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It’s a damn shame the most good-looking men have the foulest of personalities, you reflect under the blistering heat of the summer sun. You attempt to find shade under the protruding roof ledge of the Blacksmith’s Shop, however, it does little to soothe and your thoughts are immediately overtaken by ‘ what the hell is taking March so long to deliver you your upgraded sword?’. When the man in question flings open the door, promised weapon in hand and his permanent scowl on his lips, he unknowingly continues to prove you right.
Despite your antagonistic relationship with him, you’d be a fool to say March was unattractive. Strong build with biceps worth ogling over, flaming red hair and eyes the colour of the murky night, he had caught your eye almost immediately when you arrived in Mistria.
Then he opened his mouth and it all went downhill from there.
Despite an entire season since your arrival, March has yet to warm up to you and it's obvious with his pointed remarks and resting frown whenever you are in his vicinity. You return the attitude in kind, because being the bigger person is a foreign concept to you. Hence, a silent agreement has been reached to keep conversation to a minimum to prevent an unnecessary, heated back and forth.
To your surprise, March breaks the silence first, much to your displeasure.
“How many times are you gonna keep damaging it?” His tone is flat, but he keeps his hand out-stretched for you to take your order, which you all but snatch away.
“It’s the mines,” You refute, “Do you expect me to fight with sticks and stones?”
The tension dissipates when you catch March staring wordlessly, rather than busying himself with coming up with a response. Confused, you follow his line of vision to find his focus on the scarring littering the length of your bare arm, the wounds still relatively fresh. Thanks to magical advances in medicine, a quick trip to Valen’s clinic would make the scarring disappear with the bat of an eye. However, childishly you have been rationing your visits to the local doctor since last time she had made a passing quip about her seeing your face more than anyone else in town, paired with a heavy stare. You don’t think she meant any harm, but a visceral part of you can’t stand the idea of someone being disappointed in you. Hence, you’ve been stuck licking your wounds till it felt like an acceptable amount of time has passed since your last visit.
The sound of somebody clicking their tongue startles you, and before you can get a word in, March has already turned on his heel and went back inside. You stand frozen in your spot, wondering what you must have said that caused him enough offence to storm away. You contemplate leaving or apologising, but the door again opens and he stomps back out, something clenched in his hand.
“Here,” He mutters, as if reluctant, and in his open palm you find a tube of soothing gel and a roll of bandages.
“What’s it for?” You ask hesitantly and he looks at you as if you’ve just told him the sky is green.
“Your abrasions are getting red and swollen,” He snaps impatiently and shoves the items your way. “You’ll cause more trouble for Doctor Valen if you catch an infection.”
While his wording would be enough to get a rise out of you, you are still bewildered and oddly touched by his attentiveness, taking the items from his hand gingerly. Before you can finish your “thank you”, the man has already closed the door on you, with only the heatwaves as your witness to this encounter.
Something has shifted in March, and you feel like you are the only one who has noticed.
“Don’t you think there is something different about him these days?” You question and Ryis puts down his hammer long enough to consider your question. You would have felt bad for interrupting his work, but you think you’ve become good enough friends with the carpenter to press for his time occasionally.
“Not really?” Ryis admits with a flippant shrug and heaves another slab of wood onto his workbench. “He seems fine.”
“It’s not like I’m saying he’s acting worse,” You are on the defensive immediately, pursing your lips. “Just… different.”
He spares a minute to stare at you, and you can tell he’s still not understanding the difference between March from the beginning of spring and March halfway through fall.
“Okay, well, give me an example then,” He offers. You open your mouth and then close it, words failing you as you mimic a fish out of water. Despite him waiting patiently, you feel your face heat up in embarrassment that you had no explanation to offer Ryis other than determined certainty. He is one of the kindest people you know, but even he can’t bite back the amused smile that graces his lips as you fruitlessly attempt to explain your thoughts.
“Don’t laugh!” You bark which only makes him laugh louder. “There is definitely something strange going on. I just don’t know how to put it into words!”
Upon your behest, Ryis does his best to calm down, and while he can’t hide his amusement he does spare you a reassuring smile.
“If it helps, I’ll keep an eye out the next time I see him,” His proposal relaxes your shoulders and relieves your recent anxieties as you spare a few words of gratitude. Aside from his brother, the person March is closest to in this town is Ryis and if his best friend can’t notice the shift, then nobody can.
“But if I’m being honest…” The carpenter trails off as he fixes you a curious look, though he shows hesitation about what he says next. “I think the person who’s been acting different is you.”
You gape at him, taken aback by the sudden shift of accusation.
“What do you mean?”
He packs up his tools, making his way to the shop's front door as he gives you a teasing backward glance.
“Well, you’ve been staring a
lot
at him lately. Somebody would easily think you’d have a… crush on him?”
Cleverly planned, Ryis quickly shuts the door behind him before he can hear you squawking indignantly. Confusion, disbelief and annoyance creep over you on your long walk back home to the farm, passing by March conversing with Reina beside the water fountain. Upon noticing your presence, Reina offers a large smile and a friendly wave which you try your best to return despite your dejected mood. March, upon noticing the girl’s distraction, looks up. Just when you think he’d tactfully ignore you, he takes you by surprise when he tilts his head in your direction in acknowledgment. You felt your heart squeeze in its cage.
Ryis wins, again.
March did not like looking back on the past. His motto resides in moving forward and discarding weaknesses, but that doesn’t stop the tendrils of his early years from creeping around him when he’s at his most susceptible, begging to be acknowledged by him. It felt like a child pleading for attention.
Olric is older than him, but not by much. Distant family members liked to exaggerate the age difference to make March feel less guilty that his brother, who still had baby fat on his face, was now his sole guardian after the death of their parents because nobody else wanted to take on the burden of looking after an aggrieved child. He can still recite the calligraphy scrawled on the banner of the funeral home, the wails and sobbing of grieving friends and family muffled by planked walls. He had grown tired from the noise, and having to look at the monochrome portraits of his parents smiling into the frame, and opted to let the proceedings continue while he sat in the hallway. It was this kind of distance where he felt most comfortable. He touches his forehead to his knees, legs pressed against his chest as he nurses the signs of an incoming headache. He wanted to sleep so badly.
He only lifts his head when he hears the rapid pattering of footsteps against the wood floor and a frantic call of his name from a familiar voice. He turns and almost feels his heart sink when he catches glimpses of his father’s dark hair and eyes, until he realises it’s Olric. His white button-up is untucked and unironed, his clumsily tied necktie held together by some higher power, and his blazer rests on his arms rather than on his figure. His brother had always been a sloppy dresser, something his mother used to chide him for, but when he sees Olric’s eyes swollen and red, he says nothing.
He had to travel from the other side of the Capital from where he was apprenticing for the funeral, so not many aside from their grandmother could click their tongues over Olric’s late arrival. March is led back inside by the gentle grip of his brother’s hand on his shoulder, and it feels warm. Olric doesn’t move his hand even when people make their rounds to the brothers with their condolences, and empty promises to write if they ever needed anything. March never sees them again after the funeral.
They moved away from their home on the outskirts of the Capital, because rent was getting too high and Olric could hardly support himself, much less a young boy now under his care. His older brother is forced to drop out of his position as an apprentice blacksmith, and that’s the part that makes March feel the most miserable out of all the changes that have happened. Yet, Olric never frowned or complained, or even called it a burden. He told him they were moving to a place called Mistria after being offered a position there as a miner, and he knows it’s a subtle nudge to get their life going after spending months in their family house void of his father’s booming laughter and their mother’s firm but loving gaze. To persist is how his family has functioned for generations.
Mistria is small, but quaint and beautiful, and March wasn’t too fond of it because it felt
too
quiet compared to the rambunctious noise of children playing outside and the whirring of heavy machinery that he was used to. The worst part was how friendly and nosy everybody was, from the man at the General Store who made corny jokes that made him grimace, to the carpenter who would often stop by just to hover over their shoulders insisting he could help them whenever they needed “as a pro!”.
March finds a peaceful middle ground with the family at the Sleeping Dragon Inn. Maybe the principle of “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” worked, because whenever Hemlock and Josephine would stop by to share dishes with the brothers, March grew excited for their visits. He learns they have a twelve-year-old daughter who is the same age as him, and during his first visit to the Inn, that’s where he finally meets Reina.
March has met other people around his age in Mistria. Celine, only two years younger, was too shy for March’s liking. She barely spoke a word, practically hiding behind her mother’s legs and eyeing him as if he were an alien from outer space. It didn’t help he wasn’t much of a talker either, so they sat in silence until her mother came by later in the evening to pick her up after their “playdate”. They exchanged awkward goodbyes and that was it.
Reina was friendly and hardworking, which was a trait March admired. Despite her young age, she seemed to have inherited her parents’ charisma and was able to pick up quickly on what to say around March, and soon he began spending many evenings in the Inn with her and her family. Summers at the beach playing together, and winters spent playing board games in the toasty interior of the Inn. She had also been his first crush, and that was the first time March realised he didn’t hate the idea of love and romance, spending the next few months after this realisation daydreaming of doing things like holding her hand and bragging about being her boyfriend to anyone who asks. Embarrassing to look back on now, but childhood crushes were hardly ever rational. An older March can only be relieved he never followed through with all the corny stuff he wanted to do.
The feelings eventually die down as he gets more and more comfortable being settled into the town, and he realises Reina obviously didn’t like him back. It was for the better, because she and her family had slowly become a second home to him, and he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
As he gets older, he picks up an interest in blacksmithing. When Errol and Landen hear about this, they are quick to call up old friends and have him enrolled in a blacksmithing apprenticeship in the Capital. He remembers how bright Olric’s grin had been the day he had been accepted, and he feels a mixture of excitement and guilt in the pits of his stomach. He packs up a month later and he’s back to his birthplace, but as he says his last-minute goodbyes, he realises he is going to miss Mistria. From the chirping of birds outside his window to the sound of chatter at the Inn, the small town had become his home. That was also when he decided that once he got his professional license, he would return as the local blacksmith, and that filled him with pride like no other.
True to his word, after finishing up his apprenticeship (and winning kingdom-wide competitions for his craft, he shamelessly brags), he returns to Mistria and is quickly hounded for his success that has spread as far as to the humble town. That is also when he realises that during his absence, a new face recently moved in.
That’s how March first meets Ryis and is instantly taken by him. It’s hard not to be. Where March was curt and testy, Ryis was considerate and calming. Most importantly, Ryis worked diligently and pulled his weight around town.
March always liked the industrious types.
Everything had been going so well for him. His work was going strong, he’d made a new close friend on the same wavelength as him, and he’s still the talk of the town despite how long it’s been since he moved back.
Then you come along and throw a wrench in everything, and suddenly it's hard to go through the day without hearing your name being mentioned at least once. You don’t shy away from making your presence known, and he’s become accustomed to seeing you run around town with an assortment of tools strapped to your back as you greet every face passing you by.
Including him, for some weird reason.
Maybe it was the jealousy that had convinced him he disliked you, or maybe your demeanour was what ticked him off. Yet, despite his snark, you still find an excuse to stop by to talk to him, even if you were meeting his attitude with your own the entire time. March wasn’t born yesterday, he knew you found some sort of twisted entertainment in your banter. Nobody needed to get their tools checked over by him as much as you did.
As Ryis had jokingly put it, March has met his match in the form of you. He could have vomited at his friend’s chosen descriptor, because it sounded too romantic for his liking. He most certainly did not have any kind of feelings for you that involved wanting to kiss you or be yours. He likes people like Reina and Ryis, and he doesn’t like hardheaded and reckless eccentrics like you.
He’s sure of it, even when he notices that the warm glow of the open fire at the Inn casts a pretty light on you. Or how your cocky grins are almost infectious. Or that you looked nice no matter what you tried out at Louise’s stall.
Oh, fuck.