Troublemaker - Alhaitham x Reader x Cyno

Chapter 8

"Nilou!" You greeted excitedly once she entered the familiar little café you had picked to be your meet-up place.

"(Y/N)!" She mirrored your gesture with a wide smile on her face, "haven't seen you properly since the première. How have you been?"

"Eh. Ya know, got grounded so bad it felt like I was fighting my way out of the Abyss to see you guys." You grinned gesturing for her to pick a seat.

"I can barely imagine, sounds like a whole adventure. We really missed you. Faruzan's great and all, but it's not the same without you here. Don't tell her I said that." She giggled sheepishly as she sat down, seeing the booth was still mostly empty. "Speaking of... Is Faruzan running late?

"Mm-hm." You nodded, "apparently she's been trying to get Layla out of bed for like an hour now. Should have dared her to come here in time or she'd be paying this time. Oh, well..."

After about twenty minutes of catching up, Nilou going on about the success of the play and the talks about a sequel, Faruzan finally arrived.

"Ladies..." She sighed, looking quite flustered and very much Layla-less.

"Mission failed?" You questioned, trying not to laugh at her disgruntled expression.

"Her ability to sleep through everything never fails to astound me." Faruzan huffed, shaking her head as she settled in next to you, "At this point, I doubt even the Cataclysm would wake her up if it was happening right in front of her."

"Doubt it, she'd sleep right through it." You snickered.

"I'm afraid so." She sighed, motioning over the waiter to order the drinks.

You spent hours indulging in both meaningless small-talk and meaningful conversation. What Faruzan's been up to. How her studies and experiments have been going. How Layla's been faring aside from her almost comically deep hibernation. All the fun things. That was until the turn for your interrogation came.

"Just look at this, my hands are all cut up from how idiotic those designs were, had to completely alter them to make it work." Faruzan complained, showing off the little scrapes on her fingers and palms.

"Hey, it's not that bad." You reassured, turning her hand over in your hold to check.

"No, you don't get it, it's a travesty of design- hold on..." She trailed off, gripping your hand in return noticing the bruising and cuts on your own hands, mostly around your knuckles, "now what is this, young lady?"

"Oh dear..." Nilou muttered, peering in on what Faruzan had discovered, "what happened, (Y/N)?"

"Eh, it's nothing really," you tried to wave the injury off. The motion only made the sleeve of your free hand slide up just enough for another disturbingly colourful patch of skin to become visible.

This time Nilou was the one to gently catch your hand and carefully inspect the damage, "you're all black and blue..."

"Seriously... It's okay!" You slid your hands out of their grip, catching a glimpse of movement from the corner of your eye and quickly shaking your head in a 'no'.

"But-"

"It isn't as bad as it looks. I've just been practising a little more is all." You explained, "never too ready for a fight. Just hope you won't have to."

As you said that, you side-glanced the person in the next booth over, making sure he got the message, 'stand down...'

"I still think you shouldn't even have to consider that whenever you go out..." Nilou muttered, "in danger because of something your family did, it's not fair."