A/N: Why hello there! Thank you for taking the time to read this :) A reviewer said they'd like to see a bit of Ghanith, so Ghanith it is! My friend gave me a rough idea for this one, and I think it's quite cute! Thanks for reading x
Why had she been so nice and agreed to teach him? He put in so much effort, bless him, but his sword skills were shocking. In quite an amusing way, Tanith thought.
"Ghastly, your hand grip is all wrong," she said, holding up her sword and showing him the correct way to hold it. "You have to treat it like an extension of your own arm - how can you do that when your grip is so rigid?"
Ghastly moved his grip slightly and looked at the floor rather sheepishly. All he wanted to do was impress Tanith but he was getting it all wrong! He wanted to fight like Tanith, so he'd asked her for lessons and rather surprisingly she'd agreed, so long as he taught her some tailoring techniques later. Apparently she wanted to make her own corset. He had just the material for that, a deep red that would accentuate her features and show off her figure...
"Ghastly Bespoke, are you listening to me?" Tanith shouted, startling him and waking him from his thoughts. Ghastly looked up at Tanith and smiled.
"Hands. Right." He moved his grip once more to make a point but Tanith sighed at the sight.
"Let me show you," she said, walking behind him and moving his hands to the correct position. She kept her hands on his as she lifted the sword up and brought it down to the floor on one fluid motion.
"Just like that," she said, lifting her hands and going off to practice with her own sword whilst Ghastly got the hang on holding his sword correctly.
"Just like that," Ghastly grumbled.
Tanith ran at the mannequin and slit its throat before running her blade across its elbow joints, leaving parts of its arms to drop to the floor. She jumped off the wall onto the ceiling and stuck her sword through its head, prompting a flurry of feathers to protrude from its neck. For good measure, she moved her sword slightly and decapitated the mannequin. Easy.
Ghastly watched in awe of her movements, having placed his sword on the floor moments earlier.
Tanith moved onto a second mannequin, deciding to practice her hand to hand combat instead. She punched the jaw of the mannequin before kicking its legs, which would have made it collapse if it wasn't for the wooden pole keeping it upright. She kicked it in the groin before kneeing it in the face. Ghastly winced involuntarily at the sight. That would hurt.
As he watched, he found himself picking out little points for improvement. A foot wrong here, a punch slightly too high there - all little things that, if improved, would help her fighting no end.
"Tanith?" Ghastly shouted. It took three attempts to get her attention - she was so focused on beating the living daylights out of the mannequin.
"Yes?" she grunted, annoyed that her training had been interrupted. True, she was meant to be training Ghastly, but she had to train a little bit too, right?
"Your skills are rather astounding," Ghastly started.
"Of course," Tanith replied, smirking.
"However," Ghastly continued, "I think certain… slight adjustments could be made to make them completely astounding."
"Yeah?" Tanith arched an eyebrow. "And what would they be?"
Ghastly stepped over to the mannequin, ignoring Tanith's eyes staring at his back as he moved.
"When you punch, you tend to overstep a bit," he said. "It leaves you more vulnerable to close range attacks, especially if someone managed to get to the backs of your knees whilst you were punching."
"I see," Tanith replied. She hadn't noticed it before, but it was good to have someone to help point things like that out.
Ghastly motioned to her to stand where he was standing, and told her to go in for a punch. She did as she was told, and Ghastly struck the backs of her knees as her fist connected with the mannequin's face. She wobbled and ended up on the floor.
"See what I mean?"
Tanith nodded, jumping up and brushing the dirt from her bare shoulders.
"So if you were to do it again," Ghastly said as Tanith got back into position, "you'd need to make sure that your feet didn't get within a foot's distance of the other person."
He took hold of her hips and told her to go in for a punch again, but slightly slower this time. As she did, he held her hips in place so that she couldn't overstep.
"It takes a bit of getting used to," Ghastly admitted as Tanith moaned about the shorter reach she was getting because of her foot placement, "but it does end up making you a stronger fighter. One with fewer vulnerabilities."
Tanith smirked. Ghastly really knew his stuff. She liked that.
"Can we practice it again?" she asked, going back to where she had originally stood. Ghastly nodded and placed his hands on her hips again.
Ten practice punches later and Tanith thought she'd nailed it.
"Right, now do it without me holding your hips," Ghastly said, stepping away.
Tanith readied herself, stepped in for a punch and stepped in exactly the right place. No overstepping and a practically perfect punch.
"Nice," Ghastly commented as Tanith smiled at her work.
"It was nicer having a support though," she admitted. Ghastly didn't really know how to reply to that, so merely shrugged.
"Perhaps you can help me train again sometime?" Tanith said. "You're really good at this coaching stuff."
"Sounds good to me," Ghastly agreed.
"Perhaps we'll lay off the sword stuff for a while though - I'd like to keep my head!"
Ghastly laughed and nodded. He wanted her to keep her head too. Her beautiful head with those beautiful, tousled ringlets…
Tanith kissed him on the cheek and thanked him once again, before running off. Ghastly caught something she said about needing to see Skulduggery and Valkyrie about a case, but he wasn't really listening. He was more focused on the kiss Tanith had planted on his face. Perhaps he was finally getting somewhere.
"Maybe we can still have steak sometime?" he eventually called out. "After your next training session, perhaps?"
Tanith stuck her thumb up in the air in response as she ran out of the door.
Steak it was.