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“Him?!” Ingrid cries, her eyes widening as she thumbs down Mercedes’s phone. Her eyebrows furrow then, and she squints at the screen. “Wait! Have you seen his profile description?”
Mercedes laughs, stretching her hand over the tea table, nearly knocking a cucumber and cream cheese sandwich off the top tier rack. “No! Let me see! What’s it say?”
Ingrid clears her throat dramatically, placing her free hand over her breastbone. “Fhirdiad-born, Enbarr transplant. Corporate slave Monday through Friday, fun adventurer on the weekends. Looking for nothing serious, just a wife and kids. Appearance: 6’ 2” and looks a lot like your new boyfriend.” She rolls her eyes. “Men just use all the same jokes — so unoriginal!”
Dorothea tilts her head, one eyebrow arching. “Six two,” she simply commends.
Mercedes shakes her head, cracking a smile at Dorothea. “What did we agree on the other day, Dorothea?” she tuts. “Personality over size, right?”
“Says you,” Dorothea retorts, sticking her tongue out.
Mercedes sticks her tongue out at Dorothea before swiping her phone back from Ingrid’s clutch, immediately pressing its lock button and tucking her phone back into her clutch. “We don’t have to look at him. They’re all the same.”
“I can’t believe your father is still trying to set you up! Hasn’t it been literally six years now, and he’s still at it?” Ingrid asks.
“I know he means well,” Mercedes replies. “He just wants me to have a stable future.”
“I know, I know. But still!” Ingrid shivers dramatically. “Then again, I’m one to talk — my own father is still attending all these events just to find new people for me to meet.”
“Honestly I don’t know how new men keep showing up!”
“Exactly!”
“And we’ve run off all the way to Enbarr to escape all of that, and our fathers are still trying, huh?”
“I know!”
Dorothea takes a small breath and sighs quietly to herself, looking down at her lukewarm tea. She picks up the spoon and stirs it idly. This is only, like what, literally the third time Ingrid and Mercedes has griped about marriage? And just in this afternoon?
As much as Dorothea loves joining Ingrid and Mercedes for their afternoon tea, if the two of them keep bringing the conversation back to their terrible suitors and lamenting about how they have to find a husband, Dorothea may find herself needing to forgo their almost-daily ritual of savories and sweets.
And that would be such a shame, as Dorothea finds nothing more fun than spending time with her two longtime friends.
But seeing the two of them laugh at each other — small blushes on their faces and shy smiles across their lips — suddenly strikes Dorothea a certain way. A gear in her mind clicks, and a grin cracks over her face.
“Why don’t you just marry each other?” she then blurts.
The two of them look back at her, with varying degrees of astonishment.
Ingrid sputters, her face growing beet red. “Wh-What do you mean? We can’t do that!” She glances over at Mercedes, who suddenly looks very interested in the remaining half of her almond biscotti.
“And why not?” Dorothea presses, growing more excited. “Seems perfectly reasonable to me.” She points to Mercedes. “You need to get married.” She turns to Ingrid. “You also need to get married, and both of you haven’t had a single ounce of interest in the people that your fathers have presented to you. So...” Dorothea says, clapping her hands together in conclusion. “Why don’t you just marry each other?”
Ingrid gawks at her. “I-It’s not that simple!”
Dorothea tuts. “Getting married is anything but complicated,” Dorothea retorts. “Maybe there are some forms to fill out, some estates to rearrange, and some churchgoing to attend. But it’s just a legal label.”
“I know,” Ingrid says, averting her eyes. “But it’s not that, it’s that we’re... we’re two women.” She grimaces when she says the word, and then corrects herself. “Or well, two people that at least present as women.”
“Ah, but here’s the catch,” Dorothea says, with a pointed finger. She leans into the table. “I have read a lot into marriage... for reasons you both already know. And when I actually read the legal writing on marriage on Fódlan, do you know what it says — word for word?”
Silence across the table. Mercedes shakes her head, and Ingrid awaits her answer.
“The writing on marriage simply states that marriage is a mutual voluntary agreement between two people,” Dorothea then replies. “Two people,” she repeats. “It says nothing about the sex of these people, let alone even the gender — it just says simply, two people. So technically two women joining hands for a wedding is not not legal. It’s just that it’s not done.” Satisfied with her argument, she leans back into her chair, then raises her tea to her lips and takes a sip. “And I think this would work out! I don’t think the two of you would mind being married to each other for an eternity.”
“W-Well, I...” Ingrid stammers, unable to finish her sentence. She steals another look at Mercedes then, as if looking for support, but then blushes even harder when seeing Mercedes meet her eyes. Mercedes giggles a bit, raising a hand to her lips.
“What?” Dorothea challenges, now smirking. “Don’t tell me you haven’t ever thought about it!”
Here, Ingrid blinks a few times in a row — which Dorothea knows is Ingrid’s tell.
Not that Ingrid is going to lie anyway: Ingrid is fully incapable of lying, both because of her virtue and because she’s an easy read.
Ingrid’s lips twist. “I... I can’t say I haven’t thought about it.”
“I have,” Mercedes admits suddenly, giving Ingrid a soft smile. “I think about you coming home from a long day of training as a knight, and when I think about you coming in through the door, I imagine me being the one to greet you.”
“See? Now this is perfect!” Dorothea remarks. “Plus then you never have to worry about the size of a dick ever again,” Dorothea adds, nodding her head in Mercedes’s direction. “After all, straps come in all kinds of shapes — you can simply choose the strap for the night and then Ingrid can fuck you to oblivion.”
Ingrid’s eyes flash with embarrassment. “Dorothea!” she warns, her eyes looking to their left and right — ironic, seeing as that the three of them were on Mercedes’s private balcony.
Dorothea rolls her eyes. “Oh please, there’s no one else out here and we’ve talked about sex out loud a million times. I’m sure anyone that may even possibly listening already knows that Mercedes loves a big dick.”
Ingrid has never been this flushed in her life, probably. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, as if trying to figure out what to say. She never does muster a word though, and Dorothea turns to Mercedes.
“Since Ingrid can’t seem to muster a word, what do you think about this, Mercedes?” she asks her. “You can elope!”
Mercedes simply grants her a polite grin — and unlike Ingrid, Mercedes is as unreadable as always. “I’m just thinking about you, and how you would feel about Ingrid marrying me.”
Dorothea gives her a funny look. “What do you mean? I’m the one that came up with the idea, aren’t I?”
Mercedes eyes the ring on Dorothea’s third finger. “Well, aren’t you already married to Ingrid to begin with?”
“What? Oh! This?” Dorothea replies, then putting her ring up to the light. “Well, Ingrid has already said it herself! This was only a thank you gift, wasn’t it?” She looks over at Ingrid, but Ingrid avoids her eyes.
Mercedes waves Dorothea’s answer off. “Doesn’t mean that the ring means nothing to you! You wear it all the time and brandish it proudly like it’s your own wedding ring!”
Dorothea takes the ring in her other hand, starting to pull it off. “I mean, if you want it, I can give it back to Ingrid so that she can give it to you,” she quickly replies.
“Oh, no, no!” Mercedes exclaims, putting her hand over Dorothea’s hand. “You can keep the ring. You just owe us both rings.”
Dorothea arches an eyebrow. “Are you saying...?”
Mercedes smiles, nodding and reading Dorothea’s mind. “Yes.”
Ingrid furrows her brow, her eyes darting from Mercedes to Dorothea. “What’s going on?”
Mercedes turns to Ingrid. “Oh, I’m just discussing the terms of our marriage.”
“Your marriage?”
“Our marriage,” Mercedes corrects. “The three of us, of course!”
“But we can’t all be married to each other, right?” Ingrid refutes. “Dorothea said it herself, the law says two people. Nothing more, nothing less… right?”
Dorothea shrugs. “Well, we don’t have to do everything by the book,” she replies. She thinks quickly. “Maybe just for documentation purposes, the two of you can get married — since the two of you actually need to so that your fathers can leave you alone. And then I just happen to be live in the same house as both of you!”
Ingrid frowns. “People talk,” she says.
“And so what if people talk?” Mercedes says. People can spread rumors, and people can say whatever they want to say about us. No one will ever bother us again. We’ll go off into the countryside and live in a farmhouse away from all the silly people of society and do our own thing. We’ll have afternoon tea every day just like we do now, and if we want to adopt children, then we will!”
“Three parents is better than two!” Dorothea chimes in.
Ingrid smiles. “That does seem nice,” she muses, looking up at the two of them. “Let’s get married,” she agrees.
Mercedes takes one of Ingrid’s hands, her other over Dorothea’s. “Perfect!” she exclaims.
“Okay, wait,” Dorothea says. “While we’re talking about the terms of our relationship, I just have one request: We just never complain about needing to get married. Ever again. If that happens, I’m calling this all off.”
“Well, if we’re marrying each other, I don’t think there’s anything to complain about now, is there?” Mercedes replies.
To this, the three of them exchange glances and smiles.
Agreed.