#landeo

Rowing the Rarepair Rowboat: Landon Kirby x Cleo Sowande (Legacies)

Requested by @georgcfan

"Wait, wait, wait." Landon is sitting up much straighter now, leaning back against the stupidly neon wall of the ice cream parlour. “So, you're literally Clio? The muse of history?"

Cleo smiles and ducks her head, but she nods to answer his question. He gives this little... disbelieving huff of laughter and shakes his head while staring at her with his jaw practically on the floor.

"I did not know I was so impressive," she teases, but it’s an admission too. "No one else has reacted with quite so much excitement to finding out my true identity."

She knows that part of that is because she lied to them up until the point of revelation. But still, to them and to her, a muse is nothing more interesting than their average witch.

But to Landon, it seems, she may as well have told him she's some kind of unicorn here to grant him three wishes. She always hoped she could meet one to find out if the wish thing was true; it was a very popular theory among her village.

"I'm sorry," Landon says, not at all apologetically and grinning, "it's just that I've read so much about the muses — about you, I guess! I mean, reading about you in that old library book I had was what made me want to learn how to play guitar!"

"Hm, you could say I inspired you?"

Cleo looks up at him. Landon breathes out another soft chuckle at the joke. He stares — No. No, it's softer, what he's doing. Everything about him is so soft despite the sharpness she can feel lurking beneath his surface.

He gazes at her with this look on his face. Maybe it is simply his expression as she's seen it so often now.

"Yeah," Landon finally says, his voice barely above a murmur. He swallows. "Yeah, you could say that."

Cleo knows that it would be wise for her to look away. Even wiser would be to stop this before she hurts herself, and potentially Hope. Because no matter what Malivore would have them believe, they are getting out of here, and when they do...

Well, everything will return to as it was before.

She can't quite force herself to stop smiling, but she does manage to take a deep breath and turn her head enough to break the spell over them.

"Well, perhaps I could also inspire you to make us some ice cream?" she jokes, raising her eyebrows at him.

Landon grins and climbs to his feet.

He holds out a hand to her, which she accepts with only internal hesitation as her heart flutters, and he says, "Challenge accepted. Ice cream and smoothies are pretty similar, right? How hard can it be?"