#lukeasch

It was a good system: coffee shop in the mornings, some kind of outing normally on the weekend, and quick witty texts in between - a routine that Luke had easily fallen into. He’d had no reason to expect his phone to start ringing so late on a weekday night; he would have missed it entirely had he not decided to zone out of his reading when he did. The upbeat pop-punk ringtone he heard brought a smile to his face, and he reached over to snatch his phone from his nightstand.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Studying. Why?”

“Do you want to go get some ice cream?”

“Right now? It’s…” He took his phone away from his ear, checking the time that lit up on his screen as he did, “...almost midnight, Asch.”

“Remember that place we went after your Calculus exam? The drive-thru is open all night, I checked.”

“I meant we both have class tomorrow morning.”

“Like you’ll be going to bed at a reasonable hour anyway.”

Luke couldn’t help but smile at the quip. Asch certainly wasn’t wrong - he had already resigned himself to a night filled with studying, which he’d started a couple of hours ago. He’d planned on finishing the lesson he was reading before calling it a night, but surely he deserved a bit of a break. Asch was too studious to stay out ridiculously late on a school night anyway. And it had been a whole day since he’d last seen his boyfriend.

“Okay, fine, I guess you’ve convinced me.”

He could practically hear Asch’s eyeroll. “You didn’t make it very difficult.”

“You’re more persuasive than you seem.” The answering scoff across the line made Luke beam cheekily. “You said the place from after my calc exam? I think I remember where that is. If you haven’t left yet I can come pick you up.”

“I’m outside your apartment.”

Luke blinked. “What?”

“Hurry up.” The line went suspiciously silent, and when Luke checked his phone again, he found his lock screen staring back at him. It was his turn to scoff as he grabbed his jacket from his desk chair, mindlessly stuffing his hand into the pocket to make sure his wallet was still nestled inside.

The rest of the apartment was dark and quiet: signs that Guy had already gone to bed. Luke tiptoed his way over to the door, glancing over his shoulder to watch for the crack of light beneath his best friend’s door as he tugged on his shoes. The darkness stayed constant, and Luke slipped out into the hallway.

Asch’s car was waiting for him right outside his apartment building. Luke could see his boyfriend’s face glowing a soft blue from the light of the radio screen inside.

“What if I had said no?” he asked as he climbed up into the passenger’s seat. Asch smirked over at him as he shifted the car back into drive.

“I’m persuasive, remember?”

Luke rolled his eyes and leaned back to enjoy the ride.

And just like every other date before, it went great.

Asch paid for both of them, ignoring Luke’s petulant squawks of protest - “You paid for our coffee this morning, let me pay this time!” - and making a point to give him a deadpanned look as he passed his credit card through the window. Luke pouted back at him, but he could only stay annoyed for so long when a double scoop cookie dough waffle cone was placed into his hand. He still made a point to mumble one last complaint before tucking in.

It was quiet - most moments with Asch were. But it was a good quiet, sitting in the cozy pine-scented warmth of Asch’s car, parked in the dimly lit lot of the ice cream shop with the soft smacking sounds from their lips passing between them. It was the kind of quiet that made Luke feel lazy, that made him lounge back in his seat and roll his head against his shoulder. He watched Asch in the driver’s seat, nursing his own chocolate cone as he gazed out the window at the sparse traffic on the road. The half-baked glow from the artificial lights above them bounced off of his hair and cast shadows across his face; Luke stared at the shadow of his lashes dancing across his cheek and wondered for the hundredth time how on Auldrant his boyfriend could possibly be real.

His boyfriend. No, he hadn’t gotten sick of that yet.

“You’re pretty smiley for someone who almost wanted to stay in bed.”

Luke blinked. He hadn’t noticed that he’d started smiling so widely or that Asch’s head had turned, too busy mentally waxing poetic about every feature present on his boyfriend’s face.

“I was studying,” he corrected. “And it’s not like you gave me much time to prepare.” Luke propped his elbow up on the console between their seats as his smile turned into a cheeky beam. “Not that I mind. Spontaneity is pretty romantic.”

“Drip ice cream on my seats and you’re walking back to your apartment.” Luke was suddenly aware of something cold and sticky beginning to slide between his fingers. He muttered a curse and brought his cone to his face, frantically trying to lick up the melting treat before it could drip any further. Asch’s eyeroll was as loud and clear now as it had been over the phone. “Napkins in the glove box.”

Luke scrambled into motion, managing to clean up and polish off the last of his cone before any ice cream drips could fall to the seats. Asch probably wouldn’t make good on his threat, but it was too late at night to be dealing with his wrath anyway. He made a show of passing him a few napkins too, and even though the other had made significantly less of a mess, Luke had spent too much time mindfully mapping out the details of his boyfriend’s face not to notice the smudge of chocolate clinging to the corner of his mouth.

He was so mesmerized by the way the dark brown of the chocolate stood out against the smooth paleness of Asch’s cheek that he didn’t even realize he’d started speaking until he stopped. Luke quickly flicked his gaze back up, but not quick enough to beat Asch’s raised eyebrow.

“S-Sorry,” he stammered, because this was the second time tonight that Asch had caught him staring and normally he was stealthier than this. “You just, ah, you’ve got a little…” Luke thumbed at the corner of his own mouth. Asch’s hand went up and mirrored the action, catching the chocolate smear along the pad of his thumb.

“Thanks.” He stuck his tongue out, carelessly licking the remnant away, and while it truly wasn’t the most attractive of moments even for his boyfriend, Luke’s heart still did a frantic flip in his chest at the sight. “Ready to head back?”

“Yeah.” Luke sat back in his seat, pointedly looking out his window and intently staring at the streetlights along the road. As he heard the gear shift creak beside him and felt the car begin to roll out of its parking spot, he reached over to crank up the volume of the radio. The music was a welcome distraction - not to mention a good excuse not to try and make conversation. It was set to a pop station that only ever played when Luke was in the car, and as the latest hit song sounded through the speakers, Luke tried to calm the sudden spike of anxiousness that filled his chest.

Too soon for Luke’s liking, they were pulling back up to his apartment complex. Luke glanced up, his gaze instinctively picking out the dark windows of the floor he and Guy had lived on for almost two years now. He saw Asch reach for the volume dial out of the corner of his eye and turned to look at him as the music softened. The quiet made the anxiety he’d just finished settling return with a jolt to his heart.

“Thanks for coming out with me. I know you were so dedicated to your studying.”

“Yeah, yeah, and what were you doing before you decided you wanted to drag me out at midnight for ice cream?”

Asch’s smile was enough of an answer, and definitely didn’t help the seizing in Luke’s chest at all. Neither did the way Asch reached over to bump his knuckles against his arm, his skin immediately fizzing with warmth at the touch.

“Goodnight, Luke.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Goodnight, Asch, had been what Luke had meant to say. He wasn’t exactly sure where that had gotten mixed up on the way from his brain to his lips, because those were two very, very, very different responses; his mind must have been working overtime to try and get him to have a heart attack, and he was well on his way there. Luke could feel the burn that spread across his cheeks, down his neck, to the very tips of his ears. He hoped that the beams of the streetlights awkwardly bouncing around them was enough cover for Asch not to be able to tell.

It must have been - Luke had faith that if Asch could've seen how red he was, he wouldn't make him wait so long for an answer. The silence of the car was suffocating, the air getting stuck in his throat. Or was that his heart, having jumped there from his chest, frantically beating and begging for Luke to just go, just get out and go inside and holy shit why did I say that, why the hell did I say that-?!

“Can I kiss you back?”

Luke blinked. “Um.” He cleared his throat, trying to shove his heart back into its proper place. “Um, y-yeah. Yes. You can.”

“Then yes, you can.”

Luke had kissed girls before, but it had never felt meaningful. His first kiss - way back when in middle school, with some girl he hardly remembered now - had been an agreement. A hey, you haven't kissed anyone and I haven't kissed anyone so let's kiss each other sort of deal. He'd politely kissed his prom date in high school, but mostly just for show - Tear was his best girl friend anyway, so that was even more reason for it not to count. And it wasn't like Luke had spent a whole lot of time trying to make meaningful romantic connections with people. He'd never really kissed someone.

He'd never kissed a guy.

But as he shifted himself in his seat to better face Asch, and leaned over the console between them to get to him, he knew this was exactly what he wanted, and this - even with the anxiousness butting in the way - was what it was supposed to feel like.

Even so, Luke couldn't help but hesitate after that first brush of their lips. Just that tiny bit of contact set all his nerve-endings alight, and he shuddered at the feeling that shot through him and made his toes curl. Lorelei, he couldn't do this, what kind of idiot can't even kiss someone without acting like a lovesick girl what the hell is wrong with you-

A hand cupped the back of his neck, the rosy warmth of Asch’s fingertips snapping Luke free of his rampant thoughts. It was awkward, making eye contact with his boyfriend when they were in such close proximity to each other, and if his face got any hotter he was sure his head would explode. But the touch was anchoring, a gentle weight that settled at the back of Luke’s mind, right at the eye of the storm swirling through him.

Asch guided him back in with a softness that Luke had never seen him show before. His boyfriend was naturally prickly, rough around still-smooth edges, safe enough to bump into but not without the chance of getting stung. Now, though, there was only tenderness to his touch, warmth to the press of his lips. Luke reached out to grip at the collar of his shirt and was not cut once.

Asch had never kissed a guy either.

When Asch pulled away that time, Luke didn’t let him get very far, drawing him back in with a gentle yet insistent tug to his collar that Asch seemed more than happy to oblige.

It was nice, sitting in the warmth 0f Asch’s car, exchanging slow exploratory kisses in the front seat, getting a feel for what this new development between them felt like. This was the closest the two of them had ever been before, and there was still something separating them - physically, that was, with the center console pressed uncomfortably against the swell of Luke’s belly. Luke found himself entertaining thoughts of what kissing Asch would be like without that niggling sense of pain in the background. With Asch’s arms around him, with his own body pressed against his chest instead of just his hand, with no lurking hesitation and no anxiety peeping out from behind their every move.

Luke didn’t want there to be anything between them anymore.

He wasn’t sure how long they sat there together, but at some point Luke drew back to take a proper breath, and Asch didn’t try and coax him back in. His boyfriend’s hand dropped from his neck to his arm, warm fingers curling around his elbow as their eyes met again. He still felt the burning beneath his cheeks, but Luke could see the question laced in Asch’s knowing gaze and smiled in response.

“I should’ve let you kiss me that night in the apartment,” he said softly. Asch’s mouth quirked at that, and he gave his elbow a light squeeze.

“Worth the wait?”

“Definitely.” Luke sat back properly in his seat, the pressure against his stomach having made its way to the forefront of his mind without the press of Asch’s lips to distract him. Asch’s hand slid down his forearm with the movement to settle loosely around his wrist. “Thank you. For waiting, I mean.”

“Don't thank me for that.”

Luke smiled shyly under the intensity of the other’s gaze, but made no effort to try and pull the words from between them. He was thankful, even if Asch didn't understand why. Thankful for the patience Asch liked to pretend he didn't have, thankful for the considered intent behind every touch, thankful for being able to have him. Asch was the first person to stay in a long while. Luke would spend as long as he had with him trying to thank him for that.

“I should get back upstairs,” Luke mumbled, flicking his gaze over at the green numbers flashing on the radio before going right back to his boyfriend’s green eyes. “It’s pretty late.”

“And you still have studying to do.”

Luke recognized the tease for what it was, but also knew that his sociology textbook would lay forgotten on the edge of his bed until the morning; he was going to spend the next hour lying awake beneath his blankets, replaying the night over and over and over again in his head until he was sure he would never forget it.

“Yeah, because my annoying boyfriend just had to drag me out at midnight on a school night.”

“You got a free ride and free ice cream. Shut up and go finish your homework.”

Luke laughed, tugging his hand free and reaching for the door handle. “Text me when you're home.”

Asch hummed a confirmation, and Luke hesitated.

“Um… Can I…?” He let the question trail off as he saw Asch's eyebrow raise up with it, and offered him a sheepish smile.

Just another thing to get used to, he thought to himself, as he leaned back over to give his boyfriend another goodnight kiss.

Later, as Luke lay in the quiet of his room, staring up at his ceiling with thoughts of the night in his head, he felt his phone vibrate where it rested on his chest. The screen flashed to life when he picked it up, the name he was always waiting to see staring back at him.

Text Message: Asch Received: 1:15 A.M

You don't have to ask. Just so you know.

Luke smiled to himself. Asch knew as well as he did that there was really no other way this could have gone - that Asch wouldn't be the one to try and take that next step, not because he didn't want to, but because he knew Luke would need to. That night in the apartment had plagued Luke’s mind ever since the first date. It was something Luke needed to get over: not letting Asch in when he should have, when he wanted to. Because he'd been scared. He was still scared, as much as he wished he wasn't.

But Asch knew that. Somehow. Luke still wasn't sure how Asch had learned so many of his tells in just a few months - it had taken Guy a solid few years of being around him almost every day to be able to read him like a book the way he could, and yet Asch already seemed to be at the stage of knowing what Luke needed before he knew it himself.

Luke didn't know what that meant, but he did know better than to try thanking Asch again. His boyfriend wasn't quite there yet, but that was okay. Maybe someday he would be. For now, Luke was pretty sure he knew what the next best response would be, and it would mean the same thing.

Text Message: Asch Sent: 1:17 A.M

He wandered through the room, past the empty lounge and abandoned front desk. His feet took him down the hallway he found in the back, where patrons normally weren’t meant to go, and he found himself standing in the threshold of the inn’s large kitchen. The smell of fresh gingerbread filled the air, though Asch couldn’t see any of it anywhere. In fact, he didn’t see any kind of food anywhere – the steel tables and polished countertops were all just as empty as the other room.

Luke was standing at one of the counters towards the back. He turned at the sound of Asch’s boots hitting the tiled floor and greeted him with a smile. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Didn’t expect to be here. I actually wanted to sleep tonight.” Asch walked forward, finally managing to get a view of the counter. It was the only section of the large kitchen that looked alive. There was a mixing bowl on its surface, with plenty of spoons, spatulas, and whisks surrounding it. Cans of ingredients and bottles of spices were lined up in a row, and while some of them looked the way Asch had always seen them, most of them didn’t; they were nameless, with blank white labels. “What are you doing?”

“Baking.” A frowned crossed Luke’s face, and he looked back at his setup. “Well, trying to, anyway. I wanted to practice here, but I guess I didn’t think about how exactly I was supposed to do that.”

Asch wanted to ask why Luke had thought practicing here of all places – a place where everything was based on his own mind and not a single bit of it was real – was a good idea, when whatever result he ended up getting wouldn’t end up mattering. But instead, he moved to stand at the counter beside his replica, and asked, “What are you trying to bake?”

“Gingerbread. Can’t you smell it?” The smile was back on Luke’s face as he glanced around the empty kitchen. “Every time we would come here, it always smelled like fresh gingerbread. We used to order loaves of it with dinner. It was so good.” He sighed softly. “But with everything going on since we came back, and being home all the time… Well, I haven’t exactly had time to fly out to Keterburg to get some. So I thought, how hard could it be to learn how to make it?”

“Pretty hard,” Asch supplied, picking up one of the nameless bottles. “Especially when you don’t have any clue of what you’re doing.”

“Well, yeah. You’d be right about that.” His replica scratched sheepishly at the back of his neck. “I know what it looks like, but I don’t know what everything you’re supposed to put in looks like. I don’t even know what all those things are supposed to be.” He waved his hands in front of him, indicating the counter filled with blank label ingredients. “I know how to make normal bread. But not gingerbread.”

“Gingerbread is a lot different from normal bread, that’s for sure.”

Luke perked up at that. He slid closer to Asch, bumping their shoulders together. “Do you know how to make gingerbread?”

Asch bumped him back, lightly shoving the other redhead away. “No. But I probably have a better chance of figuring out how than you do.”

“So you’ll help me?”

“I might as well. Doesn’t seem like I’ll be getting back to sleep tonight.” Plus, Asch was kind of enjoying the warm home-y-ness of the Keterburg kitchen and the tasty smell of baking gingerbread – not that he’d ever admit that out loud, and Luke still hadn’t gotten a good enough grasp on their connection to go looking for the information himself. But that had nothing on the way Luke glowed with excitement, and the feelings swirling through the kitchen only got stronger.

Asch was far from a baking connoisseur, and hardly knew any more than Luke did on what exactly went into making gingerbread. But he knew the basics: flour, sugar, eggs, water –  and gingerbread had to have ginger in it somewhere, right? The nameless ingredients around them changed as they needed, bound to a world bendable by Luke’s will. Knowing whatever result they got would end up being pointless, since that same world wasn’t real and Luke couldn’t very well practice anyway if he didn’t know what he was doing, Asch taught his replica whatever miscellaneous little tricks he could think of. He showed him how to separate eggs using the shell. He showed him how to grate the ginger without sending the grated pieces flying everywhere. He showed him how to fold ingredients into the bowl instead of just haphazardly mixing them in, and then showed him a better way to hold the spoon so it didn’t make his wrist ache as much when he mixed.

The batter they ended up with was thick and brown, like melted fudge. They’d definitely forgotten an ingredient or two. But Luke didn’t seem deterred – “Even if it’s not exactly right, we still made something, and that was what we were trying to do, right?” – and together, they scooped the fudgey mixture into a baking pan, Asch holding the bowl up while Luke scraped it all out. A fair amount of the batter ended up in fat blobs on the countertop. They wiped it up with their fingers and popped it in their mouths. It didn’t taste like anything.

Luke opened the oven, and Asch placed the pan inside and closed it. They left it there in the cold, not-preheated oven, and sat on the ground with their backs to it instead.

“In the morning, let’s go dig through the staff’s cookbooks and see if we can find an actual recipe. We can check how close we got and what we missed, and then make it for real.”

“Why? Just ask Guy or Tear. I’m sure one of them will know.” Asch looked over as he spoke. His replica had already begun to pout, shifting so he was up on his knees and facing Asch.

“I wanna make it with you.”

Asch stared at him for a minute, picking out the unnecessarily determined gleam in the other’s eyes. There was a fine coat of flour smeared across one of his cheeks and nose, and a spot of batter clung to the corner of his mouth.

He thought about how it wasn’t real: not the flour, or the batter, or the oven they sat against. He thought about how this was Luke’s world, where Luke was in control and Luke could do what he wanted and no one would know anything they did here but the two of them. He thought about how he found the way Luke’s bangs fell into his eyes kind of endearing and how in general he looked really soft, how it would probably feel like touching cotton to run a hand along his shoulder, or cheek, or neck.

And then Asch thought, Screw it.

In a world where everything was fake, Luke was real. His body thrummed with life as it pressed against Asch’s, as arms wrapped around his neck and knees tucked against his sides. Asch could feel a pulse behind his lips that skipped alongside the heart that beat in time with his own. And he was warm, warmer than the Keterburg Inn – with its gourmet food and jovial customers and twinkling fire – could ever hope to be.

This had to be home. It had to.

“Cinnamon.” They broke apart, mouths open and shoulders heaving and fingers tightening on each other. Asch looked up to where Luke was cradled in his lap – his replica’s cheeks were pink and his lips were wet and every fiber of Asch’s being hummed.

“What?”

“That’s what we forgot. There’s cinnamon in gingerbread, right?”

“Idiot.” Asch reached up and twisted his fingers into the collar of Luke’s shirt, pulling him closer. Luke came willingly, shifting so his legs wrapped around his original’s torso and their bodies were flush against one another. “Forget about the damn gingerbread.”

They kissed again, and the world around them faded, until the space that only they shared was filled with nothing but the two of them, and the underlying scent of baking gingerbread that never quite went away.

A/N: I wasn’t going to explain the headcanon here but I figured why not. Bascially. it’s that Asch and Luke each have their own special “headspace” through their connection. It’s the space we see them hanging out in when Luke tags along in Asch’s mind after Akzeriuth. Each of them has control over their headspace: what it looks like, smells like, feels like, because it all comes from their memories of whatever place they choose to base it off of. Once their connection gets stronger and their relationship closer, they’re able to pass through to the other’s headspace. Which is why I mostly consider it a post-game exclusive headcanon. Doesn’t exactly work anywhere else.