Star Ocean: The Second Evolution, challenge 235 'Frenemy', tehexile

[tehexile]

Title: Wordplay
Fandom: Star Ocean: The Second Evolution
Rating: 15/Slash
Spoilers: none
Other tags: implied/described sex, characters slashing other characters, in-canon geekery

Neologisms were Welch's new favourite weapon in her arsenal of different ways to annoy Dias. The cornier the buzz-word the more entertainingly strong the reaction, generally. The swordsman had a particular hatred of the portmanteau, the new 'favourite' being 'frenemy'. Not only was it annoying, lazy and, by popular consensus in the group, not a word, it also offended Dias that someone would make light of the bond between honoured rivals. However, the absolute best reaction came when she strongly implied that Dias' often heated and close bond with his 'frenemy' - Claude Kenni, of course - was actually a thin veil over an even more powerful and, in her apparently expert opinion, very similar and closely linked emotion of raging sexual lust. When evidence was demanded, she was quite happy to point out times when Claude and Ashton spent all day only focused on each other, often alone in the training hall, and in her own words 'came out all hot and sweaty and bare-chested'. She could not be convinced that 'intense close combat training' was not a code word for 'enthusiastic wrestling with a particular focus on domination and humiliation', or that 'sword' wasn't a euphemism. Then she backed up her theories with a seemingly endless list of examples from the romantic fiction she was constantly reading, writing (no doubt about them whenever their backs were turned, although they suspected Ashton got a lot of it too) and making a tidy profit from selling whenever they were in Fun City.

 

"You know, you really ought to take him out on a one-to-one date there at some point," she said, "You're always in the arena together anyway, loudly arguing over all the commentary. It could be like a private gaycation."

 

"Okay, now you definitely made that one up just now!" he snapped.

 

She shrugged, "Someone's gotta be the first."