Work Text:
Everyone has a tell when they're pullin' the wool over ya.
It's a statement Fidelio imparts to Basilio when they're young and anyone assigned under him by the Count. Short, simple, and to the point: you need to learn when people are lying to you.
It's a skill he's proud that he picked up early. From the days where his and Bas' daily meal all hinged on haggling for stale bread and tepid water, to now where the stakes of their mission all come down to vetting new recruits for their loyalty and drive, the people who are willing to lie and cheat to get ahead only serve to make life more difficult in the future. They don't enrage him the way incompetency and stupidity does, if only because it's far easier to sniff out the fibbers, and if he gets them early it's far easier to avoid the former creeping into the ranks.
So he looks out for the ones who make it obvious. The lip biters, the ones who can't hold eye contact, the avoidant ones. People who are unable to say with their whole chest that they're willing to dedicate all they have to Louis' cause with conviction in their eyes, voices, body language.
Even those who make it to the final step usually falter, Fidelio always remembers. A recruit can wear the uniform, say the lines, and walk the walk, but a paripus' tail will always tuck between their legs, a pampered boy will always stammer at the glimpse of his first Human, and a spy will always disappear from the parties. Everyone has a tell.
Everyone except the Count himself.
Louis Guiabern is a man with a silver tongue and a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. From the day Fidelio met him there was an extent to which he's known deep down that Louis aimed only to fill his mind with sweet nothings; promises of grandeur and a better world under his rule. To a man like Fidelio, no matter how much he believed it, there was always a little nagging feeling in his chest.
He didn't doubt Louis' abilities. He didn't even doubt his promises. He supposes that he just couldn't hold it in his heart to believe it was possible. If Louis was an angel sent to judge Euchronia, where was his halo? The immutable, undeniable proof that he was more than just a man like Fidelio is?
It's a sentiment that fluxes over and over, up and down, intense to flickering over the first few weeks he spends with his Count. Some days Louis feels invincible, deity-like as he plunges his sword into the sternum of a wild Human, coating both him and Fidelio and Basilio in viscera, pungent and unably to deny is real. Some days Fidelio is caught up in the crowd on his days off, stuck watching a fight or an execution, and he can't leave until someone tells him that what he's looking at is no place for a child.
It's in his nature to be skeptical, to be cynical; it's saved his and Basilio's lives more times than he can count. You can't afford to be easy to work with, he tells Louis over dinner one night, the small table on Louis' balcony covered in plates full of dishes Fidelio and Basilio had cooked that night. Surely you understand, someone in a position like yours.
And Louis does, and he says it with that silver tongue and that thin smile. He commands respect and demands compliance. He has his ideas for the future and he will see them through, he says.
Fidelio doesn't truly understand his vision until he's worked with Louis for the better half of a year, until he hears people in town speak his name with a religious reverence, of the man who fights humans, of the man who accepts anyone, of the man who will unite Euchronia. The future isn't set in stone, he still rationalizes to himself, but in his head he sees Louis' visage, of the Igniter Consortium being burnt and statues of Louis erected in its stead, and he cannot stop the feeling of hope it inspires.
What is a lie, anyway? A simple untruth? Louis makes him consider what is meant by that. Louis' promises, his nothings, he bares them honestly; he does not lie about the feelings he holds. If they were to never come to fruition, would they be a lie then? They could be for all Fidelio cares, but Louis harbors the same hatred for false promises as he does. There's a roaring flame in Louis' heart that stokes something in Fidelio's, one that asserts that what he envisions will come to pass.
So Fidelio lets him speak his nothings, for they might as well be prophecies.
Every time him and Louis speak for a good long while, Fidelio cannot kick his habit of searching for a sign of dishonesty. He trusts Louis, but in the way a liege trusts his lord; wholeheartedly, but aware that at any moment the sword could drop.
Louis allows him closer than most of his officers (and Fidelio can tell, because Zorba doesn't glare at anybody else the way his stare drives daggers into the back of his skull), and he suspects that it's because he's not as sycophantic. Louis loves the thrill of the game underneath the feeling of winning; prey that doesn't play hard to get simply isn't as enriching as the way Fidelio callously banters back and forth with him in their downtime. There's moments of peace where they speak as if they are old friends, and not like Louis could reduce Fidelio into nothing with just an order, and that Fidelio isn't looking for bad omens while following his every beck and call.
Louis is his friend in these moments, or at the very least he acts like he is. They make small talk over dinner. They tell jokes on the way back from hunts. There's always a nagging feeling in his chest, but it all tends to just disappear when it's just them in the Charadrius' rec room, waxing on about the weather or something else just as meaningless.
As the months turn into years he stops looking at Louis' hands, throat, eyes, and lips out of suspicion and more out of some deeper, more visceral feeling. Why wouldn't he? The man is beautiful, he's powerful, almost godlike in strength and aura, like a marble statue brought to life. He's never been able to properly feel it much beforehand, intimacy being at worst non-existent in the slums and at best a currency for a meal and roof over one's head for a night. Louis, free bird he is, lets Fidelio feel as much as he wants.
Louis affords Fidelio moments where he actually feels at home where he is in his life, in his body, in his mind, in his psyche. His lord lets him decide the pace they go at, and when Fidelio asks him if this is alright, Louis simply gives him that wry smile each time, his answer as truthful as it can be. He lets Fidelio see his scars, wounds from their latest battles, and Louis sees Fidelio's marks and burns, the areas where he was cut open and sewn back together. There is no untouchable Archmage Louis Guiabern here and there is no invincible Fidelio Magnus who feels nothing and doesn't yearn for another's touch.
The moments where Fidelio has his lord's leg over his shoulder and his tail wrapped around Louis' ankle are one of the few moments he feels like Louis is not only fully bared to him but so is he. The bedroom isn't a meeting room with people telling Louis exactly what he wants to hear, or a sterile testing area where the scientists tell Fidelio nothing will hurt at all. Fidelio has nothing to hide when he ruts forward, Louis has no words to say when he hooks his free ankle around Fidelio's thin waist. No lies, no nothings, no false promises.
There is trust in what's formed between them; a level of vulnerability not afforded to anyone else. For a while, Fidelio worries that in these moments Louis may snap his jaws, and the wolf will sink his teeth into his neck and heart after all. After a longer while, he realizes he no longer cares.
For the wolf claimed he would never bite him, and Fidelio has no inclination to doubt.
Louis trusts Fidelio as his right hand. Fidelio would lay down his life for his lord.
There is one specific moment in their lives where Fidelio is certain they may have lied to each other.
"May" is the keyword. He's unsure if Louis reciprocated the moment, but he's certain on his end. It's the only moment he lies with his whole chest, the memory of why often biting in the back of his mind like a kanker sore. He still doesn't fully get what could have gotten Louis to act the way he did.
It's a late summer night when Louis startles from his slumber with a deep inhale, holding it for a few moments before allowing a shaky breath to escape him. His hand trembles when he pries it away from Fidelio's waist, stirring him awake, and the feeling of Louis' chest pressing against his back disappearing drags him to full awareness. He doesn't move, and he doesn't speak, he even keeps his breathing soft and slow so Louis still thinks he's asleep.
Every time this had happened before, Fidelio would rouse from his sleep and ask what was happening, and each time Louis would calm himself down like nothing had happened. They would go back to sleep on opposite sides of the bed, and Fidelio would be expected to forget what he heard by the morning.
Hearing his lord's ragged breathing and the sound of his pacing around his living quarters beget an aura of vulnerability that struck a nerve in Fidelio.
He wanted to know what had caused Louis Guiabern to panic as if he had a nightmare.
He can hear the door to the deck slide open then, and Louis stepping outside into the night. Fidelio waits for a few moments, maybe even multiple minutes, before he grunts, stretching out his legs and spine, letting the soothing feeling of renewed bloodflow take over him for a moment before he sits up and slides onto the cold floor. He waits another moment or two for good measure before he finally follows Louis out into the open air.
The moonlight frames the man like he is an etheric being, not a man who lives in the same mortal realm as Fidelio. White cascades over the side of his face, casting one in brilliant light and the other in total shadow. The bright blue of his eyes is barely visible in that moment, his hair pale against the night sky. A halo of light frames his face down to his body down to his hand, a wine glass of brandy being sloshed around between his ring and middle finger. Louis looks like an angel, a savior and a harbinger of death all in one. It makes him freeze in the doorway.
As if sensing his presence, Louis cranes his head over to look at Fidelio with the cold expression he gives most before softening.
"Did I wake you?" Louis hums. He studies the expression on Fidelio's face for a moment before the other speaks.
"Nah." Fidelio can feel a tight feeling in his chest. "Door's hangin' open, ya dope. You were lettin' the heat out."
And there it is. A little lie, a sweet nothing, a false promise. Fidelio lets it slip off his tongue and into the air between them. A lie that he hadn't seen anything incriminating. A reassurance that Louis had all the room he had to hide.
A promise that this wasn't him intruding on a moment of weakness by the great Archmage Louis Guiabern; it was his concerned officer simply confused as to why he was up this late.
Louis just smiles then, that same wry smile that doesn't reach his eyes, the lack of crease in his eyelid or cheek even more noticable in the pale moonlight. He leans back in his seat then, pushing the chair across from him out from his small balcony table, inviting Fidelio over. Of course, he takes it.
They talk for a while, about the revolution, about the soldiers, about Euchronia, about Basilio, about Fidelio. But never about Louis. Every little push in his direction is dodged and pushed back tenfold, redirected into something else. Eventually, Fidelio stops trying.
There is an extent to which Fidelio understands that he will never understand his lord as much as he wants to. That Louis, a man of the people, the man that brought him and his brother up from squalor, that has beared some shred of his heart to him multiple times, will slways remain an enigma to anyone who isn't himself. Louis will always know more about Fidelio than Fidelio will be allowed to know about him.
It's a shame, because he realizes he wants to. Louis might as well be a paragon to him now, a man that coaxes out the words and thoughts he can't bring himself to say otherwise. A man who can reach into his chest and bear his heart for him without even trying. The empathy Louis has had for him, a paripus from the slums that came up from nothing, always felt too good to be true sometimes. He wonders if Louis was like him once: if after his exile and relocation, he felt alone and unable to trust anyone. He wonders if he had family to support him. If he had a home to go back to.
If he came up from nothing.
"You ever have bad dreams, Lord Louis?"
It's a question that escapes him, a stray thought that slips out without hesitance. It's a simple invitation to speak his mind. It's a chance to talk about what's been plaguing him, to share this one private moment with someone who'd promise him his life and thoughts and feelings at any moment. Nothing on this balcony will leave this balcony; Fidelio just wants to see if Louis will let him in.
Louis takes a moment to contemplate what Fidelio just said, almost as if considering answering, but just laughs in the end. "Sometimes," Louis' tone is sardonic, deflective. "But i wouldn't say often. Almost never, frankly."
Louis smiles then, wide and wolflike, and he reaches up, almost subconsciously, to feel at the base of his horn.
He rationalizes to himself that Louis hates liars as much he does; maybe it was just a nervous tic, that he was just brushing his hair back, or maybe he was simply trying to do something with his free hand. It could be because of the fucking wind for all he knows.
Fidelio cannot help but feel his chest tighten nonetheless.
Gotcha.