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honey and plum
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From her solitary spot by the fountain, Flora listens to the water and little else. She sees mouths moving in conversation but they make no sound. Camilla's lips, painted the purple of a ripe plum, are stretched in a dulcet smile, wide and feline as someone tells her the one millionth happy birthday of the night, and whatever she responds with is lost on the wind. Momentarily, Flora feels bad for her at just the thought of all that attention, but she seems to be taking it in stride by graceful stride.
Flora can't imagine that – being graceful and smiling in place of dour and unapproachable. Her hands are clasped in a sweaty link in her lap, the neckline of her dress already leaving an irritated red ring around her throat. Like a noose, she thinks for a dark moment before shaking it off and turning her attention to the many hovering lanterns of the garden. They hang in hazy spheres of silver and lilac, bobbing lightly in the wind. Flora thinks of souls, disembodied and lost, and goodness, since when has she been this morbid? Always? Surely not; Felicia, seemingly always glowing and bright, would have pointed it out by now. I smile when needed, she thinks in a moment's agitation against imaginary confrontation. Should anyone look at me, they would likely think I'm having a wonderful time.
"Not enjoying yourself, are you?"
A familiar voice – Leo's, clear and quiet like a chime. When Flora meets his eyes, she finds them peeking out from behind a mask more elaborate than her own, all beads and jewels and intricate swirls of paint. Flora briefly touches the modest lace of her own mask before clearing her throat. "Quite the opposite, milord. Tonight is lovely."
Leo's mouth is unsmiling when he breathes out something like a laugh and approaches her bench. "It's plain in your posture. You're a portrait of tension right now."
"My sister and I put much effort into the decorations," Flora says, toes curling in her prim white boots. "It took hours, milord."
There's a beat before Leo says, "Forgive me. I hadn't considered."
"There's no need for apologies," Flora says, eyes to the lanterns again. "Though I might add you look tired as well."
"Do I?" Leo's voice is distant, noncommittal. "And here I thought I was sparkling with vitality."
The thinly-veiled sarcasm makes Flora smile, which she conceals with a turn of her head and a vague brush over her mouth with her fingers. "Forgive me for the observation. I meant no jest."
"Let's not spend the whole evening apologizing to each other," Leo says, gesturing to the empty spot on the bench. "May I?"
Flora blinks up at him in a moment's surprise before nodding and clasping her hands tighter in her lap. A lord asking a maid to sit beside her? Why? Why? The question echoes round and round in her head as Leo takes a seat and lets out a sudden and deep sigh, then seems to catch himself in the act of admitting exhaustion and quickly tucks it back inside. Flora feels how he turns to stone in an instant, stern and studious, the most carefully rehearsed statue. "You have something on your mind," he states rather than asks.
Flora hums. "I was considering the lanterns."
Leo lifts his head to follow her eyes to the hovering lights. "The lanterns?"
"Mm." Flora wrings her hands in her lap. "Something about them bothers me."
"What about them isn't to your liking?"
"They feel disconnected. I keep worrying they'll float off into the night and we'll never see them again."
Leo lets out another one of his mirthless laughs. "Would that be so terrible?"
Flora turns her head to look at him, finds his profile hard and hidden beneath painted porcelain. Only the thin line of his mouth shows, and Flora sees how its smile is false and grim for a split second before her gaze makes itself known and he quickly repaints his expression neutral. "In any case," he says, "there's no need to worry. Those lanterns are held in place with magic. They aren't going anywhere."
Flora immediately looks down at her hands. "Your magic, milord?"
Leo gives an affirmative hum.
When Flora's embarrassment keeps her from speaking, she feels his eyes on her, gently inquisitive. "Is something wrong?"
"I didn't mean to insult your magic. The lanterns are lovely." Flora wrings and wrings at her hands in an attempt to keep them from falling off and tumbling into the grass. "All I meant was..."
"Oh, that?" Leo breathes another laugh, then leans forward in his seat until he's perched birdlike on its edge. "No, no. You shouldn't take a word of it back."
Flora stares at his profile, the terse set of his body against the darkness splintered with lantern light. You always look as though you're on the very edge of the universe, she thinks, watching the tension in his shoulders ebb and flow in time with his breathing. Just like me.
"In fact," Leo murmurs, "I'm a little relieved someone noticed."
"Noticed?"
Leo is silent for a while before rising to his feet and saying, "That something I made wasn't perfect in the phoniest of ways. I appreciate your honesty."
A cool wind blows and rustles the leaves of the blackberry bush close by. For just a moment, Flora smells the sweet berries on the breeze and wonders if this is a scent that Leo associates with home. She watches him carefully for anything whimsical, anything nostalgic and bittersweet to ghost through his eyes, but he doesn't show it; he remains staid and stiff, distracted, before turning to her and offering a gloved hand. "We should walk. You seem as restless as I do, and these blackberries make my head hurt."
Flora stares at his hand in another moment's confusion before it sinks in that yes, this hand is reaching down and waiting for hers. The only time their hands have ever touched was by accident in the midst of serving tea, some quiet and brief brushing of her fingers along Leo's knuckles while reaching to refill the sugar bowl just as he was spooning another lump into his Darjeeling. They met eyes, Leo's softly questioning but not accusing even as Flora's body felt suddenly put on trial for having experienced warmth. She barely slept that night, hand burning from fingertip to wrist in a way that trumped all ice magic at her disposal.
Nevertheless, she accepts his hand after steeling herself for the contact, and is both thankful and remorseful for the silk and lace that separates their palms from bare touch. It's for the best, she tells the anxious flipping of her stomach as Leo helps her to her feet. It's for the best, she repeats to the sinking that follows when their hands release, and then again when their fingertips brush (another accident, of course it's another accident) at the slight bump their bodies make when they take their first step along the garden path. Flocks of nobles in their fine clothing laugh and swirl together in the magic light as the two weave through pockets of noise. Flora tunes it out the best she can, though she feels her skin start to prickle and her eardrums rattle from too much stimulation for the tiny cage of her body to contain.
Just as she's about to burst, Leo mutters, "So loud."
"All these people," she agrees.
"All these people and all this wine." Leo swipes a hand through his hair, mussing it in a moment's candidness before the breeze intervenes and sets it smooth again. "Put the two together and you have enough noise to last you a lifetime."
"Twelve lifetimes," Flora amends. "Just one wouldn't be enough to hold all this."
Her half-joke pulls a laugh out of Leo that sounds genuine. It makes Flora's chest burn. "Sometimes noise isn't so bad," Leo says, "but only sometimes, and only certain sounds."
"Like what?"
Leo is quiet for a beat, the clack of his boots light and crisp against the cobblestone of the garden path. And then, "Hearing Xander laugh. It was only once, but I heard it clear across the grass while I was searching for Corrin." Another pause. "I think it was something Laslow said. They were conversing beneath the apple tree away from the others, and my brother was smiling at him in a way I've never seen him smile at anyone before. It was...relieving. Knowing he can still let himself laugh."
Leo suddenly stops, looks sideways at Flora, and gives what she can only liken to a sheepish smile. "I'm getting awfully candid here. I should stop now."
"You don't need to," Flora says without thinking. "I'm listening."
"I know," Leo laughs out. "That's what makes it imperative that I stop."
Flora looks down at her shoes, then lifts her eyes to the path ahead. "I hope this isn't an offense, but...there's a loneliness in you tonight,milord, and it worries me."
The two walk on for a few silent steps before Leo speaks again, low and soft. "It isn't an overstep at all. I was thinking the same thing about you, but unlike you, I lacked the boldness to say it outright."
Boldness? The word seems foreign,an alien concept when applied to Flora, who spent thirty minutes in the bathroom before this occasion trying to steady her breathing long enough to fill her lungs with a decent-enough inhale to not feel like passing out, but she isn't about to tell Leo that. It feels nice to be called strong, even when the imp in her mind wars against it and tries to snuff it out into meaninglessness; but then she remembers that very strength had been paired with loneliness, and she's brought back down to earth in an instant. And amidst her exhaustion, the words fall right out of her.
"If you're being candid," she says, "I suppose it's only fair that I am as well. You're right, Lord Leo. I'm not enjoying myself tonight. Though my sister is. Even after toiling away at these decorations, she can dance and sing and clap her hands and be a picture of radiance. I don't know how she does it, and I can't ask, for that would be yet another admission of failure on my part, and I can't afford much more of that."
There's something freeing in the admission of such a negativity, but the moment everything leaves her chest, she wishes she could grab it out of the air and stuff it somewhere dark and sealed off where no one would ever hear it again. But when Leo looks at her, his expression is calm and touched with a sorrow she's seen in her own reflection far too many times to call unfamiliar. "You have much to say," he murmurs. "You should speak it plainly like that more often."
Flora sets her palm to her forehead as if to keep every horrible thought stitched safely inside her head. "I don't know where it all came from."
"I think you do. Your words were clear and focused. And I...envy you for having the strength of mind to let them out so honestly."
They come to a stop before a plum tree, heavy with fruit sweet on the night. Leo's mask is slipping a little at one corner, sagging where it once sat sturdy and glittering. He's staring at her, lanterns reflected in his eyes. "At first," he says, "I thought I'd be more comfortable with Camilla insisting on her party being one with masks. But now..." He touches the outer curve of his mask, fingers trembling. "Now I'm reminded of what their real purpose is. Symbols of deception."
"You've been honest with me this whole time, milord. In your own way."
"Though I've lied to everyone else just the same." Leo's eyes flit to the side to catch hers. "You just happened to see through me sooner."
Flora's heart pounds below her throat, sparking her words hot with adrenaline. "That may be true. But all I had to do to see through you was look at you, Lord Leo."
That pulls his attention right back to her, but squarely, not out the corners of eyes or through brief glances. She holds his gaze, refusing to let her trepidation force her eyes away. He opens his mouth to speak, closes it, and then takes a deep breath before trying again. "And that explains why I saw through you as well, doesn't it? Looking at you long enough to see what you were hiding."
A deep heat spreads its way across Flora's face, down her neck, and into her chest. Still she refuses to look away from him, head tilted back to keep their eyes locked together. "Is this the first time you've done that?" she asks him, knees feeling watery but legs too determined in their stance to give out on her. "Looked at me for a long time?"
Leo's shoulders are tense when he says, "No. Far from it."
Flora thinks of that accidental touch over the sugar bowl. If she touched him now, would she melt away? This body of ice left to pool around him, or rather to wash over him – just the thought makes her sway, and her gaze almost drops out of the sheer heat gathering over everything and making it hard to focus, but she remains right where she is. If she breaks this boldness now, she might never get it back, and she'll shrink back into herself and frost over for good, never to be warmed again.
Another sweet purple wind blows. Flora breathes it in, rooting herself deeper into the earth. "Then there's no need for masks between us, is there?"
Leo's exhale stutters in his throat. She wonders if he's fighting against the urge to look away from her, to burrow into silence and stillness and a place where no eyes fall on him; if he is, he's winning against it, because his eyes remain steadfast on hers even when she takes the barest step closer to him. "Let me take it from you," she says, shaking in fine tremors within the confines of her evening gown.
Leo is motionless as he breathes just a touch faster than before, only visible in the rise and fall of his shoulders – but Flora sees it, that confession of vulnerability, and she holds onto it so tightly her heart could break from it. Three heartbeats pass before Leo lowers his head and closes his eyes. "Go on, then," he whispers. "Take it from me."
Flora's hands feel weak and hot when she finds the ribbon behind his head tying back the mask. When it slips loose, she catches the mask in her free hand and holds it gingerly between her fingertips – and for the first time all night, she looks up at him and sees the bareness of that sorrow she thought she was alone in.
"Your eyes," she murmurs. "They're heavy."
Shame hangs like a white flag in Leo's eyes. "Heavy with what?"
"With a sadness I know too well."
Leo doesn't turn his gaze away from hers. When he reaches up and slowly removes her mask, Flora has to brace herself hard into the roots of the earth to keep from fleeing at her own exposure. She wonders how many secrets are leaking from her eyes right now, tries to keep count of them as they spark in her mind; she loses track in seconds.
Leo takes a long, deep breath. "As are yours," he says quietly. "There's scarcely any difference between you and I."
The ice clinging tothe curvature of Flora's ribcage begins to melt. Before tonight, she thinks she could have listed a million and a half ways in which their existences diverged into separate worlds that could never intersect, never even so much as graze against each other like a misplaced touch at teatime; but when she reaches up to touch the arch of Leo's cheekbone with trembling fingertips, she finds him real and warm and tangible. As his eyes become heavy, she lets her palm curl against his cheek – and when he leans into the touch, she lets herself lean up and hover just before his mouth, close enough to feel his breath hot and unsteady on her lips.
When she kisses him, the garden is silent, save for the faraway sound of laughter in the courtyard from people neither of them know the middle names of. Around them, the plum trees sway in their heavy purple waves. Leo's mouth tastes of the memory of fruit, some secret handful of blackberries plucked from a bush. You liar, she thinks, kissing him deeper, hearing him gasp into her mouth. I thought you said you hated those.