Chapter Text
The Duke of Meropide wore no armor, but his clothes were practically the same thing. No one saw his skin save for his neck and face, no one ever saw him in anything less than a shirt, his coat, and waistcoat that he methodically arranged himself in each morning. His accessories were sharp, spiky things that screamed do not touch . His clothes were his armor; they protected his body from ridicule and unwanted attention.
There had been so much unwanted attention as a child, back when she had long hair and pretty dresses. Men with wrinkled faces and sunken eyes, their hands patting her knee through the skirt of her dress as she played them a tune on the piano.
“ Such a pretty thing ,” they would muse, “ You will be a true beauty when you are older.”
Women who would pull her into their laps and coo at her as one did a pet, petting her hair and admiring the pretty blue bow Mother had tied around her ponytail that morning. Women she hoped would not want to become her new ‘mother’, if only to get their eyes off of her. Selling herself as one did a prized toy, performing for them in hopes that she would attract enough attention for one of them to take her home.
She would tremble as lustful eyes wandered over her small shoulders and thin hands, tucked prettily in white gloves and blue silk. Always so pretty . She would pray that they did not pick her, that she was safe from wandering hands another day.
Mother had hit her when she cut her hair off, the black strands now lying choppy over her shoulders and neck, curling at the ends. “How dare you! You had such pretty hair, ********, how dare you ruin it! No one wants to adopt an ugly girl!”
She had not cared. She had already stolen clothes from one of the older boys. Matthew, with his kind gray eyes and tousled black curls that gave him a soft, gentle appearance. He was her favorite of the brothers she had known, and she had cried when he was adopted. It was him who had helped her learn the horrible truth.
It was in Matthew’s clothes she ran away, and he was born. At fourteen, living on the streets was hell. But, the short pants and shirt, along with a little vest and cap, made it easier. Boys had it easier than girls on the street, he quickly realized. At least he got propositioned less often. It never stopped, but the ragged appearance of his clothes and the sharpness of his eyes made them quickly realize their mistake in talking to him. Ciel , the baker heralded him as when he delivered eggs to him. He hadn’t given a name when asked, so he figured the baker had taken it upon himself to give him one. Sky .
Soon, Madame Angelica was calling him that too, when she would scrub his face of dirt with her painted lips pursed. “Please be careful, Ciel. The girls and I wouldn’t know what to do without our big strong boy around.”
“I will, Madame,” he would tell her in the soft, slightly raspy voice that had not dropped with age. He knew she suspected his identity, Madame Angelica was not a stupid woman, and yet she and the other women of the brothel never treated him any differently. He could always depend on a warm meal and the ladies of the house fussing and fawning over him like a group of overbearing aunties.
It was in those clothes that he fashioned his gauntlets, under the careful eyes of the streets and ladies of L’ Adonis, picking fights and getting stronger. Stealing what he could not get through fair work, he continuously worked towards his goal. Revenge. Payment.
“Be careful, Ciel,” Mel, the oldest of his aunties said, eyes watching as he tightened his gauntlets to his wrists. Still thin and small, despite three years to grow.
“Why do you call me that? Ciel? I never gave you a name, it’s just what the baker called me.”
“Your eyes,” Mel told him, “They’re such pretty ones. Like the sky. Good luck, Ciel. I hope it works.”
“You too. Say thank you to the Madame for me, for the free meals.”
Mel knew he didn’t intend to come back. It was okay, he believed, that Ciel died in the streets he had been born from. He left the hat and vest behind for them to remember him by. They were too small anymore anyways.
He was still in Matthew’s clothes in the infirmary of the Opera house, bloodied and soaked as a kind Melusine nurse dressed his wounds. If she noticed the bandages wrapped around his torso, she made no comment of it. If she noticed the stain of dried blood that was not from any wound, old and browned despite him trying to wash it out many times, then she still made no comment.
“Name?” A Garde asked, filling out the form for him. They didn’t trust him to not turn a pencil into a weapon, it seemed. He thought for a moment, wondering back to a childhood before, reading the obituaries and judging the stuffy names.
“Wriothesley,” he said calmly, much too calmly for a seventeen-year-old boy who had just murdered his former foster parents. Was he psychotic? Probably. Wearing his dead brother’s clothes and massacring parents who had, all things considered, actually treated him rather well. Yet the others hadn’t gotten much of choice, and so maybe it was also poetic.
“Birthday?” they asked.
“Today.”
That had gotten him a sympathetic glance. It truly was a mentally ill child, after all, who planned to commit a murder-suicide on his own birthday.
The uniform of Meropide held his weapon quite well. Everyone quickly knew that Wriothesley traded in secrets. For the right amount of credits, he could find out anything about anyone, from the lowest of the hierarchy to the highest level of the Gardes. Whispered answers against his throat as they cruelly pounded into his body as if they were actually conquering something. Perhaps he had learned something from the ladies of the brothel, who used their bodies to their advantage. They were all powerful women, and he admired them fiercely. It was power, and he used his body as if it was a weapon. A honed blade that kiss-soaked lips whispered against, that too sharp teeth bit slightly too hard. He knew he had pretty eyes; they were everyone’s favorite compliment to him. Those pretty eyes saw everyone’s weakness, and for the right price, the foul mouth they were attached to would tell you all about it.
Yet he was also honest and hard-working, which got him favors. He never shied away from blood or dirt, which led him to the ring and his favorite pastime of boxing. It was easy to get people to bet credits on him, as he begun to put on muscle and weight with the help of the wonderful nurse.
Sigewinne quickly became akin to… something to him. She seen him stealing her bandages to wrap around his torso and had decided then and there to put a stop to that behavior. Now that he was on a hormone replacement, the breast tissue he had stubbornly tried to hide in his youth simply looked like large pectoral muscles after the rest of his body caught up to the memo. He was perhaps lucky he had such an abysmal food supply those pivotal years, and thus his body had decided there were other things to devote such energy into growing. It did not stop them from existing, and he still wrapped them in bandages to make them appear even smaller. If he wrapped them too tightly on the days where he couldn’t stand to look at himself in the mirror, then that was no one’s business but his own.
He stopped being pretty and became fierce , which he decided quickly was a much better thing to be. The men he had once curled around, honeyed words and a too sharp smile dripping from his lips, would lock onto his fists and quickly decide that his “bad side” was not worth the effort of trying to get to know. Even women took notice of his appearance and flocked to him for protection. He gladly accepted their company, they were much better conversationalists than the men anyways, and they had such a wide network of secrets and knowledge that he would have been a fool to not apply it.
When he took over, the suit he had found to wear to his first meeting with the Chief Justice had been ill-fitting. The shirt had been too tight against his chest, straining against shoulders and made of an unforgiving fabric. The trousers had been too large, made for a man who had indulged in too much alcohol and sweets at the expense of others. Wriothesley would have been lying if he had said he was thin , his body a mass of fat and muscle that could easily lift a reasonably large Mech, but the previous Warden had been borderline obese.
The coat was not much better, thin and wrinkled and not at all comfortable to wear. Yet clipping his vision to it had been a last-minute decision, an ornament he had been at first ashamed of, but now was proud. It was a symbol of himself; of all the hardships he had faced.
The Chief Justice had been kind, almost disgustingly handsome as well as he gave detailed instruction of his budget, salary, duties, and new responsibilities as well as new ownership. As Duke he now owned a lovely villa in the countryside, the farmland that was rented by a man and his family generated a steady flow of mora and even gave him several other assets such as a mill and the contract of being a vineyard in Mondstadt’s grain supplier for their beer production.
“Stop by Chioriya Boutique before you go back to Meropide,” Neuvillette suggested when he seen Wriothesley tug at the collar of the shirt one too many times. “Her clothes are very well designed and comfortable.”
The woman who owned the Boutique all but tore the clothes off of him once she seen him the first time, an Inazuman woman who had sharp scissors and an even sharper tongue. She had tsked at him when she discovered the bandages, he wore to support his chest, snipping them off of him and taking measurements. It was strange, to be in nothing but boxers as she flittered around him like a golden butterfly, but he supposed it was needed, and they did technically have the same body parts… even if he much rather they didn’t.
“You will do no one any good if you pass out from being unable to breathe, Monsieur,” she tutted at him, “I will make you a garment that makes you the man you desire to be. Trust me, when I’m done with you, the men of Fontaine will be sick with envy.”
“I’m in your hands, Miss Chiori,” Wriothesley had never been able to afford a proper set of clothes, let alone anything from her hands before. To have it now, at the ripe age of thirty-seven, was like a dream.
“Oh, don’t tell me that, Monsieur, otherwise you’ll never escape the silks and organza I could put you in,” Chiori said with a quirk of her lips. Not quite a smile, but not a frown either. He understood, keeping your emotions in check was pivotal when working with others.
Three weeks later he was pulled into a dressing room with her and given a whole set of clothing. Gray slacks and a darker gray shirt, red details and silver and gold buttons. The fabric was thick and dense, the stitching immaculate.
“Put it on, I want to see if it needs any adjustments,” Chiori ordered, watching as he put the clothes on slowly, making sure not to harm any of the pieces. He buttoned the shirt close and looked in the mirror as she walked around him, eyes focused and he put a hand on his, for the first time, remarkably well-dressed self. He looked sharp , almost dangerous, and the colors suited him nicely.
“I’m glad you like it, Monsieur,” Chiori handed him a handkerchief, which at that point he realized his eyes were becoming misty.
“I don’t know why I’m crying, Miss,” he whispered, “but thank you- for everything.”
“Seeing someone comfortable in their skin for the first time is what makes my job worth it, Monsieur. It suits you rather well, does it not?” She tilted her head and gave him a smirk of painted lips.
“... That was a terrible joke.”
“I am known for sewing, not jokes.”
That had been almost seven years since, and thin, deft hands were slowly undoing each article of clothing that had become his armor, exposing more of his skin to the warm lamplight and soft, shining violet eyes. His breath hitched as the last button was undone, leaving him exposed and vulnerable to everything in the world.
Soft lips pressed to his neck, soft hands touched his chest, cradling all of him as Neuvillette quickly took him into his arms. Fully surrendering any affection to his body, pressing adoring kisses to his face and cheeks as those soft, loving hands threaded their fingers with his coarse, crooked ones.
“You are lovely , Wriothesley,” Neuvillette said sweetly, so sweetly that Wriothesley felt as if he had placed a sugar lump directly onto his tongue. “My beloved, so handsome, so strong.”
“I have scars,” Wriothesley admitted, “my body- it’s been used, Neuvillette. I’m not a virgin, far from it. I’m not beautiful, I’m not even sure that word ever applied to me.”
“You are you,” Neuvillette told him, with all the authority of the courtroom, “and this is the body that houses the heart and soul I fell in love with. If you claim you are ugly, I will love you until you see yourself as I do. If you hate yourself, I will love you until you forget how.”
And for the first time, Wriothesley did not feel the need to wrap himself in leather and cotton. He, after forty four years, felt safe enough to bare himself to the world, wrapped in the protective arms of his love.
It was a feeling he would never forget.