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He’s sitting on a bench, the whole thing uncomfortable as shit, feeling splinters wedge their way into the crack of his ass, when someone asks what he looks for in a woman.
Fidelio is feeling his tail chafe against the barely sanded down wood of the seat, the skin under his fur rubbed raw. The men had won a battle with some minor casualties, unimportant bodies who died in mediocracy, not honor, and felt it prudent to celebrate the win. That was something he appreciated about Louis’ men— their inability to focus on the bad. Men watching their comrades get torn to shreds should be an express ticket for insanity, of demoralization at least, but with these men— clad in their white cloaks and iron helmets— fickle feelings of grief bounced off them like a paper ball does a rubbish bin. But, upset or not, they wanted to celebrate and Del was their ‘commander’ for the expedition so he was obligated to come. Even if only for a moment.
“You old enough to like women, Lad?” Paul… something or another asks. He moved up the ranks quickly, not out of true skill but luck. He’d been sent out on 5 human hunts now and every time came back alive, which meant something when initially crawling your way out of the flock of sheep they took in. Fidelio watched him drink, squinting as the fellow Paripus clapped a heavy hand on his back. He looked young, younger than himself surely, around Basilio’s age maybe. Shaggy head of green hair, big ears to hear a whole lotta nothing. Fidelio doesn’t smile, because there's nothing in his life to smile about, but he sips his drink good naturedly.
With a tug, he brings the boy down to his level and speaks into his ear. No need to whisper in a packed pub, you’ll only hear half of anything said, so Fidelio doesn’t. Instead just talking as he would any other day. “You’re gonna die before the week is up” he responds, tone dry. When he turns, the boy is gaping at him, face flushed from the drinks or the joy or the insult, but he stays silent for, presumably, one of the same reasons. Fidelio stands, cracking his neck, rolling his shoulders and raising the mug up in false merriment. “TO COUNT LOUIS!” He yells. Their merry band screams in agreement, the voices of 50 something odd men shaking the room with the volume.
With that done, he walks out, ignoring the stiff feeling in his tail from that coffin they call a chair, and drops a small bag of gold on the bar’s counter. No use in letting the men run up a tab and set a bad precedent. Lord Louis had an image to maintain, after all.
He wore a size 8 in shoes. Occasionally, if the cobbler was odd or difficult, it might be a 7. Once or twice he’s worn a half size of 7 and a half, though that was a fluke as it hasn’t happened again. If he wears thick socks, the expensive ones made of cotton that’s only carried in Altabury, he can fit a 9. They feel cluttered and cramped though, too long for his foot, even if the added layer of padding from the sock fixes the width issue. It was uncomfortable, though. Terribly so.
He’d had his clothes tailored, when Lord Louis first took them into his personal company. Outfitting every single member of his army was expensive, horrifically so— but he could apparently manage to retrofit the wardrobes of his closest generals. He’d yet done it for anyone but the Magnus brothers, instead caring little about anything besides basic hygiene and clean bust plates, but Fidelio kept the feeling of ‘special’ out of his chest.
Basilio was big, sickeningly so at times, but his lean and lanky form lent itself well to the clothing he liked to wear. Fidelio had bought him something on a whim, some unremarkable outfit he’d built in the middle of a clothing aisle, and held in his hands and rubbed between his finger and thumb and thought— Basilio would like this. Stylish suits and loose button ups became his entire wardrobe, so much so he, basically, had the same outfit repeated over and over with accessories to differentiate. A belt of rings for one, a faux corset with another. It varied by the day. Del loved seeing him mix and match with the pieces, gold buttons matching with the chocolate zippers or the red cuffs with cream neck tie. It was almost like seeing a puzzle come together.
The best part was when Basilio would build a look, something real proper and fitting, and would look to Fidelio for a moment, expression a touch of worry painting his otherwise focused features. Does this work Del? He’d ask. Sometimes Fidelio couldn’t even answer fully, the image of what they were doing not at all lost on him. Pickiness. Uniformity. Cohesiveness. Such foreign concepts. Yet they were gaining fluency all the same.
Paul dies 2 days before week’s end. Murdered in his sleep by his bunkmate, supposedly because he kept insisting he was unkillable. The soldier had said, quote “You seem quite killed to me!” before confessing to the crime. He goes unprosecuted though. Naturally.
“You think Zorba like, always keeps the eye closed?” Basilio asks between spoonfuls of frozen custard. They pass the bowl back and forth. It’s Fidelio’s as most things are, but the nature of being older means you just tend to share everything.
He takes the bowl back, scooping some custard in his mouth “Fuck no. Gotta get itchy at some point”
“I mean, yeah. ‘Spose thats true. But it just looks odd”
“Yeah. ‘s not nice to say Bas. I’d quiet down if I was you— that alloy bastard’ll hex yah” Suddenly, for no reason, he feels the bowl be ripped out of his hands. Taken suddenly.
“Not nice to call him an alloy, Del” Basilio wrestles the spoon from his hand, laughing.
He always does this. Basilio doesn’t even like sugar. Not like Fidelio does.
Asshole .
Just, fucking, spoiled rotten now. “He is one though. Right bastard too”
“Yeah. True that.”
“Fidelio,” Lord Louis is walking through town with them, painfully bare of his usual finery and military clothes. “You wear a 9, don’t you?” He doesn’t really ask, because Louis Guiabern rarely asks anything as much as he says it and waits for any possible, justified, correction.
“Yes, me lord. Why?” They’re in some shithole by the sea, something unremarkable and impoverished. Lord Louis liked to spend time in the worst places he could find, making day trips of visiting villages with less coin to their names than whatever was lost in his drawers. It motivated him, Fidelio assumed. He always left these trips more energized, like the horrors that awaited him reinforced something.
Basilio likes to bring a small pouch of butter candy with him, keeping it in his coat pocket to hand to passing children (and men and women and the elderly, really anyone with a mouth). These trips of theirs were lowkey, enjoyably so; their usual hustle and bustle of killing humans and people alike being paused for the momentary hum of quiet, sleepy, forgotten places.
“I have some shoes I have no need for anymore, and I thought you may like them”
He blinks, turning to look at a little girl sweeping dirt into piles. “I can afford me own shoes, sir. Though I thank you for the kindness.”
Lord Louis doesn’t react much, just a light nod of his head and that sustained stare he liked to give to see the weaker men under him squirm. Fidelio didn’t squirm. “Zorba always gets quite excited when I offer gifts, so. I thought I’d attempt such flattery with you as well.”
Fidelio doesn’t manage to hold back his scoff. “With respect, I’m no Zorba.” No one was. The Alloy was testy in all matters but his Lord savior Louis. Fidelio respected their leader for all he’s done— all he will do— but he doesn’t love the man. He doesn’t like him much as a person neither, in the self-respecting way anyone can ‘dislike’ their Lord whom they’d happily and readily die for. Louis commanded something deeper than affection from Fidelio. But from Zorba he, somehow without thought, had convinced the man to give everything.
“Surely not, no.” Basilio wandered off to hand more candy out, giving a few to the little girl busying herself with cleaning the ground from itself. They both stand on the other side of the path, just dirt and foot trails working to move you through the ugly line of homes, and watch him talk to the quickly forming gaggle of kids around his legs. All little Paripus and Nidia children. “You’re unflappable compared to Zorba. Compared to anyone really.”
“M’ not. You just got big shoes to fill. Wouldn’t wanna delude myself into thinking I could,” he pauses, tasting the next words in his mouth, waiting to see if it's sour or not. Nothing resonates. “Besides, I don’t have much appreciation for hand me downs anymore. You spoiled that for me.”
When he looks back up at Lord Louis— and it really is an exercise in looking up , not just at — he’s met with an expression he cannot name. Lord Louis, in the years they’ve spent in each other’s company, has made it clear that he isn’t the most expressive person. Not typically. He enjoys dramatics, he revels in the macabre, and finds everything concerning his precise planning to be an extension of premiere stagecraft only the likes of Lady Junah have seen and experienced as it is for performers. But he’s tempered, in the restrained way Fidelio has contented himself with. So every new expression feels like an admission of something, even if that ‘something’ was somehow both infallible and impossible to name. So now they stand, looking at each other, one lost and the other Lord Louis. “Sir?”
“... Nothing. Let us go, we have more to see.”
So they went. To go see ‘more’ .
His morning routine went like this. Wake up, go to the bathroom, take a piss, lean over the sink and try to make his brain start working as the shower ran, just wasting water because wasting water meant nothing to Lord Louis so why conserve it, brush his teeth, wash his face, shave and then comb his hair till he looked like somebody’s child; once the bathroom tasks were taken care of he’d go to his closet, pick a wife-beater and put it on, then pick an under shirt and put it on, then pick a button up and put it on, then pick a sweater to put on, then put his socks on, then put his pants on, then connect his suspenders, then his jacket and finally, his shoes. He’s snug in the layers and makes his way to Basilio’s room before he can focus on the feeling of his lungs trying to expand.
“Damn it—!” The only place he bought clothes at was a boutique on the corner of one of the miserably cold streets of Altabury. All his clothes came from the lap of Sanctism, in a sick twist of fate. The irony of all his threads being woven under the watchful eye of the god he so detested wasn’t lost on him. But that sort of introspection was for another day.
Today he was here, probably for the last time till Summer began, and he’d missed the only tailor he’d stuck with. Louis tried to keep expeditions to the frozen city to a minimum. Even the most fanatic fan of his was isolated in the holy streets, left cold and misunderstood when the kingdom’s faith surrounded them on all sides. Every outfit he had was either bought here or commissioned entirely. He knew their schedule well and did his best to come right before it got truly dark. Yet, here he stood, staring at a closed building.
That meant fuck all now, of course, as Fidelio stands in the freezing cold half dizzy with anger at the freaks in the runner who took goddamn forever to park, probably up there jacking each other off and twiddling their thumbs over doing their damn jobs and getting them in position to dock.
He turns to leave, too pissed to think straight, when he hears the soft jingle of a bell. A door opening. With a blink he turns again, shivering at the cold, and sees a woman coming out and moving to lock the door.
He speaks before he can stop himself.
“Ma’m!” There was less than 10 feet between them, no need for any yelling, but it came out of him anyway. The noise hot and desperate. She turns, just noticing him and blinks back, surprised. She’s Mustari, and not his usual aid but it didn’t much matter. He couldn’t exactly degrade her for not being the knobby knuckled Clemar he was used to. Not when he was already making an ass of himself, begging to be let inside after closing. “I know it’s late, an’ about as cold as cold can get, an’ you probably have a lot to do, but, shit. Could I trouble you for just a moment? I had a appointment set for earlier, just an hour ago and I missed it, just barely and I— damn it, I need this. Please.”
She just stares at him silent, taking him in, and he keeps speaking. Anger makes him babble, he learns. Belt up, Del. “I need some measurements and nothing more, promise. I’ll be in and out. You’ve my word” Not that it meant much. But she didn’t know that.
He watches as she looks down, at a massive suitcase by her feet. He didn’t know what supplies seamstresses needed but clearly it was a lot. He’s half frozen to death when he hears the lock click again and sees her smile and nod towards the shop. He doesn’t wait past that. Invites were so seldom received and easily revoked, in his experience. No point letting her think about it.
They walk in together, him only a few paces behind. Her heels clack against the hard wooden floors, the room still dark.
It’s unsettling walking through the silent room like this, as if something’s wrong. He’s been here enough that he can easily make his way to the sitting room turned fitting room in the back, right past the register. To keep this interaction short he walks over, easily making his way through the dark. Just as his tail begins to curl into itself, and he’s reached the curtain of the back room, he pulls the fabric as the lights come on. He hears the front door close, and her light footsteps walk up behind him. In the light he can see why the place was closed so early. It looked like a hurricane had come through the back, the whole place clearly ransacked. Rolls of fabric thrown around, unraveled and unfurled; little buttons and pins and ribbons littering the ground; hangers bent and left forgotten. Worse, the mirror had blood on it.
It was a mess.
It’s just then, as he takes the mess in front of him in fully, does the woman speak up “Apologies for the state of things,” Her voice is low, but soft, more exhausted than anything; got an accent too, something hard to place. Pagan original, probably. Lots of that around here, he’s found.
Fidelio turns to look at her and takes her in for the first time since he got out the cold. She’s got a dark complexion and blonde hair, similar to the few Mustari he’d met in their ranks. Tall as shit too, about Basilio’s height if he were to guess, and dressed in a long pantsuit. A dark brown coat sits over her white outfit, her hands hidden under leather gloves. She’s dressed for the weather at least, to that degree he’s jealous. She doesn’t fidget, not exactly, but she looks awkward; such a big lady in such a small shop. He doesn’t usually make a job of staring down poor assistants, but he’d been told for years he had a bad staring problem. Both him and Basilio. “Can I offer you a cup of tea?” she tries, moving past him to look for the (presumably) knocked over teapot. He watches as she bends down, picking at the different knocked over objects, careful to avoid any spilled liquids or droplets of blood around. Her hands look scarred from here, more akin to his own than that of a seamstress. Pin-pushing was a dangerous sport, he guessed. Or maybe the Sanctists up here were worse than he’d thought prior. The realization is as unsurprising as it is unfortunate.
She’s pretty. Not that it means anything to him when he was. Him. Most Mustari hid their faces so diligently, especially the women, so he’d never actually seen one. Not this close at least. Not unmasked. “No, thank you. I shouldn’t stay long” Instead of staring he walks to the center of the fitting room and waits. “You know what happened?” It clearly looks like a struggle. Furniture toppled over and blood splattered on the mirror.
“Apparently we were robbed” She walks over, grabbing a small, beaten up notebook from her coat pocket. From the floor she reaches for an unfurled roll of measuring tape. Without another word she moves to take his measurements.
“Is Gustav okay?” He levels his voice, sounding disinterested. He didn’t know the man, no more than he knew anyone that wasn’t Basilio, but he’d been ordering here sporadically for almost a decade now. They’d grown close, or as close as an old man and the young client who saw him twice a year could be. She runs a hand up his back, feeling his coat. She moves to grab the tape and begin working before Fidelio remembers himself and begins taking his coat off. “Sorry, not trying to make this harder for you” He says between layers. The coat is handed off, and she takes it moving to fold it as he begins to strip. It’s not fun to drop to your smalls in front of Gustav, but that was down right pleasurable compared to doing the same in front of a young woman. They were probably the same age, he guessed.
Not that she’d know. “You wear a lot of layers, don’t you?’ He does nothing but shrug at that.
“He’s in hospital now. I was told to come and close up shop early, and begin cleaning for the next day,” She answers. He feels her before he sees her, the reflection of her form in the mirror moving slowly through the motions. Length of the arms, then legs, then the tail slit, then torso. Gustav, for all his sewing genius, shook horribly. She was calm, steady hands working without pause. Clearly shaken yet working so diligently. That was the Mustari for you, he supposed.
She takes one final measurement, holding his neck as she got it exact. Her hand curls around his nape, the other by his Adam's apple. She’s got a good grip and looks to her notebook to check her measurements again, and instantly when the hold scantily tightens he wants to bristle, to jump and force her hands off him. Basilio had told him that his paranoia would get the best of him one day, ruin something easy. He could hear him now, all giddy at the image of Fidelio struggling. You had some pretty lass touchin’ on yah, and you shook her off? Yourea’ fool, Del. So he calms, forcing his body still. A hand on his neck, doing what he forced her to do, wasn’t a death threat. He wasn’t in danger.
She pauses for a beat, looking at something on the ground, before speaking outside of answering a question “You work for Lord Louis?” She asks. It doesn’t sound like a question. She moves away suddenly satisfied, and Fidelio gets that feeling that usually comes whenever someone talks against his Lord.
His eyes catch on the jacket he took off, noticing the emblem of Lord Louis’ army sewn inside. Neither he nor his brother were forced to dress in the uniform, but they hadn’t felt right working under Louis’ banner without some sort of proof of their devotion. Basilio had floated the idea of a tattoo, which was tripe. Fidelio thought about wearing the army’s colors outright, which Basilio found unappetizing as, apparently, white wasn’t his color. They met in the middle with the emblems. In the mirror he levels her a glare, flat and hard. “That a problem?”
She looks at him for a beat before smiling, just as polite as before. “No. I didn’t think I’d meet another supporter of his—”
“Bit more than support, Ma’m,”
She nods, turning to allow him some privacy “Of course. Apologies.”
They finish without much fanfare. He puts his clothes back on and she leaves, finishing the page. When he walks out of the fitting room she’s standing by the door, waiting. “Is something wrong with the register?”
She shakes her head “I couldn’t make you pay for that. It was routine,” Without much else to say she hands the measurements over, the note folded into a half sliver “Also, here” She puts a bundle of socks into his hand. 100% cotton, Altabury Original, the tag reads. When Fidelio looks back up at her the question must be obvious on his face. “You had some tears in your socks. Cold has a way of finding every nook and cranny to crawl in from”
“... If you want me to play dumb and offer to pay, I’m not the one for it. Doesn’t work on me.”
She chuckles, barely, more an exhale of air. “Never. Please, I insist,”
These little pockets of kindness he finds on his trips into cities and villages, all thanks to his Lord, it feels like a reward. Like he’s doing something right. The feeling is unimportant, but warm all the same and he looks away, already knowing his cheeks are flushing. He’d mastered the art of not emoting through ear twitches or letting his tail wag, willing his expressions to bored disinterest or contempt more often than not, but he couldn’t yet control blood’s movement through his veins. Yet . “Right. Well, thank you for the assistance, considering…”
“Of course. Happy to.”
They walk outside together as she turns the lights off, the cold assaulting his senses. He shivers, envious of how easily the natives of this horrible place bear the temperature so easily. She doesn’t even shiver.
They don’t speak again, instead he watches her wave kindly and he nods before scampering off back to the runner. It doesn’t occur to him until he’s inside, sipping on some soup Basilio put in front of him that he never caught her name.
When he hands the measurements to Zorba a few days later, to look over them before he sends them off for commission, the necromancer looks at the note for a moment, his gaze jumping from page to Fidelio over and over. He scoffs, rolling his eyes and ripping the page in half “I don’t know what blind man you convinced to measure you, Magnus, but that’s useless to me. Those numbers don’t make sense”
Zorba might be their perfect mage or whatever he was, but he was a right prick too. “What, you think I don’t know how small I am? I watched her measure me, Alloy —”
He cuts the slur off, sounding more bored than hurt. This was normal for them. “She wrote ‘1’ for your leg height. That means nothing. Less than nothing” With the confidence of someone who thought himself untouchable, Zorba waves Fidelio off, out of his lab. “Fuck off and get it right next time.”
Fidelio wants to throttle him, but doesn’t and instead just turns and walks back to his room. Fucking prick.