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It was drizzling slightly. The grey clouds cast a somber pall over the school grounds, and Fitzroy cursed his luck as he pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. Why did it have to be raining today ? His boots made squelching noises in the wet grass. "Eugh," he muttered.
Despite the gloomy weather, and the looming threat of war, Fitzroy felt almost warm. He had asked Rainer to meet him under the big tree after a significant amount of prodding from his roommates (well, mainly from Argo). Apparently they "had a lot to talk about together". Fitzroy wasn't entirely sure that Argo was right, but he trusted him enough to give it a chance.
His heart was lighter as he saw Rainer. She had a little black parasol sheltering her from the rain, and there was a blanket draped over her lap. She smiled at him. "Fitzroy! I expected Argo and Master Firbolg, too. Is it just the two of us today?"
"Ah, yes--or, that was the plan--I could get them?" Fitzroy offered. Gods, I'm quite possibly the most awkward half-elf ever to have existed.
"No, that's okay! I was just...is this about the, uh, the war, and my dad? Because he hasn't figured out a time yet. Or...maybe the... trial you mentioned?"
"Oh, no, neither of those. Maybe another time? But I'm not sure I'm allowed--anyway, no. Something...something else," said Fitzroy.
Rainer tilted her head. "Okay! What, um...what is it?"
"Rainer, I…" Fitzroy swallowed. He hadn't realized how hard it would be to broach the subject. "I feel as if I need to explain myself."
"Explain yourself?" she repeated. Suddenly, she shivered.
Fitzroy's eyes widened. "Oh, goodness, are you cold?"
"Ah, just a little? It's not a big deal."
"Should we go inside? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked to meet you outside in this sort of weather--"
"Fitz," Rainer said fondly. "I'm not so sweet that a little rain will melt me, you know. Just say what you wanted to say."
"Okay, well, then," Fitzroy fumbled. "You know when we were talking just the other day here? And I mentioned a, um, dream that the demon Chaos had shown me--well, all three of us got one, but this one was specifically mine, obviously, or it wouldn't be relevant--a dream which was supposed to be...our perfect futures?"
Rainer's cheeks flushed slightly. "Yeah. Yeah, I remember. You said, um, I had proposed marriage to you?"
"Ha, silly, right?"
Her blush darkened and she looked away from him. "Of course, so silly," she mumbled.
He winced. Fitzroy might have been less insightful than some people, but it was pretty obvious that he had hurt or disappointed Rainer with his flippancy. "Actually, no--I'm sorry, Rainer, I was being...deflective? Is that a word? I was deflecting."
She glanced back at him hesitantly. "Hm?"
Fitzroy pushed his hood back and swept his damp hair off his forehead. "The thing is, I actually don't think it's silly? Because it was, I mean, I did want that future when Chaos showed it to me. Do want it. Most of it, I mean, the whole executing a dude wasn't great but the bed was cool and the servants, and my closet was tight , and also I looked hella good in the mirror, those curse scars really suited me--"
"You're rambling, Fitzroy."
"You are right, I apologize, and anyway, that letter? From you? Was a big part of what I liked. I liked that you were in my future ten or fifteen years from now. I do want that. I really, really want that."
Even the tips of her ears had turned pink by now. Rainer stared at him, her blue-gray eyes wide. "You do?"
He nodded.
"I really want that, too," she said. "If we both survive this war, if we get a future…"
Fitzroy's heart seemed to stop at the idea of Rainer not surviving the war. He couldn't help but reach out to her.
She grabbed his hand. "Yeah, I know. It's really scary, right? I mean, I didn't expect my college years to include an actual demon war. But then, I didn't expect them to include a sweet, handsome, dorky half-elf who stole my heart, either."
He opened and closed his mouth a few times. "...I am gathering from context clues that you are referring to me there, but could I perhaps get some verbal confirmation?" Fitzroy said, dumbfounded.
Rainer giggled, and Fitzroy's heart soared. "Oh, gods, you just tripled the dorky part. Yes, of course I'm talking about you."
"Cool! That's super cool. Hey, Rainer? I really like you, a lot. Your squirrel friends terrify me and truthfully, you scare me a little too, but you are one of my best friends and the thought of spending time with you makes me really happy, and I also like looking at your face? Just looking at your face makes me happy," Fitzroy told her.
Currently, her face was so red that he didn't think she could physically blush any further. "Yeah, right back at you," she managed. She linked their fingers together.
Fitzroy felt her shiver again. "Can--hey, can we go inside? My hair is going to get horribly frizzy if it gets much more wet."
She shot him a look that suggested she absolutely knew what he was doing, and didn't really mind. "Sure. Want to come to my room? It's a little more, uh, private than yours." She had a single room, one of the few on campus.
"That works!" He ducked under the edge of her parasol a little and she adjusted the floating height of her chair to accommodate him as they made their way to the main dorms.
Rainer's room was on the first floor, and was the first door on the left. It was warm in her room, and the various surfaces of her dresser, desk, and bed were all strewn with papers and books and clothes and dishes from the dining hall (and a few stray bones, which he did his best to ignore), but the floor was entirely clean. Fitzroy saw why as she nudged her chair in ahead of him and began straightening up. It would have been difficult for her to reach to pick up anything on the floor. "Sorry it's a bit of a mess," she said.
"It's nothing, the Firbolg leaves leaves everywhere," Fitzroy responded.
She laughed. "Why doesn't that surprise me? Um, do you want to sit?" she asked, quickly pulling the covers up on her bed and removing a few sweaters from it. "I don't have a chair, other than this one, there's not much of a point."
Fitzroy sat down on the bed. There was some sort of mattress topper that was extremely comfortable, and the quilt was soft and thick.
Rainer maneuvered her chair back so she was facing him. Her blush had faded, but now she looked a little nervous. "Do you want, um, a towel to dry your hair with?"
He patted his hair and cast Prestidigitation, hoping it would go off without a hitch. The cantrip worked fine, and his hair and his cloak both dried. "Nah, I'm good. Oh, dear, my hair is a bit of a...puff now, isn't it?"
"It has some character," Rainer admitted. She reached out and ruffled it. For anyone else, Fitzroy would have ducked away with a scowl. For her, he sat still and hid a smile. "I think it's cute."
It was his turn to blush. "Do you like this sort of weather?" he blurted out. Ah, yes, perfect. Exactly what everyone wants to talk about all the time. The weather.
But Rainer didn't seem to think the question was cliche or boring. "It's nice, actually. Maybe I kinda have to because of my name, but I like the rain. Even if cold weather can cause worse flare-ups sometimes. But then again, so can hot weather. I guess my body just doesn't like temperatures?"
"Are you doing alright right now?" asked Fitzroy. "We definitely don't have to talk about it, and I don't want to be overbearing, I just want to make sure--"
"It's okay," she reassured him. "Um, it's kinda average. Not a stellar day, but I'm sitting up without much pain and I can focus and think, so I'm doing better than I could be. I don't...you know, we've talked about this, I don't like every single person asking me how I'm doing every single day, but it's okay once in a while. Especially because I know with you, if my answer is 'super shitty', you won't make some awkward excuse to leave so you don't have to find things to say in response. I can actually be honest about it instead of having to lie and say I'm doing great so other people are more comfortable."
"It sucks that you have to do that with anyone ," Fitzroy said.
"I have to do it less and less these days. I've got so many genuinely good friends now." She smiled wistfully. "I know this school has problems--including the principal being a demon prince in disguise--but it's hard to fully accept that because it's been such a good place for me."
"I'm glad it's been so good for you," Fitzroy said earnestly. "And I hope that after we defeat Gray, we can still...just go to school. The real Hieronymous will take over and everything will be better than it was before."
"That would be nice, wouldn't it?" sighed Rainer. Then she paused. "Fitzroy, can we go back to talking about what we were talking about under the tree?"
"Y-yes," he said, startled at the sudden shift. "What about it?"
"Well, do you want to...be dating ? Do you want to wait until after the war is over? Do you want to do nothing and pretend that we never talked about it?" she prompted.
"No! Definitely not that last one," Fitzroy said, horrified. "Do you know how much courage it took to confess all that to you? Pretending we never talked about it would mean all of that was in vain!"
Laughing, Rainer said, "Okay, so...do you want to maybe go on a date with me?"
"Ye-es?" he faltered. "Only, I've never exactly...done that before?"
"Never been on a date?"
"No, I've been on a date!" he said hastily. "But it was...I haven't had a girlfriend or...anything like that, since I was, uh, thirteen? It didn't...work very well. So I don't really count what we did as dating. Since it mostly involved sitting outside our school in silence and sharing snacks. And it didn't end… great ."
Rainer was quiet for a moment. "Do you mind if I ask why…"
"I mean, does any thirteen-year-olds' relationship end well ?" Fitzroy said, forcing himself to laugh. This one had ended more poorly than most, he was pretty sure, but he didn't want to talk about the details right now.
"No, I meant…" She smiled a little. "No, I was going to ask why you haven't been in a relationship since then."
"It didn't seem important when I was a teenager," he answered. "Then I started working on becoming a knight, and it was...a lot of late hours, and I was also working...well, anyway, I didn't have lots of time to meet people? And I didn't care enough to make time. At Clyde Nite's Night Knight School, I had plenty of time for dating if I'd wanted to. And let me tell you, a lot of people there were dating. But…" He swallowed, a little uncomfortable. "Well, anyway, that's me! How about--"
"No, finish your thought. Please?" Rainer requested. She leaned forward. "I want to know. You've never talked about this before."
Fitzroy hunched over a little. "Do I have to?"
"Of course not. But you can , you can tell me anything. You can trust me with anything, Fitz." Rainer shifted slightly and transferred herself from her chair onto the bed to sit next to him. She took his hand.
"Nobody, um, liked me there?" he said in a small voice. "You might as well know, I'm not exactly...I mean, my family isn't...well, we're not rich like I pretend to be. And I hadn't figured out how to pretend very well when I first started going there. I was on a scholarship, and most of the people there were paying tuition, and they could tell I was different. In...in a lot of ways." He cleared his throat and pretended that he didn't see how sympathetically Rainer was looking up at him. "In any case, I didn't have any friends and certainly no dating opportunities there."
Rainer stroked her thumb across the back of his hand. "That sounds rough."
"I didn't really mind...the not-dating part. That didn't feel important to me, I never felt the need to really...seek that out? But it did kinda suck, having everyone hate me."
"Is it better here?"
"It is now. Um, for a while I was pretty sure everyone hated me here too, but this time because I seemed too rich, since I got pretty good at faking it. But not anymore." Fitzroy sighed quietly. "I think I have bigger problems now, anyway."
"You sure do." Rainer pressed his hand in between hers. "But I'm happy you know you have real friends now."
He leaned a little closer to her. "Me, too. Also, it feels a little weird to talk about going on a date when we have about six months before all hell breaks loose, quite literally, but I would still like to go on a date with you."
"Well, we don't have to focus our whole lives on the war, right? We deserve an evening off every now and then. We could go for dinner in Last Hope?" Rainer suggested.
"That would be very nice!" he agreed.
"Maybe this Friday after class?"
"I'm pretty sure that works for me, unless something unexpected comes up."
Her mouth twitched. "Like having to stand trial for something?"
"I still cannot tell you anything about that," he said.
"I figured."
Fitzroy's mouth was a little dry. He could hardly believe that this had worked . Rainer actually wanted to go on a date with him. He would have to interrogate Argo about how the hell he had known--had Rainer told him?
Rainer bumped her head against his arm gently. "Hey, I'd love to hang out more with you soon, but I've been sitting upright for too long and I should probably lay down and do my PT stretches so my joints don't lock up later. There's usually a lot of swearing involved, and I don't really want to subject you to that today, so…"
"I will take my leave," Fitzroy responded. Instinctively, he lifted her hand up and kissed it.
That must have been the right thing to do, because she blushed again and smiled. "You really take the whole Knight thing seriously, huh? That was really sweet, Fitz. Now shoo, I'll send you a message in the notebook."
"I will be eagerly anticipating it." He stood up, considered bowing, decided that was stupid, gave an awkward wave, and left her room.
All in all, that did not go nearly as poorly as it could have, he thought to himself. With a slightly giddy smile on his face, he walked through the rain with his hood down. Not even the black clouds in the distance indicating a coming storm could deter his happiness today.