Work Text:
The most recent Magic Knight Captain's meeting left Yami Sukehiro feeling like everything was going to absolute shit, and he couldn't do anything about it.
He lay awake that night, his mind reeling, his body restless. Why he even bothered attempting to sleep at this point was beyond him. He sat, propped up against his headboard with a cigarette hanging from his lips. Asta was missing, presumed dead by most, Julius was no longer the mentor he had respected and admired, devils were running amok throughout the Clover Kingdom, and Charlotte Roselei still refused to make eye contact. Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte.
Of all the fucked up things going on in the world, Yami wondered how his mind could possibly make room for the beautiful blonde Captain. Before Finral had made him wise to her confession in the Spade Kingdom, he had thought of her occasionally, in the same way he thought of many fellow captains. He respected her abilities as a fighter and admired her leadership of the Blue Roses. He may have admired certain other things about her—he was a man, after all, and she was one of the most beautiful women in the Kingdom. Yami had always found that she was even more beautiful when he teased her and she reddened in anger, brows knit together and lips pursed. Since her confession over a year ago she was never around him long enough for teasing banter. She no longer stood next to him at meetings, or sat across from him at dinners, or stayed in his presence longer than was absolutely necessary. It dawned on him that he missed her.
Before he knew of her confession Yami truly believed she hated him most of the time and barely tolerated him for the rest. He never allowed himself to think that a woman like her would ever—could ever—love a man like him. Yami was not a man who lacked confidence in any way, but they were so different, literally from different worlds. He was a crass foreigner with too many vices and she was a refined noblewoman who had men eating out of the palm of her hand. He replayed their interactions over the years and mentally kicked himself for misinterpreting her Ki for so long. Her Ki was always unlike anyone else's and he always assumed she hated him more than anyone else ever had. He hadn't recognized love. It was baffling, he had never been so wrong about something before.
Determined not to spend another night tossing and turning, Yami stood from the bed and yelled for Finral. "Get yer ass in here, I need my wheels!"
Finral appeared in his room a few moments later, still half asleep and completely disheveled. "Captain, did you really need to wake me and half the house just to take a dump?"
"Not that it's any of yer business, but I have other plans tonight."
That piqued Finral's interest. He knew the Captain's movements and behaviour quite well, and it was unlike him to leave the base in the middle of the night. "Where to?"
"The Blue Roses base." Ah, that made perfect sense. The Captain had been restless lately and grumpier than usual. Without a word—Finral sensed now was surely not the time to annoy his Captain—he opened a portal and smiled encouragingly. Yami put out his cigarette and took a deep breath before walking through it.
______________________________________________
Charlotte Roselei always preferred her rose garden at night. Whenever she had trouble sleeping—which was becoming more frequent as of late—it was the only place where she could calm her mind. There was something therapeutic about tending to her plants in the moonlight without the use of any magic. She never expected to hear heavy footsteps coming up through the courtyard. She knew who it was without turning to look. She always knew.
She wasn't prepared, though. She hadn't been alone with him in over a year, too mortified to be in his presence without others around. She stiffened as his footsteps approached, her heart rate skyrocketing, the heat of a blush starting to creep up her neck. Her palms were so sweaty, hands so shaky that her small pruning shears slipped out of her grasp.
"Charlotte." She stiffened.
Without turning around, she rose to her feet. "I, uh, need to, um.... go..." she needed an excuse, she needed to get out of there before she embarrassed herself again.
She started to run as she often did in his presence, but his next words stopped her in her tracks. "I never thought you were a coward, Charlotte Roselei." She whipped around to see him casually leaning against a tree, appearing as unbothered as always.
Her embarrassment dissipated almost instantly at the accusation, replaced by anger and indignation. She was a powerful and admired Magic Knight Captain who had been into battle many times and risked her life for her kingdom and comrades. She was not a coward and would never let a man, not even this one, think so and get away with it. "You dare come to my base uninvited and then have the audacity to insult me?!"
"If it means yer gonna stay for an actual conversation with me, sure." Ah, he had her there. The man knew her well enough to guess that her pride would outweigh her embarrassment.
"Fine!" She threw her hands in the air, exasperated and annoyed at the man she begrudgingly found so handsome. "What do you want to talk about?"
He pushed himself off the tree. "I think you have something to tell me."
She stiffened again and bit the inside of her cheek. She had wondered if he was here to discuss her confession, but of course her instinct was always to fight this man instead of being honest with him. It was so ingrained in her after over a decade that she hardly knew any other way to act around him. The only reason she had been able to confess before was because she thought he would die and she would never see him again. She had acted irrationally in the heat of the moment but would never allow herself to say those things otherwise. Unfortunately, under the current circumstances her knee-jerk reaction to him remained the same. It was easier to be cold. "You're an insolent brute."
"Yup, you've told me that before." He took a step toward her. She felt his gaze bore into her but she couldn't bring herself to look at him.
"You're an insensitive beast." She stood her ground.
"Sure, I've heard that one too." Another step.
Her heart was racing again as she looked around for the closest escape route. Her fight or flight instinct was acting up, and with him the urge was always flight. This time, however, she stopped herself, remembering his words. I never thought you were a coward, Charlotte Roselei. She would prove him wrong, right here, right now, once and for all.
She released the breath she had been holding and gathered all her courage. "Last year, when you lay dying in front of me, I told you that I love you." She had done it, she had said the words. An invisible weight lifted from her shoulders. She still couldn't meet his gaze, but the words that had evaded her for so long had finally made their way out.
"Did ya mean it?" Whether he thought that she needed space, or because his confidence was faltering, he no longer walked towards her. He had stopped a few feet away, close enough that he could read her expressions in the moonlight, but just out of reach.
Finally, after more than a year of avoiding eye contact, she looked at him, truly looked at him. The air of determination and defiance he always wore was of course present, but he also looked tired. Where he was as ruggedly handsome as ever, she itched to smooth the furrow between his brows and feel his stubble against her skin. He was everything that she had ever loved, strong and confident, capable and good, an insolent brute who cared for others more deeply than he let on. Here he was, standing before her, asking Charlotte to bare her soul, and how could she not? She did love him, after all. Maybe, just this once, she could let her love for him outweigh the fear she felt in confessing.
"I did mean it." Her voice came out more confident than she could have hoped. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought to herself. "I meant it then, I mean it now."
His expression was unchanged at her admission. "How long?"
"Since you rescued me from my curse." Any other day she would be embarrassed to admit that she had pined for him for so long, but she was past that point today. His expression fell at her words, though, and she started to second guess herself. The urge to run was creeping in again. Why does he look disappointed, she wondered.
Yami sighed and ran his hands through his hair before dropping them to his sides. She saw them twitch and she knew he wanted a cigarette. She could always tell. "So ya love me because I broke yer curse, because I saved ya? Well I hate to break it to ya, Spiny Prickly Queen, but I'm no knight in shining armour."
Now it was her turn to take a step toward him. She finally had the courage to speak her mind and she would not let herself be misunderstood. "Yami, no," she took a deep breath to steady herself while she organized her thoughts. "The curse broke because I fell in love with you, because you stole my heart. I lived my whole life until that moment thinking that I had to be strong enough to do everything alone, and that I had so much to prove. It was a lonely way to live until you reminded me it didn't have to be that way and that I could rely on other people. That I could rely on you." She took another step forward, any closer now and they would be touching. Her voice was getting louder as it filled with emotion, she was almost yelling at him now. "I know you're not a Knight in shining amour. You're a Magic Knight in a tattered cloak. You're crass, you annoy me, and you smoke too much, but you're a good man!" She collected herself. "You're a good man," she repeated more softly this time, "and I have loved you for ten years knowing that."
Yami's expression morphed from stunned to annoyed. He sighed deeply and frowned, muttering under his breath, "ten fucking years..." Charlotte, confused by his reaction, simply waited. It surprised her when he moved.
Yami Sukehiro was not a tender man—at least he would never describe himself as such—but in that moment he gathered all the tenderness he could muster to step forward and place his hands on Charlotte's cheeks. She was so small and seemed so delicate, even though he knew she was anything but. Her skin was softer than he had ever imagined and he needed to know if her lips would feel the same. He feathered his thumb across them, and it thrilled him to know what they felt like. Her breath hitched and a blush crept across her neck and face. Oh, how he loved her blush. How he missed it. Unable to stop himself, he leaned forward. Though they were standing a hair's breadth apart there was still had quite a distance to her lips. He didn't break eye contact and gave her plenty of time to back away or to stop him, but just before he placed his lips on hers she rushed forward and closed the distance herself.
Yami had known many pleasures in life—the rush of winning a battle or a game of cards, the taste of cigarettes or Charmy's cooking—but kissing Charlotte was the greatest thing he had ever experienced. She was everything that he was not. Where he was dark and hard she was light and soft. She smelled like roses and tasted like honey. He was hesitant to scare her, to have her run away as she had done so many times, so he kissed her with gentle pressure, savouring the feeling of her lips against his, letting her take control. Her arms wound around his shoulders, somehow pulling him closer to deepen their kiss, and when she tangled her hands in his hair and moaned ever so slightly the dam broke. While one hand still cradled her face the other lowered to her waist and pulled her against him. He could feel every part of her and he couldn't get enough.
He would have been happy to kiss her forever, but a tremor in the ground beneath them shook them out of the kiss. Looking around in confusion they saw Charlotte's briars growing and surrounding them. Embarrassed that she had lost control of her magic during the kiss she buried her face in her hands, but Yami gently tipped up her chin and nodded to the rose closest to her. The rose was red. All of the magical roses she had created were red. "What happened to my blue ones?"
Yami smiled at her. It was the kind of smile she rarely saw him sporting, reserved only for moments of fondness with his squad when he thought no one else was looking. It warmed her heart to see him use that smile with her. "I've always wondered about the magic behind the curse—and you would never give me straight answers about it, which didn't help." He gave her a pointed look and her blush deepened. "When Charla possessed you I noticed that even though she was using your powers her roses were red and she was more powerful. I wondered if we hadn't fully broken the curse." She nodded, following his logic. "Tonight is the first time I'm hearing of love breaking the curse, but it explains a lot.”
Charlotte cocked her head to the side, brow furrowed. "Now you've lost me."
"Tch, come on you silly woman, ya really don't know?"
Her confusion was replaced by annoyance, as it often was around this man. "You beast of a man—“
Yami interrupted her, "I broke part of the curse when I stole yer heart," he poked rather unromantically at her chest, "and you broke the final part tonight when you stole mine." She stared at him in shocked silence, mouth hanging open. "Or maybe," he added more gently after clearing his throat, "you've had my heart all along, and it was just the kiss that was missing." Tears welled in her eyes and she couldn't move to brush them off her cheeks as they spilled over.
Yami took in her expression, grimaced, and rubbed the back of his neck while looking away. "Sorry Prickly Queen, believe it or not I actually didn't mean to upset ya this time. I guess I always say the wrong thing." He started to move away from her, but she leaped into his arms. A smaller and less sturdy man would have been tackled to the ground, but Yami caught her with ease as his arms wrapped around her small waist.
She held him tightly and whispered in his ear, "oh you dimwitted fool, you have never said anything more lovely." He tightened his hold around her and chuckled awkwardly. He really wasn't good with all this mushy feelings stuff. "You really were right, all those years ago, when you told me that I could rely on others. I'm glad I've relied on you."
He pulled away slightly so that he could look her in the eyes again. A smirk was forming at the edge of his mouth as he teased her, "what was that? Did the great Charlotte Roselei admit that I was right about something? I never thought I would see the day."
He glanced at the elegant curve of her neck and she threw her head back in a full belly laugh. He wanted to kiss the exposed skin, so he did. The kiss was chaste, born not out of lust, but of a need to be closer. She let out a surprised squeak, but her hands migrated to his hair and held him close to her. He scooped her up by the thighs, wrapping her legs around his waist before sinking to the ground. They sat chest to chest, wrapped around each other. She could hear his steady heartbeat beneath her ear and his chin rested against her hair.
"Why now?" she asked hesitantly.
"Honestly?" He felt her nod against him and squeeze in encouragement. "I really didn't hear yer confession back in the Spade Kingdom, and all these years I really thought that ya barely tolerated me. I just liked getting any reaction from you, even if it was an annoyed glare. When we got back from Spade you wouldn't even look at me anymore. Finral was shocked that I hadn't heard the confession—I was shocked that everyone else had. I wasn't sure if you just said it in the heat of the moment or if you still meant it. I always thought I was good at interpreting Ki and reading people, but apparently I had been wrong the whole time when it came to you. It really fucked with my head."
"So what changed tonight?"
"I haven't been sleeping well." That explained the dark circles under his eyes that she had noticed earlier. "There's so much fucked up shit going on right now. I'm man enough to admit that I miss the kid, and I miss Julius, and I was missing you too. How stupid is that, to miss someone right in front of you? But of all the fucked up things going on in the world, I just wanted to fix one of them tonight. It was time to surpass my limits."
"Who knew the surly Black Bulls Captain was such a romantic."
"Hey now, watch it." He gently pulled at her braid to tilt her head to meet his gaze. "I have a reputation to uphold." She laughed again and he couldn't help but noticed that he had never heard her laugh so many times in one day. He knew her laugh would become another one of his vices. He would crave it at all hours of the day, he would yearn for it when he was stressed, and he would travel the length of the kingdom to get his fix. "And what about you, are you still going to run away from me when I tease you?"
"Why don't you kiss me and find out?" She blushed when she said it, but was feeling uncharacteristically bold.
A roguish smile graced his face as he leaned in. "Oh yer gonna get it now." She didn't have time to roll her eyes before he kissed her with unbridled passion. They spent the rest of the evening wrapped in each other surrounded by red roses and moonlight.
Of all the things that were wrong in the world, the two of them together were absolutely right.