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Fitzroy sits cross-legged on his raised bed. He draws a brush through his thick, unbraided hair and savors the rare moment of solitude. Argo is still in the shower (why doesn’t he just sleep there if he loves water so much) and the firblog is probably running around somewhere out of doors. Maybe he’s made another adorable animal friend and received laudation and praise from another professor. Fitzroy wouldn’t know.
He’s at forty-five brush strokes – or was it fifty-four? Blast it to heck, he’s going to have to start over. He simply can’t settle into a restful meditation without brushing his hair with sixty strokes exactly. He wiggles his butt on the bed to get more comfortable, but of course his posture remains immaculate. It is pleasant to be in his loose-fitting sleep shirt, to breath and even perhaps emote without feeling as though he’ll burst through every mother-of-pearl button on his shirt. The brush’s bristles scrape along his scalp, a fitting physical sensation, a poetic mirroring of his constant distress and discomfort at this school.
Fitzroy sighs once. It’s barely a huff, disappointing and pathetic. He sighs again, adding a slight vocalization at the end to fully express the mournful tragedy of his plight. Over in the corner Gary the Gargoyle opens a single unimpressed eye.
This time it’s a properly intended huff.
“Snippers? Er, attend me, please.” Festo said that he would be able to summon the familiar on instinct, but Fitzroy felt any creature associated with himself deserved a little more panache.
Snippers appears in front of Fitzroy and offers his strange little whispery greeting. Then he scuttles up Fitzroy’s leg into his lap, turns around three times, and promptly curls up to sleep.
Fitzroy didn’t even know crabs could do anything one would describe as curl.
“Aren’t you even going to ask how I am? Ungrateful creature—I feed and love you – with pretzels from my own hand—this is the thanks I get?”
In a manner eerily reminiscent of Gary the Gargoyle, Snippers opens one eye to witness Fitzroy’s histrionics. He chirps affirmingly.
“What does one have to do to receive proper, well-earned sympathy around here? By gosh!”
Fitzroy pouts in what he’s sure is a very handsome and pitiful fashion. No one has properly appreciated his plight since, well—
“Snippers!”
The crab throws up its claws and jumps out of Fitzroy’s lap (it really shouldn’t be possible to startle the semi-physical manifestation of one’s own uncontrollable magic and yet).
“Can you deliver a message? I will write it this time.”
Snippers clicks his claws together in a way Fitzroy interprets as I’d be delighted to do so!
“Thank you,” Fitzroy says graciously. Gallantly. As befits a knight of Goodcastle.
Rainer is a light sleeper. Usually this means she’s awoken by strange aches in her limbs (or familiar ones), or else one of her neighbors getting up to use the toilet. Occasionally she has a nightmare (one particularly nasty recurring one features all her squirrels collapsing into dust, never to animate again).
This strange, scraping knock is a new one.
Rainer is a necromancer. She doesn’t have a normal bar for creepiness, and if something is trying to hurt her, she is hardly easy prey. She uses her arms to shift herself up in bed and takes a deep breath.
Something skitters under the door, faintly illuminated. Rainer leans down, sees what it is, and laughs.
“Come here, little friend!”
Fitzroy’s crab scales the bedpost and runs up to her, nudging at her hand. Rainer obliges him with a head scratch and takes a piece of parchment from the nubbier of his claws.
The single sheet has the heft of quality, sealed with crimson wax.
“Is he actually real?” Rainer asks the crab. “Who sends notes looking like invitations of state at—” she glances at the lunascope on her bedside table—“two o’clock in the morning?”
The crab chitters happily. With the slightest flick of her hand, one of the mice skeletons under her bed animates and prepares to entertain their guest. Rainer turns her full attention on the letter, using Prestidigitation to make it glow enough to be legible.
The seal bears a maple leaf, predictably. There are curious drops floating around the edge; perhaps rain, but depicted in red wax it makes Rainer think of blood. She slides a fingernail under the edge. Thank the Raven Queen, it’s not written on monogrammed stationary. Rainer prides herself on being a very open-minded person, but that truly would have been unforgivable of him.
To the Noble and Good Villainous Lady Rainer,
To begin, allow this good knight to thank you most graciously for the invitation to break our fast together yestermorrow. Your company was delectable and the crepe most thoughtful—that is, the crepe was delicious and you were exquisite—I appreciated both the refreshments and your company.
I write now to ask you to do me the honor of accompanying me on a walk around the lake or some such pleasant diversion after lunch tomorrow. Do you prefer the term ‘float’? Drat, I do hope I have not offended. Of course I would be most pleased to join you in any activity comfortable to you, though I must say I truly and sincerely hope it is not one involving squirrels.
You may send Snippers with your response at your convenience. As far as I can tell, he is a magic crab and does not grow tired nor impatient. You do not have to tip him; tipping is gauche.
Your chivalrous, charming, and handsome sometimes-henchperson,
Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt, Knight Errant of Goodcastle
“He does realize that I only wrote my note in that tone to tease him, right?”
Her incredulous grin fades into something more contemplative as Rainer genuinely considers her answer. Of course, his musclebound figure was pleasant enough to ogle from behind in a game of fantasy dodgeball, and there was something undeniably cute in his delight at the smallest things – crepes, casting a magic trick on their opponents—delight that betrayed his much louder front of misery and victimization.
Still, Rainer couldn’t quite get a read on him. Was he truly in earnest about Goodcastle? About his contempt for the school? About this invitation itself? At least her invitation had contained a very comfortable amount of plausible deniability. She had told him his roommates were welcome along. He called himself handsome and charming in his closing. Then again, based on absolutely everything else about him, she could almost believe that he was just like that, and it didn’t matter if he was writing to her or the firblog or Professor Hieronymus himself.
“What do I do with this?” she asks the crab—Snippers—and her mouse. They run up her arm to perch on her shoulder, but offer no advice. She stifles a yawn and flips the letter over, not wanting to bother getting out of bed to find her own pen and parchment. An unspoken incantation opens a tiny slit in her finger, and she writes back in practiced motions, fingernail acting as a pen nib for the blood.
The trouble with not actually sleeping is that it left one with no recourse when one wished to feign sleep to get out of talking with one’s roommates. Fitzroy attempts to settle into his meditative pose, but he can’t help flinching when the door bangs open and Argo enters.
Being Argo, he is inevitably drawn into conversation. Normally Fitzroy wouldn’t mind (conversation is high among the courtly arts), but he’s rather preoccupied at the moment.
He’d simply sent an invitation to Rainer without a second thought! Late at night, on a whim, simply because he wished to see her! What sort of barbarism was this?
Fitzroy considers the wording of his note. Will she find it presumptuous? Will she think it a joke? Will she think he means to court her?
Does he mean to court her?
“Fitz, lad, didja have a bad dream or something?” Argo interrupts his own waffling on about… limes or something. “You seem awful distracted.”
“I—” It comes out too high. Fitzroy clears his throat. “I sent overtures of friendship to a beautiful lady.”
Argo raises a rougish eyebrow. “Good for you.”
“The trouble is, I don’t know how I will be received.”
“That’s always the trouble.” Argo gives one of his confident chuckles. Fitzroy glowers. He’d confided his emotions, and Argo can’t even treat the gesture with the import it deserves. He needs a proper squire or manservant, but of course there is no room for one in such quarters. He sighs.
“Love’s like the ocean, you know,” Argo continues. “Always changing, beautiful and powerful, but you can drown in it if you’re not careful.”
“Love—I never—who said anything about love?” Fitzroy squawks.
Argo raises both roughish eyebrows. “That sigh was as lovesick as a cabin boy pining after a captain. No room for secrets on a ship, nor in these close quarters, I’ll warrant.”
“Of all the ridiculous—I shan’t even dignify that with a response, this conversation is over!”
“Whatever you say, friend.”
Argo does appear to take the hint, turning off the lights and settling into his bunk. Fitzroy is torn about even trying to begin meditation—who knows if Rainer will receive his message or send Snippers back until morning?
What if she does refuse him? She’s pretty and captivating – he’s sure anyone with eyes could see that – but more than that, he thought, maybe they were friends. Or at least acquaintances who had friendly breakfasts together. And he doesn’t have many friends to spare, a half-elf who only ever half-belonged, a barbarian with the wrong sorts of powers.
As if sensing his growing distress, Snippers appears before him.
“Good news or bad?” Fitzroy whispers. Despite having manifested from thin air, Snippers carries a folded piece of parchment in his left claw. Fitzroy grabs it before his maudlin anxieties can overwhelm him.
“She said yes!” he crows to Snippers. Snippers clacks his claws supportively.
A spritz of water hits him in the face, and Fitzroy yelps. “Don’t get my hair wet!”
“If you’ve got a date you’re gonna need your beauty sleep,” Argo grumbles. “Shut up and get some rest.”
Fitzroy sniffs. As though something as trivial as lack of rest could impact his good looks! Still, Snippers gets grumpy if they don’t get at least a few hours of meditation in. He focuses on a mantra of bright laughter and warm smiles and drifts away.
They run into each other at breakfast, a possibility Rainer really should have thought of. She’s left her hair loose, which she usually doesn’t on days when she has casting classes, but that’s the only concessions she’s made for their maybe-date. She determines that it will be her only concession, even though she could theoretically change her outfit if she has time and energy after her combat class; it’s one thing for her to silently obsess over her appearance, and quite another for him to know she’s dressed up on his account.
“Rainer, greetings, er, hello!” Fitzroy calls brightly. They’re the most awkward distance apart; not so far that she can wave back and continue to load her plate with fruit and toast, but not so close that she can strike up a conversation. She takes a few more strawberries and directs her chair towards him.
“Hi, Sir Fitzroy.”
He’s dressed as pompously as always. Pompous or not, the tightly laced shirt and tunic combo does excellent things for his chest and shoulders. Rainer lets herself ogle, just a little.
“How did you sleep?” His ears twitch, and Rainer is reminded of a giant puppy more than anything – or perhaps a kitten trying to mimic the quiet dignity of its elders and failing spectacularly.
“I was sleeping quite well, but then the weirdest thing happened,” Rainer says.
“Oh?”
She smiles; he doesn’t see where she’s going with this. “Yeah, this glowing crab just appeared out of nowhere!”
“Oh,” he says again. His skin is too dark to show much of a blush, but Rainer can read the embarrassment in his posture.
“It’s okay, plain old uninterrupted sleep is just so boring.”
“Yes, well I—half-elves don’t really sleep—so,” he coughs. “Did you know I wrote the note with mage hand?”
“Fitz, did you really?” She grins, and he preens. Clasping his hands behind his back also does nice things for his chest, and really it’s a good thing he’s too proper to ever roll up his shirtsleeves, because she doesn’t expect she’d ever be able to focus on anything else if he went around showing off his forearms, too.
Maybe she’ll be able to corrupt him a little.
“I did! I didn’t even smudge the ink.”
“That’s wonderful.” It’s a success that could seem so trivial, but Rainer knows what it is to treasure small victories, and she knows how much fulfillment using magic and mastering spells brings her. If Fitzroy can learn to love magic, he’ll be that much closer to settling into the new life it’s brought him.
“Thank you. I, er, did wonder about your methodology, so to speak. The ink was such an… interesting rust color.”
“Oh, yes, I used my own blood. Lots more convenient than getting up and getting my inkwell,” she says brightly, knowing people tend not to challenge her when she speaks about her more… macabre habits as though they’re perfectly normal lifehacks.
“Ingenious,” Fitzroy says weakly.
“Thanks!”
A shadow looms over them both.
“It is time now for… the class,” rumbles the firblog.
“Time to stop lollygagging about, Sir Fitzroy,” Argo says. “Good morning, Rainer.”
“Good morning, boys. I should go eat, anyway,” she tells Fitzroy.
“Yes, of course, of course, enjoy your meal.”
“I’ll see you later by the dock?”
“Yes, I will be there. Indeed. I will see you then. Er, goodbye,” he says as Argo gently tugs him back out into the hall. Rainer waves as he goes, then turns back to her breakfast, an easy smile on her face.
Fitzroy rushes back to the Annex during lunch to freshen up. He dons a handsome cloak and pins it with his most expensive (but not his largest) brooch. He looks in the mirror and considers. He wants to impress Rainer, not have her think him an insufferable dandy. He leaves the heavy brocade around his shoulder but switches the jeweled brooch out for a simple cloak pin.
“Yer runnin’ late kiddo.” Only Gary’s mouth comes to life. It is extremely unnerving; Fitzroy yelps accordingly. Then, the words sinking in, he rushes through the Annex and across the grounds to the dock.
It’s a brisk autumn afternoon. With the exertion he’s quite warm, but there’s a breeze that makes him thankful for his cloak. Rainer has a blanket across her lap in addition to what looks to be a specially-tailored cloak. It drapes around her charmingly, a cheery green plaid.
Fitzroy stops short. Then he sweeps a bow, unsure if it’s the right thing to do, but figuring he might as well err on the side of more courteous.
Rainer giggles, but it’s not condescending. “I’m not going to curtsey for you.”
“I wouldn’t expect—that is you—er, it’s entirely unnecessary,” Fitzroy splutters.
“Shall we walk?” Rainer says brightly.
“Yes, alright.”
He stuffs his hands in his pockets—an old nervous tic—and they set off around the lake.
“I do apologize for Snippers waking you up,” he says. “My roommates hadn’t yet gone to bed, and I don’t really sleep, per se, so I didn’t really have a point of reference…”
Rainer waves him off. “I’m a light sleeper anyway, if it wasn’t Snippers it would have been something else.”
“Noisy roommates?” Fitzroy sympathizes.
“Oh, no. I actually have a single. Sometimes I hear my neighbors, though.”
“That must be so nice.”
“Sometimes.” She shrugs. “Most of the heroes and villains do have one roommate, but I got a medical exception. It’s not… that is, it can still get a bit lonely.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that,” Fitzroy says honestly.
“There’s pros and cons to everything.”
“Mm.” Fitzroy casts around for a change of subject. “How do you like being a villain? If that’s not too improper a question.”
“Oh! Well, I like necromancy, and villainy sort of comes with the territory.” She considers as the breeze ruffles her hair. “I think it’s more fun to be a villain, honestly. It’s more like playing a part. Heroes are under more pressure because people assume they’re like that all the time – but I can put my villain role on the shelf most of the time and people are just pleasantly surprised.”
“I… suppose that makes sense.” Fitzroy hadn’t thought about it like that, the implications of Goodness, how it could spread and become more than just a job, whether one wanted it or not.
“And…” Rainer continues, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, “I liked having you as my henchman.”
“Even though I blew up the game?” Fitzroy jokes gamely.
“Keeps things interesting! Besides, if you’re going to have crazy powerful unpredictable magic, I’d rather it be on my side.”
“Well, Lady Rainer, it was my honor serving as your henchman. I—shall look forward to doing so again.” He can’t help the earnestness that creeps into his teasing tone.
“We could start now,” Rainer says lowly. “If you don’t mind taking orders from me.”
She flew her chair so skillfully, he hadn’t noticed her getting so close. But she is very, very close. Her eyes are big and beautiful and his throat is dry.
“I don’t. Mind, that is.” He swallows “Uh, my lady.”
“Okay. Okay, good.” She’s blushing, but Fitzroy knows he must be too. He thinks wildly that it’s strange, or maybe wonderful, for a necromancer to look so alive. “Step closer, then.”
He does, a little afraid that he’ll push her and send the chair floating away, but it holds steady even as her knees knock against his legs.
“Put your hands on the arms.” Her voice is so steady. He brackets her in; it’s all he can do to hold her gaze.
“Brush the hair off my face.” She tilts her chin up to help him. He takes one hand and tucks the curtain of dark hair behind her ear. She shivers when his thumb brushes the shell of her ear. Fitzroy swallows hard; he doesn’t pull his hand back.
“Good,” she breathes. “Now kiss me.”
He leans in, and the magic of it is tangible before their lips even touch. She smells excellent, like vanilla and lotion and not at all like death, which he’d been slightly (reasonably) worried about. Then their lips are touching, and he doesn’t even have words for the soft way her mouth moves under him. He angles his head to the side, and her lips part. She brings a hand up to the back of his neck, below his ponytail; Fitzroy has exactly one braincell that still has the wherewithal to be thankful for the chair’s solid construction since it is now supporting both their weights with admirable steadiness.
She breaks the kiss but doesn’t pull back from his space, and that’s magic too. They breathe the same air. He takes in her deep golden skin and dark brows. One hand is still tangled in her hair; it curls gently around his fingers.
“I think that was a promising start.” She speaks quietly, but her brown eyes sparkle with characteristic joy.
“Yes, certainly.” Fitzroy pushes his glasses up his nose with the hand that’s not caressing her hair. “A partnership I am most eager to embark on.”
“Even though I can do this?” She bites her lip, as though from nervousness, and it’s enough to distract him from the obvious implication of her question. She flicks her long, lovely fingers.
A rodent skeleton somersaults out of a compartment by her shoulder. It does a complicated acrobatic routine across the arm of her chair, jerking closer and closer. Fitzroy stumbles back so hard he nearly falls, narrowing his eyes at Rainer’s suppressed laughter.
“Well I’m not going to kiss those monstrosities, but I don’t see what that has to do with kissing you!”
She laughs properly, loud and clear, and it’s worth the bruised pride of nearly falling. He thinks it’s probably worth a whole lot more than that.