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one.
The first time that Ashe heard someone talking about something being arousing, he felt his ears burning at the sound of their words, their description just like the passages in his war novels he’d skim over because they made him uncomfortable. He was thankful that he wasn’t one of the boys involved in the conversation, but didn’t want to make it obvious that he could hear their words of desiring tender touches and kisses in places he felt awkward hearing others talking about. Conversations like that slowly built up to becoming the norm for the group of boys (and the occasional girl) that he found himself on the outskirts of, and every time one of them would start down that path he’d pull his nose a bit closer to the page he was reading, wanting the talk to completely disappear.
They spoke of their desires and arousal as being something that everyone had to experience at some point, and if Ashe had somehow gotten dragged into their talk he would have been hard-pressed to come up with an instance where he’d felt anything close to what they described. The closest he could even think of was when he’d be reading a book about grand military actions in a fantasy land, or legends that had been collected from generations long since past, and the climax of their conquests would fill him with such a prideful sense of joy that lingered from head to toe for the rest of the day. But he knew that if he dared mention that as his highest peak, they’d laugh at him and tell him that someone else’s climax couldn’t be considered part of his own, and so he was glad they never once considered asking him about it.
At the same time, though, as they grew older and the conversations grew bawdier by the week, between classes comparing sexual endeavors and practices, he began to suspect that they were leaving him out because it made sense to do such a thing. He wasn’t much to look at, with his splash of freckles framing his bright eyes, masked overall by his gray hair that hung similar to a mop on his head, his lean body always covered in baggy hoodies and pants that were ill-fitting, too long for his legs and tied tightly to him by a ragged belt. He’d been around these others, students with family histories and money and places they called home with their own actual parents, since they’d started in the school and they were quickly approaching graduation, and yet he couldn’t remember ever once having a conversation with any of them that wasn’t short and snappy. He didn’t have the same bond with them that the outcasts in his favorite tales found with the people they unwillingly were surrounded by, and that only added to the idea that he was left out on purpose.
Coming to that conclusion didn’t give Ashe anything to do about it, however; the school was small and clique-heavy, and he wasn’t going to be able to find solace in a new social group as a shy, book-loving young adult when he’d missed when everyone else had found their groups years before. So things stayed as they were, he kept listening in to conversations he didn’t physically understand and kept getting left out of any chances to talk in them.
That changed with a couple weeks to go before they graduated from the school, one of the ladies who occasionally was involved in the conversations coming to sit with him rather than the overall group. “Hi there, Ashe,” she greeted, shocking him as he had no idea she knew his name. “I thought maybe today I could talk to you and get to know you a bit better, since all I really know is that you like reading. What’re you reading today?”
“O-oh, this? It’s just a war novel about the beorc and the laguz of some forgotten land,” he replied, closing the book he’d been reading to show the smiling girl its title. “Nothing too remarkable or notable, but it’s written in the form of war diaries of a commander of the beorc and I find that to be quite interesting.”
She tapped a finger to her lips in thought, looking from the cover of the book to Ashe’s face and back. “I think I’ve heard of the laguz before,” she told him. “There’s some singing ones, right? Birds or something?”
“The herons, specifically, but yes.” Surprised not only that she was talking to him, but that she knew something about what he was reading, Ashe didn’t know what else there was that he could say to her without coming off as laser-focused on his book. “It’s an interesting read if you’re familiar with the stories of their wars, but I’m more in it for the tactical aspects these diaries are providing. I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to be a leader in a time of war, but something tells me that’s not a realistic goal to have in life.”
“It’s definitely more plausible than my goal.” Gesturing grandly with her hands as if she was pointing out the words on a marquee, she continued, “I’ve always been dreaming of seeing my name in lights on a concert hall’s sign, proclaiming that, for one night only, they have the gorgeous and definitely talented Annette on stage, but…it’s not going to happen. I can’t even sing in front of my friends.” That was when her hands dropped into her lap and she glanced over to everyone she usually hung around, them in the middle of some conversation that had playful punches and shoves being thrown. “But hey, impossible dreams are good guidance to get you to other places, aren’t they?”
His eyes also following hers over to her friends, he mumbled, “I suppose that would be true.”
“What’s got you so down? Weren’t we just talking about things that make us happy, even if they’re related to dreams we won’t achieve?” Her head turning back to him to catch him staring towards her friends, she did a quick double-take to make sure she knew where he was looking before coming to her own conclusion. “Is this about them? What did they do?”
“Nothing, they did nothing,” he replied, which in itself was the truth, but he knew that Annette was going to take it as him deflecting. “I was just looking where you were. I can tell your friends mean a lot to you, and have meant a lot this whole time we’ve been here.”
“Sometimes having good friends in life is better than achieving your dreams.” Her face lighting up, Annette was clearly thinking about something to do, and when she grabbed Ashe’s wrist and tried to pull him to standing he was immediately resistant. “Come on, I’ll properly introduce you to all of them!”
His eyes went wide and he kept tugging his arm back to where the rest of his body was going to remain. “No, it’s quite all right, I don’t need proper introductions with them. I’m familiar with Felix and Ingrid, we worked on a project together, and Dedue and I have worked in the kitchens many times together. I’m fine right where I am, honestly.”
“But you haven’t met everyone, then! Stop being silly and open up your horizons a little! Do you think the singing laguz would be so memorable if they stayed all alone?” It became clear right in that moment that all Annette knew about the herons was that they were singers, because the memorable aspect to them was that they had indeed been isolated, but her attempt at connecting to him through his current interest was enough to get him to give in to her request. After all, meeting everyone properly after so many years of sitting aside and listening to their talks would only be right.
The very first question that he was asked after everyone had shared their names was about if he’d ever slept with a girl. When he said no, it became if he’d slept with a guy (with everyone saying there was zero judgment if he had), which also came with a negative answer. “Have you ever even had your first kiss?” Sylvain, the one that’d always been starting these sorts of conversations, asked with his head tilted somewhat to the side. Ashe’s response was to shake his head rapidly, knowing that he most certainly hadn’t. “Ah, well, if you think you’re interested, I’m sure Ingrid’ll offer up her lips for the cause and Felix won’t mind it one bit.”
“Excuse me? Since when do you get to decide if I’m going to cheat on my boyfriend in front of him and kiss our new friend?” Ingrid’s glare she was giving towards Sylvain softened when she looked at Ashe, an apologetic expression on her lips. “Please excuse him and his big mouth, he says things without meaning them. I’m sure you’re saving your first kiss for marriage, or you’ve just never met someone you’d want to have it with.”
She was saying words he understood, but the meaning behind them was completely lost on him. “I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone,” he admitted, earning a couple gasps from the group, but Ingrid’s understanding look remained steadfast, as did Annette’s encouraging one next to him. “It’s not something I’ve ever thought I needed, just like a girlfriend or a boyfriend or…any romantic anything, if we’re being completely honest.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if some of these guys were the same way,” Annette muttered, while Ingrid’s eyes shifted over to Sylvain, who seemed completely shocked that anyone could not want such a thing in their life. “Maybe having you around them will make them think more with their heads and not so much with other parts, Ashe!”
He couldn’t say that was exactly the role he wanted to have in a friendship group, but it was better than sitting on the sidelines and listening to them without being included. Even though it would have been best if they’d stopped the conversations that he felt left out of, but even with the physical presence they made it a point to not ask him about his conquests, because they knew he wasn’t having any.
two.
A handful of years post-graduation, Ashe found himself invited to a wedding between two of the friends he’d made there in the last weeks of school. The invitation itself was gorgeous, with hand-lettering done in a blue paint that reflected light depending on how it was being viewed, and he smiled to see the faces of two of his friends looking so happy in the picture. But when he opened the attached card and saw that the note he was meant to send back with his RSVP on it had already been partially filled out, he felt a tinge of sadness wash over him.
In the box asking about bringing a plus-one, someone had already taken the time to mark that he wouldn’t be, and just seeing that done on his behalf made him realize that his friends all must have thought him strange to not have tried settling down now that they were full-fledged adults. Rather than let it get him down for too long, he filled out the rest in a similarly colored pen and sent it on its way, hanging the invitation up on the door of his fridge in the little place he called home.
Days later, he got a call from Annette, who asked him about the different colors on the card he’d sent in. “It’s the strangest thing, actually,” he started, knowing that she’d only seen it because she was in charge of organizing the wedding and therefore would be in the know of who was bringing extra guests. “When I got the invitation, the box about a plus-one had already been filled in for me, almost as if whoever put it together was making that assumption on my behalf. Not that they were wrong, of course, but…”
“I wish I could say I knew who all was there when Ingrid was putting these together! Ugh, I wish I could’ve stayed the whole time, but I had things to attend to that were more important.” It was obvious that Annette was annoyed, but Ashe wasn’t going to dig into the details. “It was probably Sylvain who did it though, and I’ll make sure he gets in trouble for it, because that’s not nice of him to do.”
“No, no, it’s fine, there’s no reason to cause a scene on my behalf. He was right in his choice of answer and it saved me just a bit of time in filling things out.” Why she was so bothered by it for him, he didn’t know, but he did appreciate that she was ready to start a fight among friends to make things right. “You shouldn’t focus too much on these tiny details, it’s not even your big day to be so concerned with.”
“I know it’s not my big day,” she agreed, before grumbling something under her breath that she quickly moved past. “But I said I’d help be in charge of it and I guess that makes my job noticing all those little things and fixing them. I’ll talk to Sylvain and tell him to knock it off before he ruins his friends’ wedding, and he’ll get the idea.”
It didn’t quite feel right for Ashe to leave the conversation at that, but he knew Annette was getting heated about what had happened and he didn’t want to be the one responsible for her making a bad decision. Instead, he thanked her for her understanding and checking in on him, and that was where he left things. The next day, he was getting a barrage of messages from Sylvain asking him if he was actually bothered by the gesture and if he was, to let him know because that wasn’t cool of him to do if it was such a problem, and instead of saying the truth he laughed it off and told Sylvain that he’d appreciated the gesture. If the world knew that he wasn’t romantically interested in anyone, then what they did with that information was their choice, and Ashe couldn’t control what everyone did in regards to his lack of romantic desires.
three.
It was months after the invitation was sent out that the wedding took place, a gaudy event held in a church in the heart of Fhirdiad. Just getting to go to the city for a day was a treat for Ashe, and he’d set aside money to make the trip worth the while, making sure he’d get to go to all of the related festivities and see some of his other friends outside of the church’s walls before he was back home trying to make ends meet in his small town life. Naturally, the first person he wanted to see when he got there was Annette, who greeted him with a giant hug before pulling back and checking to make sure that he was fine with the physical affection. “Hugs are completely acceptable,” he assured her, allowing for her to come in for a second one. “It’s so good to see you again.”
“I’ve been counting down the days for this!” she squealed, her grip tightening around him. “It’s almost finally over, all of this wedding stuff, and then I can go back to my boring life that I was leading before I got roped into all this planning!” He could tell that she was mentally exhausted, and when they’d broken out of their hug and she was taking him from the bus stop and deeper into Fhirdiad, the weather that day relatively nice for the cold capital city. “You’re the last person to arrive of the non-family attendees, but I knew you’d be getting here when you were, so I’ve been telling everyone else not to worry.”
“What, exactly, am I supposed to do in town when there’s so much to do back home?” he asked, to which she gave a playful shrug. “It’s easier for me to focus on getting things handled in my town than it is to be a tourist around here. Are we going to be seeing everyone else tonight, or is it just going to be after the wedding?”
She stopped walking, almost like she was thinking about how to answer the question, but then she turned down the next street and he realized her pause was to figure out where she was leading him. “The rehearsal is tonight, which you are welcome to attend if you want, but I don’t even think everyone’s going to be at that. I know Dimitri and Dedue are both busy, and…well, everyone else has to be there, don’t they?” He laughed, knowing why that would be the case, and she seemed excited to hear him in such high spirits. “But it’s really up to you if you want to be there. I know that Ingrid was going to have some of her friends from her international horse club there, so maybe you’ll…”
As she was trailing off, he knew he could finish her sentence for her. “Meet someone that I’ll fall in love with? Very unlikely, things like that only happen in books.”
“I was going to say make a new friend or two, but it didn’t feel right.” They continued with their talk about what the plans were until they’d gotten to where he was staying for the duration of his trip to Fhirdiad, a grand hotel right down the street from the church that he could only afford to stay at because Annette had pulled some strings with another friend of hers to make it happen. After they’d checked him in and gotten him up to his room with a view of the city skyline, they talked more about what he was going to do that night, and even though she was doing her best to make it clear that he could go to the rehearsal if he wanted to, he chose to stay there at the hotel and see everyone at the ceremony. She seemed hesitant to leave him alone, but his assurance that he would be fine was what sold her on being able to do it.
The moment there was no one else in the room with him, Ashe threw his suitcase on the bed and opened it up, pulling out first the suit he’d bought for the occasion to let it hang and not get quite so wrinkled, followed by his shoes so that they could be shined, and lastly a book about legends of Faerghus that he was in the middle of rereading for what had to be the hundredth time. There was something about traveling to the capital that made him want to refresh himself on the legends of the area, of heroic kings and brave knights that served them, knowing that he’d gone to a school with people directly related to those royals and their lieges and would be seeing them at the next day’s wedding.
Only leaving the room that night to go grab dinner, he was fully prepared to hole himself up there with his book until he fell asleep, but as he was crossing the street outside to go pick up his order from the café that he could see from his room, a traffic cop motioned for him and everyone else to stop moving. Rolling through the street was a cavalcade of some sort, and while everyone else was fixated on the people riding in open-top cars through the streets, Ashe couldn’t help but stare at the cop and how important he seemed to be in that moment. There was very little he wouldn’t give to have a role as necessary in society as someone protecting people from being hit by cars, and he almost wanted to say something about it, but figured that a grown man (well, he was in his early twenties, so he wasn’t fully grown by most people’s standards) fawning over a cop would be seen as a bit strange.
The one and only thing he noticed about the people parading around was that one of them had a really neat mark on her face that she framed with her hair, which he only happened to see because she was facing the crowd he was in as her vehicle passed. Deeming it insignificant, all he could think about as he went to retrieve his meal was the cop and how friendly he’d been when directing everyone to stop and to resume walking, and he sort of wished he’d still been there once he’d collected the food and needed to cross back over.
four.
Annette was back the next morning to get Ashe and take him to the wedding, already dressed in her nice clothes when she got there. He was admittedly taken by surprise to see her standing at the other side of the hotel room’s door wearing a floor length gown a creamy orange color that managed to stand out against her brighter orange hair that hung in curls down her back. “Thought I’d be smart to get ready before getting us there, instead of needing to take the time later to get ready. Less lugging my dress around the better, really,” she said as she came inside, noting that he was still in his pajama pants and an old shirt labeled with the name of the academy they’d gone to. “Are you going to get ready soon too?”
“I’d figured you’d tell me when you were on your way so I could do exactly that, but it shouldn’t take me too long to get ready. You’re more than welcome to sit on the bed and wait, if you’d like.” She declined the offer, citing not wanting to wrinkle her dress from sitting down, and he nodded, understanding that it was important she look her best. “Well, to pass the time you can always look through the book I brought with me. Nothing about laguz and beorc this time, I’m afraid.”
While he grabbed his clothes and took them into the bathroom to get ready, he could hear her laughing about what he’d said, and he realized that he’d held on to that one common interest they had for so long that he couldn’t even be sure that she was still aware why he brought it up. He couldn’t help that he spent just about all of his free time reading, and therefore remembered details about real-life things that correlated with things he’d read in books. “You know, I’ve always dreamed about staying in this hotel,” he heard her say, rather loudly, and he noticed that her voice was coming right from the other side of the door. “That’s why when we needed to find somewhere for you to stay, I got Mercie to pull some strings to have it be here, so I could at least be in one of the rooms for a little while. Pretty silly thing to think about, I know.”
“There’s probably a reason you wanted to stay here, isn’t there?” he asked, while in the middle of undressing. This was bound to be the sort of situation that most guys would have been thrilled to find themselves in, taking their clothes off with a dolled-up woman in the room, but Ashe saw it as merely a moment between friends. “You can tell me, you know I won’t judge you.”
“Oh, I know you won’t judge me! It’s understanding me that’s the problem, really.” She sighed, and he could hear her tapping on the wall. “Did you notice what the name of this place is? The Fral, the most exclusive hotel in town, the place that politicians and their families alike have stayed when visiting Fhirdiad since it opened.”
“I did notice it, yes, and it felt quite familiar when I read it on the front doors. I just couldn’t place where it was that it was familiar from.” It had been when he was walking back with dinner the night before that he’d seen the name of the hotel on the doors in a fancy, curlicued font that made it stand out as a big deal. Had he known that the sense of it being familiar was something that would come up in conversation, he would have looked into it on his own.
Thankfully, Annette was there to jog his memory, leaving him mumbling about how he should’ve known it from the start. “Its name is the shortened form of Fraldarius, which I know you’re familiar with because that’s Felix’s last name. The very same Felix who we’re going to be watching get married here in a couple hours.” The distress in Annette’s voice made Ashe consider opening the door to make sure she was okay, but he was standing there without pants and an unbuttoned dress shirt on, so he reconsidered doing it. “I can’t believe that this place belongs to his family and he’s probably brought Ingrid on so many nights here, but he…”
“What was that last part?” he asked, after she’d trailed off into nothingness. “I couldn’t quite catch what you said.”
“I said that he’s brought her here so many times, but it’s always been my dream and he couldn’t even make it happen for me.”
Ashe, not sure where she was going with that, laughed to himself. “That makes sense, though, doesn’t it? I mean, they’re getting married, it would be silly for him to bring someone else on a date to his family’s hotel.”
“He could have done it when I was dating him. Just a peek in one of the rooms would’ve been enough for me, and he knew that!” Her scream that followed had him lunging for the door, but she was calmed and explaining herself further before he could get his hand on the handle. “I didn’t come from a family that had some huge important backstory to it, and he knew how much it meant to me to see the place that ran in his family for generations, but he chose not to bring me here for some reason and I’ve always…held it against him, I guess? He knew I wanted to be a star, to dip my toes in the life of the luxurious for a change, and he gave that all to Ingrid instead of me.”
“I never knew that you and him were together,” Ashe admitted, hurrying to get ready so that there would no longer be a door keeping him from his friend in her time of need. “When I got to be part of the group back at the school, they were already together.”
She let out a long, forced breath, before replying, “Yeah, I know, we’d broken up not long before that. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t work out as it was that he wanted to get with the girl he’d always wanted, since she was finally ready to get with him.” The concept of wanting to be with someone still didn’t quite make sense to Ashe, as he’d never felt that way about a single soul, but he knew it wasn’t the time to point that out. “There was a lot that happened in our group before you were really a part of it, most of it to do with them and their drama.”
“What kind of drama was it? I’ve read historical dramas, you know.” He wasn’t going to say it then, but he’d slowly come around to enjoying reading people’s romantic issues in stories and he enjoyed that much more than hearing about real-life romantic dramas.
“Ingrid used to have something for Felix’s older brother, but then he died and she was bitter about it and didn’t want to date Felix because he wasn’t the same, so I got to date him until she was over it and then they got together, that sort of drama. Sylvain used to always say it was better than the soap operas he’d watch when he’d get sick.” A lot of emotional baggage was being unleashed in that hotel room, and the moment he was fully dressed Ashe was out of the bathroom to wrap Annette up in the biggest hug he could manage, her not shying away from it despite the clothing they were both wearing. “I wish that things had been different, but it worked out for them, now didn’t it?”
“You’ll find someone better than him,” he assured her, wanting to stroke her hair because that’s what he read people would do to comfort those they cared about. “Like…have you thought about trying any of your other friends?”
Her face scrunched up as she considered the idea, only to shoot it down. “Dedue and Mercie have been together for years, and Dimitri’s way out of my league and I couldn’t think about dating him anyway, and then there’s Sylvain, who—”
“I wouldn’t suggest for you to date Sylvain.”
“—I know, but he’s already got a girlfriend! She was supposed to be here for the wedding, but she, get this, has an engagement at an opera house to perform at tonight!” Another scream came out of Annette’s mouth, leading right into Ashe’s ear and disorienting him for a couple seconds. “I’m a decent enough singer, I think, but he finds some other girl who can sing better than me and have her name up in lights to get with!”
“I’m so sorry…” he apologized, not know what else there was he could say in that moment, because he didn’t know what there was that he could do as someone who loved Annette so deeply but didn’t love her in the way she was looking for. “Maybe at the wedding you’ll meet someone? That’s how it goes in romances, right?”
“Yeah, but for me? I think I’d be better off staying far away from romancing anyone else with ties to politics or hotels.”
five.
All in all, the wedding went about as well as it could, having been planned by an amateur who had just come clean about her feelings toward the couple who was getting married in the first place. Everything was in order, everyone who had a role in the ceremony was where they needed to be, and Ashe was able to sit in his assigned seat three rows back from the front to watch the whole thing by himself, just like he’d planned. Annette kept looking at him from her seat across the aisle from his, making sure that he was comfortable, but as she was there with her mother she couldn’t do much beyond give him small glances every now and again.
There was something about the performative romantic display that made him feel slightly uncomfortable, and he had to avert his eyes from the altar when the kissing started, even though everyone else was cheering for the newlyweds, and he couldn’t bring himself to look back at them seriously until after they’d finished up. When they passed him by hand-in-hand, he gave a halfhearted smile and a quiet clap, but that was all he could manage in the moment, Annette looking at him with a concerned expression when she was able to see his reaction. He knew that she was going to ask him about it when she got the chance, and he was steeling himself for that talk about how he just didn’t feel the greatest when it came to romantic endeavors.
But his focus on what he knew was going to come was completely obliterated when the members of the wedding party passed by as well, locked arms but nothing romantic between them. Sylvain looked like he was actively trying to distance himself from the woman he was paired with, her looking uncomfortable with being a focal point at the moment, but when the next pair came down and Dimitri had a familiar-looking woman on his arm, Ashe felt his whole world stop for a moment. The woman had long, purplish hair that was tied up and had various braids hanging throughout it, and that was notable enough, but what Ashe distinctly remembered was the mark on her eye that he’d seen the night before. In fact, he couldn’t even pay attention to the third pair that passed by, because he was thinking solely about her and the odds of having seen her again.
So when Annette was finally able to break away from her mother (who had gone to chat with the other parents who were there, whether they were relatives of the bride and groom or other members of the wedding party), Ashe couldn’t even let her begin to ask him about his sour reaction to things. “Annette, could you tell me who the lovely lady with the purple hair is?” he asked, cutting her off at the first syllable of what she aimed to say. “I saw her last night riding in a cavalcade, and now she’s here on Ingrid’s behalf.”
“Her? That’s Petra, her and Hapi and Marianne are all part of Ingrid’s international horse club she’s so fond of talking about, so naturally she wanted them here as her bridesmaids.” She gave Ashe a small smile as she saw him mouthing back the words he’d just heard. “I told you about them last night, didn’t I? Said they’d be at the rehearsal, right?”
“You did, I remember that.” It didn’t make sense, though, that someone who was meant to be at the rehearsal would be riding around in a open-top car, but then he realized it very well could have been Dimitri she was with, and as Dimitri was royalty in Faerghus it would make perfect sense for why they arrived the way they did. “Last night, did they get here together? Her and Dimitri, I mean?”
Annette’s smile grew a hair larger. “Oh, yeah, they did! She’s been staying at the Fral as well, penthouse suite from what I’ve heard. Kind of place a princess stays, though.”
“A…princess?” Ashe almost couldn’t believe what he’d just heard Annette say, but she nodded that he’d heard her correctly. “How did Ingrid manage to meet and befriend a princess in a horse club?”
“Don’t ask me, I just know that’s where they know each other from.”
six.
Never before in his life had Ashe felt like he needed to meet someone quite like there at the reception, when he was constantly checking over his shoulder looking for Petra, just to get to introduce himself to her. He was beginning to consider asking someone, most likely Annette, if the strange feeling he had deep down was something along the lines of romantic interest, but he didn’t want to be a burden on anyone at such an important event. He had plenty of chances to bring it up though, most notably when he got pulled aside by Sylvain to catch up on the past years’ worth of gossip and also have a proper apology for the plus-one stunt that had been pulled on him.
There was a lot that was going on there during that reception, between dances and things being tossed into crowds—all of the single ladies filed out onto the floor when Ingrid, dressed in her second gorgeous gown of the day, threw her bouquet, but Ashe felt saddened when he didn’t see Petra among them—and it never seemed like there was a moment to take a break. It was only when the cake had been sliced and people were able to eat it that Ashe found himself sitting down at one of the various tables, with Annette and her mother on one side and Dedue and who he assumed was Mercie (although she was referred to only as Mercedes by everyone else) on the other.
They weren’t speaking much, unless someone else came over to the table to see what they were doing, which did happen on several occasions, the biggest one being when Ingrid and Felix, both of which had remnants of cake in their hair from when they’d shoved it in each other’s faces, came to see them. Ashe felt like they were both happy to see him, although it was hard to tell with Felix and his always-annoyed expression, but he was more worried about how Annette was going to handle them being there than anything. She was cordial, as was her mother, and before the couple moved on they made an attempt to get hugs from all of their friends and guests.
Following behind them were other members of the wedding party, specifically the three men and two of the ladies, with Petra noticeably absent from the group. They were making the rounds as well, talking up everyone who had come to the wedding like they had anything to do with running it, and when they got to the table a quick set of introductions took place. Sylvain, having assumed the role of telling everyone who the ladies he was with were, took great care to introduce Marianne and Hapi to the other two, while Dimitri took care of introducing the other groomsman to them, even stepping aside so that Byleth could come in and talk about himself for a bit, only for all of them to be shocked that he’d met Felix when they’d been students, because he was teaching one of the other classes they rarely saw. “In fact, from those days, Marianne here was one of my students,” he told them, Marianne shrinking back at being called out like she was. “It’s actually my fault that she met Ingrid in the first place, because she’d told me about her online horse club and I might’ve told Felix about that, and he told Ingrid…and the rest is history.”
“I think I speak for us all when I say we are thankful for your intervention in their lives,” Dedue said with a sage nod, and the others all agreed. “You did them quite the service.”
“It just happened naturally, I can’t take any actual credit for it.” Byleth looked at them all, then noticed that Ashe’s eyes were wandering all over the room, not focused on the people who’d gathered around. “Are you looking for Petra, by chance?”
“Uh, yeah,” he admitted, feeling shamed for being called out so quickly, but before Byleth could say anything more he saw the person he was looking for across the room, peeking inside from a doorway. “Oh, there she is, I’m going to…go talk to her.”
Despite everyone who’d been in the wedding telling him to stay where he was, he caught a single glance at Annette giving him a thumbs-up on the plan and he had the confidence to do exactly what he’d said he would, leaving the table and hearing them all calling for him to come back until the din of the rest of the room drowned them out. Petra didn’t move during his approach, and when he got close enough to her to wave, she seemed struck by his sudden appearance. “Who are you and why are you here?” she asked, her speech slow and intentional. “I promise I am not of the partying type, I can be left alone.”
“I’m not really a partier either,” he said, his heart racing at the interaction; this wasn’t anything he’d felt before and he didn’t want to lose the feeling. “I just saw you last night, then again today, and I wanted to tell you that I think you’re pretty. That’s really it.”
“I am sorry, but I have no interest in being dated.” The air between them went frigid as Petra saw Ashe look at her funny, almost like he didn’t understand why that was what she said. “Do you mean that you have no dating interest as well?”
“Can’t say that I do,” he replied, holding out a hand to her, which she looked at for a moment before shaking it. “My name’s Ashe, it’s nice to get to meet you. You’re Petra, aren’t you?”
“You are the first to not call me 'Princess' upon first glance. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Ashe, and our friendship shall be one of not understanding these dating interests.” The laugh Petra gave as she made that declaration was contagious, and Ashe felt for the first time that he had someone who really could understand what it was to not get the innuendo and desires that everyone else seemed to run their lives on. But, at the same time, shaking Petra’s hand filled him with the same joy reading a great war novel always had, so perhaps they’d be able to dive into that correlation together as they got to know each other.