Post by devilinthedetails on Jul 15, 2022 2:57:01 GMT 10
Series: Pepper and Passion
Title: Candlelight Legacies
Rating: PG
Event: Last Straw
Words: 981
Summary: Yuki, Neal, and the legacies they discuss by candlelight.
Candlelight Legacies
“I’m on my last straw with Mai.” Neal rasped out a wrought, ragged sigh. Speaking of their daughter who had inherited his sharp, clever tongue. Tore at his hair–lit copperly by the candlelight as they curled together in their bed late at night–with fretful fingers. He would make himself bald before Mai turned him gray, Yuki thought with a fond exasperation toward two of the people she loved most in the world. “She’s frayed away my every nerve. I don’t know how to handle her.”
A confession that sounded ripped from him. Smart men rarely relished admitting their ignorance. Their baffled ill-prepardness when confronted with one of the great mysteries of life.
“She is her father’s daughter.” Yuki wrapped her fingers around Neal’s. Tugging them away from his head before they could inflict further damage on his hairline. “Very like you, my love.”
“And that should mean I know how to deal with her?” Neal scowled. Arched a skeptical eyebrow.
“Not at all.” Yuki was a model of serenity under fire. Always had been. Always would be. There was that unrattled calm at her core. The unrattled calm that her excitable, easily-anxious husband drew strength and comfort from amid chaos and confusion that inevitably stressed him. “But you might remember how your own father dealt with you. Still deals with you, in fact.”
Her father-in-law, blessed with a long life, had gone gray and stooped with time. The red-brown streaks of his hair disappeared. His tall spine bent with age. His dark green eyes retained their clairty–their keen alertness–unclouded by loss of memory as wrinkles twisted around them. Wrinkles with shapes that suggested he had spent more of his long life smiling than frowning. They were laughter lines. Laughter lines that made his eyes seem even more deeply set in his sockets.
He had retreated from court, of course. Retired to Queenscove castle with its verdant gardens and glorious views of the Emerald Ocean that shone in sunlight like the jewel for which it was named. Resigned his position as chief of the realm’s healers. To be replaced by her husband. His oldest surviving son. The only son who had studied healing at university or on the battlefield.
“With incredible gentleness.” Neal kissed her fingers, entwined around his own. “With enviable, constant composure. With boundless patience. With firmness and fairness. Always knowing when and how to be stern with me when I needed him to be. Thus earning my eternal love and respect.”
The kisses on her fingers stopped as her husband paused. Became pensive. Troubled. A furrow knotting his brow. Added with pain and shame in his raw voice, “But I am not my father, Yuki. I cannot be as patient or as gentle as him. No matter how hard I try, I always fall short of being him. It’s not in my nature to be patient or gentle. I was born for cutting sarcasm and bitter cynicism.”
That was her husband’s most hidden insecurity unveiled. His deepest, darkest fear confessed by candlelight. That he would never live up to his father’s legacy. That he would never be as patient or as gentle. That, as a healer, he would lack that certain, indefinable sympahy in his bedside manner. That as a father he would never be as tender and understanding as his own had always been. That he would never be as good a man, as good a healer, and as good a father as his sire.
No matter how unstintingly Neal worked–how much he studied and trained–he would aspire to be more than he was. Forever fear that he was falling short of what he should be. Failing to be the heir he should have been to his father.
A man could be dominated and crushed by that fear, Yuki realized. Even if the father was a loving, gentle one. Perhaps especially then, because the failure sliced all the deeper. Cutting through flesh like a glaive. Carving through bone.
“You have a soft heart. A healer’s heart.” Yuki pressed a palm to her husband’s chest. Feeling the organ she spoke of pulse and pound beneath his ribcage. The softness of his heart–along with the green of his eyes–had been one of the qualities that first attracted her to him. “That’s why you wrap it in so much sarcasm to protect it. I know that. Your father does too. That’s why he’s always so patient and gentle with you. He doesn’t want to hurt your tender healer’s heart.”
“He has more of a tender healer’s heart than I do. That is why he is so patient and gentle with me.” Neal snorted but somehow simultaneously managed to appear immensely gratified by her words. By her reassurance. By how well she could see and know him. How she could read what was written on his heart even better than he could. What was love except that seeing? That knowing? That reading?
“You want to be like your father because you love and admire him.” Yuki stroked at the much-abused hair her husband had been striving to yank out of its roots earlier. Thinking of the cycle of emulation. The desire that drove a son to copy his father. A daughter to mirror hers. An intergenerational circling of traits like water flowing through a mill. “That’s why you became a healer. Your daughter wants to be like you because she loves and admires you. That’s why she’s so sharp-tongued and sarcastic all the time.”
“Ah.” Neal smirked. A sure sign that he was resuming his usual caustic manner. That she had soothed away his vulnerabilities and fears for now. “How wonderful it is to know that I have passed along my most admirable qualities to my offspring. What an inheritance for her.”
“Some of that inheritance comes from me.” Yuki grinned. “I can’t let you take all the credit or the blame.”
Title: Candlelight Legacies
Rating: PG
Event: Last Straw
Words: 981
Summary: Yuki, Neal, and the legacies they discuss by candlelight.
Candlelight Legacies
“I’m on my last straw with Mai.” Neal rasped out a wrought, ragged sigh. Speaking of their daughter who had inherited his sharp, clever tongue. Tore at his hair–lit copperly by the candlelight as they curled together in their bed late at night–with fretful fingers. He would make himself bald before Mai turned him gray, Yuki thought with a fond exasperation toward two of the people she loved most in the world. “She’s frayed away my every nerve. I don’t know how to handle her.”
A confession that sounded ripped from him. Smart men rarely relished admitting their ignorance. Their baffled ill-prepardness when confronted with one of the great mysteries of life.
“She is her father’s daughter.” Yuki wrapped her fingers around Neal’s. Tugging them away from his head before they could inflict further damage on his hairline. “Very like you, my love.”
“And that should mean I know how to deal with her?” Neal scowled. Arched a skeptical eyebrow.
“Not at all.” Yuki was a model of serenity under fire. Always had been. Always would be. There was that unrattled calm at her core. The unrattled calm that her excitable, easily-anxious husband drew strength and comfort from amid chaos and confusion that inevitably stressed him. “But you might remember how your own father dealt with you. Still deals with you, in fact.”
Her father-in-law, blessed with a long life, had gone gray and stooped with time. The red-brown streaks of his hair disappeared. His tall spine bent with age. His dark green eyes retained their clairty–their keen alertness–unclouded by loss of memory as wrinkles twisted around them. Wrinkles with shapes that suggested he had spent more of his long life smiling than frowning. They were laughter lines. Laughter lines that made his eyes seem even more deeply set in his sockets.
He had retreated from court, of course. Retired to Queenscove castle with its verdant gardens and glorious views of the Emerald Ocean that shone in sunlight like the jewel for which it was named. Resigned his position as chief of the realm’s healers. To be replaced by her husband. His oldest surviving son. The only son who had studied healing at university or on the battlefield.
“With incredible gentleness.” Neal kissed her fingers, entwined around his own. “With enviable, constant composure. With boundless patience. With firmness and fairness. Always knowing when and how to be stern with me when I needed him to be. Thus earning my eternal love and respect.”
The kisses on her fingers stopped as her husband paused. Became pensive. Troubled. A furrow knotting his brow. Added with pain and shame in his raw voice, “But I am not my father, Yuki. I cannot be as patient or as gentle as him. No matter how hard I try, I always fall short of being him. It’s not in my nature to be patient or gentle. I was born for cutting sarcasm and bitter cynicism.”
That was her husband’s most hidden insecurity unveiled. His deepest, darkest fear confessed by candlelight. That he would never live up to his father’s legacy. That he would never be as patient or as gentle. That, as a healer, he would lack that certain, indefinable sympahy in his bedside manner. That as a father he would never be as tender and understanding as his own had always been. That he would never be as good a man, as good a healer, and as good a father as his sire.
No matter how unstintingly Neal worked–how much he studied and trained–he would aspire to be more than he was. Forever fear that he was falling short of what he should be. Failing to be the heir he should have been to his father.
A man could be dominated and crushed by that fear, Yuki realized. Even if the father was a loving, gentle one. Perhaps especially then, because the failure sliced all the deeper. Cutting through flesh like a glaive. Carving through bone.
“You have a soft heart. A healer’s heart.” Yuki pressed a palm to her husband’s chest. Feeling the organ she spoke of pulse and pound beneath his ribcage. The softness of his heart–along with the green of his eyes–had been one of the qualities that first attracted her to him. “That’s why you wrap it in so much sarcasm to protect it. I know that. Your father does too. That’s why he’s always so patient and gentle with you. He doesn’t want to hurt your tender healer’s heart.”
“He has more of a tender healer’s heart than I do. That is why he is so patient and gentle with me.” Neal snorted but somehow simultaneously managed to appear immensely gratified by her words. By her reassurance. By how well she could see and know him. How she could read what was written on his heart even better than he could. What was love except that seeing? That knowing? That reading?
“You want to be like your father because you love and admire him.” Yuki stroked at the much-abused hair her husband had been striving to yank out of its roots earlier. Thinking of the cycle of emulation. The desire that drove a son to copy his father. A daughter to mirror hers. An intergenerational circling of traits like water flowing through a mill. “That’s why you became a healer. Your daughter wants to be like you because she loves and admires you. That’s why she’s so sharp-tongued and sarcastic all the time.”
“Ah.” Neal smirked. A sure sign that he was resuming his usual caustic manner. That she had soothed away his vulnerabilities and fears for now. “How wonderful it is to know that I have passed along my most admirable qualities to my offspring. What an inheritance for her.”
“Some of that inheritance comes from me.” Yuki grinned. “I can’t let you take all the credit or the blame.”