness.
"You think?" Lunya asks dryly, her head on his lap. The remnants of their picnic lie around them, waiting to be packed up for their return home, but neither of them are in any rush. "Haven't you had enough time to think about it?"
G'raha grins at her, feeling 24 summers old once more when he notices that though she has grown and changed too, she still blushes at the second confession. "More than a little," he admits, brushing her hair from her face. "I can say wholeheartedly now that I'm very much in love with you."
He leans down to bump his nose to hers, relishing in the way she laughs, and this time there's no dimension crossings or eternal naps to stop her from telling him she's very much in love with him too.
