#vardr

 ❖ ‘ you know — ’

[ @vardr. ] SABRINA I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

He’s a little too susceptible to those baby blues, and the scintillate smile that’s his quotidian undoing. Gladio’s pulling a lopsided smile when he plants a loud, smacking kiss to the peak of Zack’s cheek, to the exact spot that he’s directed him to. But he lands another to the corner of his mouth, and another to the pout of his lips, though the latter are for his own personal indulgence. 

[ send me a ship and one of these and i’ll write a mini fic ]

@vardr  ║  not accepting !

that AU where they’re long distance for a bit ;)

“And I miss your hands ….. I miss your smile ….. Definitely miss your butt. But do I separate that into two categories? Like left butt and right butt? Do they deserve their own distinction? I think I’m gonna do that. It’s fair. I miss each of your butt cheeks. I miss …. Oh! I miss the way your hair spikes jams into my face sometimes when you don’t wash your god-awful hair gel before bed, and they’re still like …. Sonic the Hedgehog meets Ron Jeremy for the most perfect nightmare with which to savage my face first thing in the morning—”

“Easy on the hair gel,” Zack warned, his voice coming tinny from Gladio’s phone speaker.

“I could say the same to you.”

“Wiseass.” But Zack was laughing on the other end, looking more handsome than he had any right to over a video call, and half a world away. “So you basically listed me in parts and said you loved every one. If I was Mr Potato Head, I could just mail me back to you, piecemeal. Problem solved.”

“What’s the purpose in that?” Gladio asked, his brows furrowing hard as he frowned at the screen where Zack’s face, bleary with sleep, showed half obscured in the dark of his room. “That sounds morbid.”

“You’re the one reducing me to the sum of my parts, here,” Zack returned, the retort softened by his own drowsiness.

“Yeah, but like… a synecdoche,” Gladio explained, making vague gestures with his hands out of range of the camera, but Zack knew he was making them all the same. “A cute one.”

Zack yawned. “I don’t know what you said. I don’t even know why you said it.” 

Gladio laughed, stretching as he settled back into his bed. “It’s like when you talk about a part of something but it represents the whole. Like when you talk about a sail on the horizon, but you actually mean a whole boat. Or when you count heads but you mean a whole person. Or when you talk about missing Zack Fair’s ass, but you mean you miss Zack Fair.” 

He let it sink in before he continued. “It means received together,” he went on, his voice muffled now by the lethargy of sleep slowly overtaking him. “Or understood together. I love every part of you because it makes up your whole. But that also means you have to come back in one piece. Or else.” And he jammed the phone between his cheek and his pillow, settling against it. 

The waiting was the worst part.

The captain’s pocket watch ticked madly with a metronomic precision that echoed within the the metal of his helmet, the hollow of his skull. Gladio blinked, rifle poised under his arm, pressed to his ribs, ready instinctively for the signal to begin the walking assault. The siege would begin at 0600, with the attack commencing upon the eastern face of the fortified schloss. Heavy artillery on that side was due to draw the attention of the castle’s defenses, their efforts to be drawn in concert there, leaving their back exposed to a second, supplementary attack.

Lucis Company was positioned to the south, where Gladio and his fellow soldiers waited within the thick of the encroaching trees. Alpha Unit was installed along the high ground to provide cover for the western penetration, their legendary snipers were already laid prone along the austral edges of the forest, masked by the wild bramble that sprouted in the bosque. Their captain gave a low whistle for the one minute mark, wherein a small eternity ensued before the first, stentorian blast sounded, preceding a spectacular spray of stone and mortar.

The captain’s hand was raised, their signal to hold. And so they did, sweat already beading their brows in the low summer heat, waiting like monoliths in the obscurity of the flora. A sniper took his shot, the bullet whizzing over Gladio’s head, and connecting expertly with the target who stood imprudently between the crenellated slats of the battlements.

“As good a time as any,” Gladio heard his captain mumble, before giving the signal to advance.

SEND ‘KISS’ + A NUMBER TO KISS MY MUSE…

…before going to sleep.

…because you missed them.

@vardr  ║  accepting !  [ and not to be continued!]

World War 2 AU, BECAUSE REASONS

The nurse lays a hand on his shoulder, feather-light, like she’s trying not to be obtrusive. The fact is, he’s the one impinging upon their space, resting like a wraith in the corner of the infirmary, where Zack lays in some sempiternal slumber from which Gladio waits for him to wake.

Gladio hadn’t left his side since he’d found him in the basement of that castle, half dead with whatever ungodly experimentation they’d done on him. He could still remember the dullness in those eyes that had been nearly incandescent in his memory of his best friend, how hollow they looked as they blinked up at him when he lifted his body from that worn cot. 

Did he recognize him then? Does he recognize him now? Zack had yet to speak a word to affirm. It was enough that he woke for the few hours a day that he did, long enough to sallow down some tasteless gruel and a paper cup of vitamins Gladio was sure was doing fuckall. Not that he’d been doing much better. 

Gladio stares helplessly at the half-parted lips that he can still remember whispering his name, that last time he’d dropped Zack off on his stoop, stealing a kiss he knew would be his last (and only), before he snuck off like a thief to do his part with the war effort. He’d turned away, then, too scared to see the sure rejection illuminated by moonlight, and left without a proper goodbye.

That same terror seizes him now, even as Zack lay sleeping in his bed, hands at his side above the perfect arrangement of his thin covers. He wishes he had the gall, but he doesn’t. Not to take something twice that never belonged to him. No matter how desperately he wants to. 

Gladio entwines his callous fingers within his, staring at the constellation of scars that adorn his knuckles. They’re more obvious at certain angles against the firelight, when the amber glow illuminates every ridge and hollow, and Gladio counts with compulsive disconcert each errant wound by pressing his lips fervently to them. He curses every weapon, every man that had a hand in marring the beauty of those hands, who he can remember from more halcyon days, when they were as soft and smooth from the luxury of disuse, when the worst hardship they’d known was the grip of a pen to crawl out arithmetic homework. 

He kisses each scar in a methodical ecliptic, until his lips taste of his skin and salt and an indescribable, palliative scent that has the curious effect of slowly recovering the rift in his riven heart.

@vardr

There’s a tense moment, before Gladio can discern exactly what this ardent gesture means. His brow furrows first in contemplation that coalesces into determination. In one fluid motion, his head snaps down, his thewy arms fling themselves skyward (sort of, iono what the degree of that angle is) in sharp formation. The sheer force of his overly-muscled appendages is enough to sonic boom some fucking pigeons out of the sky, and hurls Zack back with enough velocity that his extra-ass hair is transmogrified without explanation into something that might actually be passable for his legendarily rakish tendencies.