snake & sweet flower (new Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn fanfic)

[queenlua]

When the march on the Tower of Guidance begins, Sothe knows his place is at Micaiah's side.

But Micaiah sends Sothe with Tibarn's army instead, to watch over Pelleas there.

Tibarn, the man who's threatened to kill Sothe once before. Tibarn, a man Sothe doesn't much respect or like. Tibarn, who is not Micaiah.

And also: Tibarn, the man that Sothe keeps having weird dreams about, ever since he threatened to kill him.

Sothe/Tibarn/Reyson, ~10k words.

Read here on AO3.

If I had a nickel for every time I used Radiant Dawn Part 4's "hey most of the world is frozen in stone" era as a backdrop for characters to make Irresponsible Sleeping-Around Choices, I'd have three nickels, which isn't that many but, y'know, more than I would've expected when I first played the game!

This fic was mostly just me trying to answer the question of "okay, if Tibarn and Sothe WERE to hook up, how would that happen," and the only way I could make it work was by bringing Reyson into the mix. (I think Sothe would be interested in Tibarn; I don't think Tibarn is interested in Sothe absent Reyson pushing him a little bit.)

And while I did write A Plot Of Some Sort, because my brain can't not, even when I'm just trying to write something quick and indulgent—I'm not entirely sure how well this extrapolates Reyson's character into something within the bounds of Plausibility and also Interestingness. A Known Failure Mode of having a blorbo is the thing where you make your guy too cool and too cunning, to the point where they become boring, right. (See: an awful lot of Claude von Riegan fic where he's just So Cool And Totally In Control And Magically Knows His Partner's Every Desire All The Time, yawn, boring.)

I'm, like, 60% confident that when I write Naesala, he's getting dunked on enough that he's never TOO cool to the point where it's annoying. But Reyson's a much newer blorbo of mine, and thus I am significantly less sure I pull that off in Reyson's case, here, but oh well. (The great irony is that I started writing this fic when I was in the middle of a more serious Reyson fic, and I realized that in that fic I was straining to write Reyson as way more edgy/nervous-breakdown-y than his circumstances actually called for, and also the Reyson-as-chill-if-somewhat-in-over-his-head guy that was emerging in that story was a much more interesting angle overall, so I was like "okay I need to write something Totally Different for a bit so I can expunge edgy!Reyson from my head before I take another thwack at this," and, uh, the edgy!Reyson I was trying to avoid spilled out on the page here instead I guess. Fuckin' oops.)

...anyway, I do care less about Absolute Fidelity To Plausible Psychology when I'm writing something more for Weird Smut purposes. And when I just need to have something be done so that I have expunged this thing from my body. So, here we are :P

Tremendous love to the dead dove server folks for inspiring like at least 50% of this, plz keep shitposting about FE characters forever

ETA: oh right. the title is a very vague Epic of Gilgamesh reference. by way of Bleach volume 47. uhhhh it's mostly vibes don't think about it too much; one of those rare times i needed A Title and didn't have one naturally emerge to me as i was writing the fic (well, "Ritual", but "Ritual" is so generic!!! wanted something better)