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once again thinking about yuzuru’s onmyoji performance

Learn Me Right

Jaheira x Khalid

This is a fic excerpt (~600 words). Someday, I’ll publish the rest. Because there is more — believe me, there is more.

Between the two of them, Khalid is the first to cry in front of the other.

They're tears of sheer frustration. They’d barely had time to sleep the night before, the day has been hell, and all he wants is a moment's quiet but the patrons of the pub below their room clearly have other plans. On a good day it would set his teeth on edge, never mind now. Jaheira is trying to cheer him up with that flirtatious banter she's so good at, something he loves, and this is the fourth time he's gotten completely trapped in the middle of a sentence. For fuck's sake, he's trying to compliment her (it's a favourite trick of his, disarming her with sudden earnestness) and somehow he can't coordinate his own mouth to say it.

He can’t find a way to tell her how beautiful it is when he can make her really laugh, that he wants to do it again and again for the rest of their lives, that when she smiles at him her eyes glow golden and warm and he feels it from shoulders to hips. He can't meet her eyes and his face is screwed up with effort, fists suddenly clenching as his head jerks uncomfortably to the side, and for a moment he's frozen there — and then he's crying.

The whole thing is mortifying. Khalid desperately swipes away the tears, turns away from her in his effort to hide it all. What must she think of him? Unable to keep it together even now, in this quiet moment between them.

Jaheira doesn't allow it.

She approaches slowly, sits in front of him on the bed. This is bad enough on its own, but then — then she’s holding his hands, moving them away from his face and clutching them firmly in her own. Khalid feels suddenly wild with panic. He can’t, he can’t, he —

“I-I-I —”

"No need to be ashamed," she says firmly, thumbs brushing over the backs of his hands. "It's just the two of us."

After a moment, she brings his hands up to rest above her breasts, and then both of hers move up to his face. Jaheira holds his head in her hands and kisses away the tears under each of his eyes, before her forehead presses against his. As her chest rises and falls with her breathing, he manages to copy her.

"Good," she says, a softness in her tone that's uncommon, that he's always treasured when she opens it to him. "That's it."

Her thumbs trace rhythmic circles over his cheeks like she’s trying to soothe and memorize him all at once. Slowly, the sharp noises from downstairs that had grated on him fade into undifferentiated murmurs, and there is nothing but her; the way she smells of the forest even after days spent in the city, the steel of her spine, the unshakeable calm in the eye of her storm and the way she can somehow bring him into it with her. He has no idea how he got so lucky, that he has the privilege to spend so much time at the center of her focus.

Jaheira is looking at him with that rare, precious gentleness that tells him she’s dropped her guard. That he’s seeing her all the way through, the way she always seems to see him, and all he wants in the world is to learn every path to get here with her. All he wants is her.

"I love you," Khalid whispers, and Jaheira’s eyes are suddenly wide and bright in a way he’s never seen before. For a tiny moment, they flutter closed, and he could swear her breath trembles.

She coughs. "Well, I --." Swallows. "I love you, too."

He suspected she felt it, but he had expected a smart remark, for her to hide behind a quip again. His heart swells.

Before Khalid can say anything else, she kisses him, one hand fisting into his hair, and he knows they'll both sleep soundly tonight.