( fic ) world's okayest birthday

[spiraea]

When Ajax awakens on the morning of his birthday, Juniper is nowhere to be found.

An oddity in and of itself, he thinks, and today of all days; the two of them have grown so accustomed to beginning their days entangled in one another ever since they began traveling together, and now that they’ve taken their travels across another world, into his home of Teyvat, he sees no reason that this routine should change. And especially not on his birthday…

The Snezhnayan mornings really can be so frigid in his hometown, too, even in the summertime. Wouldn’t she rather wake together and bask in their shared warmth beneath the blankets…?

Ah, he thinks as he slowly sits up in his bed and laughs to himself, she must be scheming something.

Even so, the thought is all but banished when Tonia bursts into the room crying out, her voice a clarion bell for a rude awakening. Immediately the warrior tenses, his fingers already twitching to conjure forth his twin Hydro blades at the first sign of trouble - as ever, but most certainly so when his family is concerned.

“Tonia? Tell me, what’s the matter?”

“It’s Teucer! He’s— Come quickly, brother!” No sooner than his baby brother’s name leaves her mouth than he is leaping out of his bed, pulling on a shirt, his coat and cloak. His nerves going cold and numb in the urgency of the situation, yet his blood running hot in his veins for the violence he’s sure to deliver unto whoever has hurt Teucer. Did Teucer run off again? Did Juniper disappear in pursuit of him?

If they’re hurt—

He can scarcely remember even throwing on his scarf and pulling on his boots, but he must have done so at some point before Tonia pushes past the door to their family home. It takes all of his willpower not to slip into his most violent instincts in front of Tonia, but soon enough he…

”Heeheehee! You naughty child! You didn’t eat your vegetables last night!”

…can hear Teucer laughing?

Tonia leads him into a clearing in the woods - where he as a child so often played and pretended to be a heroic adventurer - and where he now instead finds his baby brother in the arms of a cloaked figure with a shrill voice… and rabbit ears. It’s not long until they come upon this sight that a girlish little giggle bubbles up out of Tonia, and then soon Anton is emerging from the brush as well, so that he and his sister can each take one of Ajax’s hands to tug him further into the clearing.

“Save me, big brother!”

“Oho? What’s this?” the cloaked one asks, “So you’ve come to take my prey away, handsome and heroic adventurer!”

All three children dissolve into laughter, but this does not deter the mysterious figure as she lifts a hand to pull her cloak back… revealing - much to his undoubtedly genuine shock - Juniper, his lover. What manner of betrayal is this…

“You’ll never take them from me, for I am Baba Yaga, the most fearsome hag in all of Snezhnaya!”

So she was scheming something, after all. And to rope his baby siblings into it… Juniper really does make for a wonderful big sister, but he’d already known that. He’d known it the moment they defeated the Hourglass Coven together and rescued those children. He’d known it long before even that. And— is she pretending to be Baba Yaga? Juniper? Pretending to be a hag, an enemy she most feared in the past?

He huffs out a laugh in his disbelief, but soon he opens his arms wide in a grandiose gesture. He’s not one to shy away from the spotlight, after all.

“Haha, come now, Madam Hag, surely we can resolve this peacefully!”

When Ajax awakens on the morning of his birthday, Juniper challenges him to a (hand-to-hand) spar in the name of entertaining his most precious siblings. But what she truly offers is so much more, and this he realizes as they crumple down onto the grass together, with Teucer, Anton, and Tonia soon piling onto them both before their mother calls them in for breakfast. The three of them scramble away in pursuit of food, leaving Ajax and Juniper a winded heap in the clearing on this soft summer morning.

“So? How is it, being a handsome and heroic adventurer?”

She reminds him of bygone dreams - no, she realizes it for him, willing it into fruition, even if it’s just for this most momentous of mornings. Ajax rolls onto his side, draping one arm across Juniper’s waist and propping himself up on his elbow with the other while he looks down into her eyes, momentarily arrested by how vivid they are, how they match the vibrant summer green of the grass beneath them.

“This isn’t exactly how I imagined spending my birthday morning with you, you know.”

Truly, only she would think to kick off his birthday with roleplaying and a spar.

“Hehe… Happy birthday, miri!”

“I adore you, Juniper Veltris.”