the setting lilac moon

yún (formerly cheshire @/yukinohiko)

enfj • she/her • your friendly neighborhood russian blue ᓚ₍ ^. .^₎

masterlist

I am a chronic writer of all things I see around me, whether that comes across in fully crafted stories, poems, fragmented excerpts, or a babbled line between a drink or ten

it’s a selfship in a sense, mostly following yún in the world of pokémon, ft. her fav characters

oh no 😭 mb gang

you wouldn’t say you’ve been coddled working within research and in-house intelligence. but the day you’re thrown into frontline combat and in a cavern of mercenaries, you certainly think you’re underprepared.

“look alive, soldier!” one of your comrades calls.

you think it’s a brave and logical command. but when he himself is struck down by a blow from a hulking mercenary, you bite on your own tongue. you taste blood and stare around the stone walls. against the flickering firelight, bodies of your comrades drop one by one.

until there’s only you left.

“just the mouse,” the treasure hoarder says, looming over you. “pretty far from your den, aren’t you?”

you feel your heartbeat fluttering in your chest. panic making you freeze, and you feel less like a lion and more like prey, indeed. you’re no soldier, no warrior.

just then the light blows out. no, not blown out. you catch a glimpse before the dark engulfs the cave; shards of ice crystallizing the flame until there’s no light left at all.

“tormenting the mouse? now, that’s hardly fair.”

you whirl around, startled by the new voice. but it isn’t unfamiliar. you had only met with vice-captain lohen once, at the very beginning of the mission when he split the tactical units. you knew where he was meant to be, and it wasn’t the cave here. has something gone wrong? has something gone right?

there’s the sound of a polearm blistering through the dark, and sounds of ice crackling. white shines around you. rushing around the walls. but it’s drowned by the sounds of panic, the hoarders yelping and darting around, and collapsing one by one.

you squeeze your eyes shut once, trying to catch your breath and steel your nerves. to harden yourself. when you open them though, there’s something far more chilling than cryo walls alone staring back at you.

“ah,” lohen breathes, scarlet eyes sliding up to you, as red as the blood stains on his cheek, his jaw. “you made it. I’d half worried I’d cut you down, too.”

you stare down at the bodies, born friend and foe.

“would you have? really mistaken me, I mean.”

lohen straightens, smiling too wide, teeth too white. he wipes his bloody cheek with his sleeve, and stains his clothing with the victory.

“perhaps,” he says. “or perhaps not. that’s the thrill of the game, isn’t it?”

you swallow, paralyzed to the spot, frozen like perhaps his ice really has caught you. “no,” you whisper. “it doesn’t sound very thrilling to me.”

lohen’s eyes soften even as his smile sharpens. he approaches you and you retreat finally, unsticking your feet, but it’s only to find your back cornered against a frosty cave wall. he brushes back a stray strand of hair, normally so carefully tied back, and marks your face with the stains of his brutality.

sae blinks up at you serenely, sea green eyes drowsy and unreadable. “comfortable?”

“very much so.” your arms wind around his neck like the rose vines outside your villa walls. “and you?”

“hmm?”

his eyes trace you. the shape of your nose and the curve of your mouth. you watch them as an easy warmth settles in you like the waves of the coast.

“are you comfortable,” you say, echoing his own question back to him. knowingly, pleasantly smug.

his fingers pinch at your thighs for the cheek, and you protest, raising your weight like a bristling cat. sae hushes you as though he hadn’t been the one to prickle you, pressing a dreamy kiss to your temples.

“what are you up to?”

“nothing. lemonade? you look tired,” you offer, spying the belt around his hips, lopsided from the weight of tools.

had it been a loose floorboard he’d nailed down? or was it the porch door, that had swung shaken at night and spooked you with the sound of the wind last evening?

it hardly matters, you think. he absently unbuttons his collar, the tan flushing him further and further.

sae clicks his tongue. “what are hiding, then?”

you flutter, both offended and incited by that sound. as though you’re one of the stray ranch cats!

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“no?”

“no,” you insist, clenching the hat tighter.

sae purses his lips, then steps forward. you step backward. it’s a dance you’re both all too familiar with at this point, and when he has you against the kitchen table, against the vase of tulips he’d cut for you this morning, you look up all too warm and flushed.

“liar,” sae murmurs, knowing, unsurprised.

“how rude. don’t you trust me?”

his hands land on the table on either side of you. he smells of grass and sunshine, lips as rosy pink as his hair, and you lean forward as enticed as a butterfly to his wildflowers.