Work Text:
Meropide is a quiet town, about an hour northeast of anywhere anyone could find on a map. If they are being charitable, they call it quaint or unpretentious or charming, but when they’re honest, most people call it a podunk backwater that might as well be crowned the capital of Bumblefuck Nowhere. It had been much the same thirty years ago, just slightly less stooped and gray, but Wriothesley’s fading memories of the town don’t need much adjusting.
He likes the idea of quiet nowhere. Something like a ‘fresh start’ is a bit beyond him, but an early retirement to a tiny country town suits Wriothesley just fine, and that’s before he sees the lighthouse.
It has been almost a century since that lighthouse has seen actual use—the local fishermen are guided now by the lights and impressive signal of the radio tower, and Meropide hadn’t seen much other traffic even when the trade routes had come along this part of the coast. The shoals here are too rocky, the thick kelp forests disguising where deep water abruptly became sharp and jagged shallows, so even when the lighthouse had been active, it was not a popular one. The granddaughter of the last keeper had preserved it for historical interest and nostalgia only, and was happy enough to sell it, even to a man with Wriothesley’s reputation.
“Well, the Hydro Archon pardoned you herself, so I reckon you’ll do alright by Meropide, Mr. Wriothesley,” she’d said tartly, and patted him on the hand when she gave him the keys. “You’ll want to fix the roof before the storm season, and see that you mind the otters.”
Later, Wriothesley puzzles over that statement for only half a day before he finds an otter peering in one of the kitchen windows, at which point further explanation wasn’t necessary. There is, as it turns out, an entire colony of otters nesting along the base of the old lighthouse, and sometimes inside the great old cellar. As the cellar is mostly flooded and no longer needs to contain the hundreds of gallons of tallow and oil to light the tower, the previous owner hadn’t seen any need to chase them out.
Wriothesley ends up giving his new neighbor most of his toast that morning, figuring it pays to make a good first impression. It isn’t as though he has a choice what impression he makes on the rest of Meropide.
Watching the otters becomes something of a habit, alongside morning, noontime and evening jogs, aimlessly perusing the too-small library for things more recent than thirty years out of date, and gently harassing the town’s sawbones, a tiny little woman called Sigewinne who greets him with none of the polite rubbernecking the rest of Meropide gives him Watching the otters from the docks and his windows seems like an entirely indulgent waste of time, and wasting time feels positively luxurious after all the years of every minute being tallied as meticulously as a spendthrift’s pennies.
Because he spends his days watching otters, Wriothesley finds himself gravitating towards the few books on marine life the library has, and when the liaison from the Court of Fontaine visits for her monthly check-in, he asks her for more, along with as many varieties of tea as she can lay her elegant little hands on. And, because he keeps asking her for more, over the months he accumulates quite a collection, the echo of a teenage boy’s dreams of doing something worthy. And, because he’d read all those books, Wriothesley knows what he’s seeing, when the colony suddenly begins to withdraw and hide amongst the shoals one afternoon, even though the sun still peers through the stubborn fog.
A storm’s coming.
The otters would know better, and faster, than anyone save the Hydro Archon—Wriothesley grimaces at the thought of relying on that woman for an accurate prediction of the weather—and he takes heed of their caution, gathering tarps, cardboard and a copious amount of duct tape at the local store (a hardware store, barber shop and small grocery store—Meropide really was at the ass-end of nowhere). Storms are boring, for the most part; with his windows secure and leaks preemptively sealed, there is nothing else to do but light a candle, brew tea in the dark, and read until it is over.
It is what storms take away—or leave behind—that makes them interesting.
Wriothesley does not expect this storm to leave behind a concussed, bleeding and very angry otter, tangled up in a net and half-drowned in the lighthouse cellar. One jacket and several scratches later, he carries the thing all the way through the waterlogged town to bang on Sigewinne’s door, and is relieved when she does not cuss him out immediately on seeing the problem. They are fortunate that Wriothesley’s otter had passed out on the way there—it makes cutting the harsh wire of the fishing net free from the otter’s body much easier than it would have been awake and fighting for its freedom.
Afterwards, cleaning out the wounds, Sigewinne pauses, peers at the fur parted between her fingers, and says, “Hm, that’s interesting.”
“What?” Wriothesley has lived long enough to know that the word ‘interesting’ is always alarming from a medical professional. “What’s interesting?”
“Nothing you need to sound so alarmed about, Mr. Wriothesley.” She laughs at him, and rummages around through her shelves for a few books. “Come back this evening, and we’ll get him into the water.”
“That soon?”
“Yes,” she says, and smiles in a way Wriothesley knows she thinks is mysterious, but, instead, makes her look like she’s swallowed something sour. He wisely chooses not to mention this, and looks at the books she thrusts into his hands, all of which are about local folklore. “I doubt he’ll want to wait much longer than sunset.”
One of the other things Wriothesley is old enough to have learned is to not argue with any medical professional, particularly one you’d woken up before the crack of dawn with a wild animal stuffed in your jacket, so he doesn’t.
Thus, that evening he finds himself down at the rocky beach with Sigewinne, holding a disgruntled but oddly cooperative otter in his arms as it, apparently, and quite vehemently, refuses to go into a carrier. It isn’t as though Wriothesley is attached to it—it is a wild animal, no matter how friendly his little neighborhood otters are. But he still feels a little strange when it taps a tiny paw to his cheek before he sets it down on the shore, and that strange tight feeling lingers as the otter vanishes into the surf without looking back.
Sigewinne pats his arm and smiles, not unkindly, but doesn’t say anything else. There isn’t really anything to say, Wriothesley thinks; they’d done the right thing, and as he’s always suspected, doing the right thing is a little lonesome. So he smiles back, collects his jacket to be washed, and goes to bed early, dreaming only of the sound of ocean spray.
Wriothesley does not expect to be awoken by a knock on his door, barely half-past the ass crack of dawn. He definitely does not expect to open his door to see the most stunningly beautiful man he’s ever laid eyes on, standing on his stoop.
Silver-haired and dressed in clothes that could have walked off the set of a fantasy drama, or right out of those games he teases his parole officer for playing, the man stands there almost crystallized in the clear light of the dawn. The sea wind that delicately flutters through his impeccable cravat brings enough color to flawless, glass skin to confirm this is not a statue carved from the purest marble.
Wriothesley has never been one for formalities, but a jacket over his ratty gym shirt and worn boxers he sleeps in, are a little bit underdressed in comparison. He gapes for a moment or two, and while he scrambles internally to find his voice and his wits wherever he’d dropped them, the stranger on his step speaks.
“I have something for you, Wriothesley. May I offer it to you?” His voice is only a moderate baritone, but spoken softly enough that it seemed to contain even greater depth. Smooth, too, and surprisingly even. Wriothesley will admit to himself later he almost expected music to burst forth from this stranger’s lips instead of spoken word, which would fit the surreality of the situation.
Wriothesley is no fool. This man knowing his name does not make him any less a stranger; his name is not a guarded secret, not here nor anywhere in the nation of Fontaine. But people turning up on the doorstep to offer gifts was not, generally speaking, going to be a sound bargain. He has every right to refuse, to close the door, and go back to bed.
“... Sure, come inside, I’ll put the kettle on,” is what Wriothesley says instead, and turns back into his house to find the kettle and actual pants, in that order. When he comes back more appropriately dressed, the kettle is boiling and the stranger is sitting delicately on his couch, looking somehow even more out of place there than he had on the doorstep. In his lap there is a box, held in his elegant gloved hands, dark and lacquered in a way that makes it somehow iridescent.
“What kind of tea do you want? I’m out of anything really fancy, but I still have some good Liyuen Jasmine or Mondstadt Grey—”
“Just the water will be fine,” the stranger says, watching Wriothesley with those bright, strangely colored eyes of his. They are pale, almost lilac in color, and strangely, remind Wriothesley of the otters, who he has not seen since releasing his injured friend last night. He brushes the thought away, grimacing as he pours plain hot water into a cup, tells himself not to think about it, and brings it and his own proper cup of tea over to the little table in front of his couch.
Instead of reaching for the boiled tap water (Wriothesley is not succeeding at not thinking about it), the stranger holds the box up to Wriothesley expectantly. The insistence is certainly odd, and should feel more suspicious than it does, but Wriothesley chalks it up to just another outlandish part of the morning and takes the box carefully. He realizes with a start that the box is heavy, full of something, and that the strange glimmering surface is not a dark wood, but deep black mother-of-pearl.
The stranger watches him with an expectant air, so Wriothesley swallows the strange sense of foreboding, flicks the catch on the lid, and opens the box. What stares up at him out of it are at least a hundred solid gold coins, all twice as large as the Morar coins Meropide’s singular ancient vending machine sometimes spits out at him. Even worse, he dimly recognizes the script scrolling around the edge of the top layer of coins.
He is holding a box full of Remurian coins, and Wriothesley has the sinking suspicion every single one of them would be genuine, if he took them to be authenticated.
“I—what?” Wriothesley looks from the box to the stranger, who stares back with an air of someone very politely waiting to be praised. There is an innocence to that look, guileless and expectant, that makes Wriothesley breathe out a laugh. This entire morning has been surreal and ridiculous from start to finish, and he is delighted to find out he’s not too old for this nonsense, after all.
“This is very kind of you,” Wriothesley starts, and watches the stranger’s brow furrow at that response. That someone so unearthly beautiful can be so cute warms something in his heart. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any use for these.”
The stranger starts, and looks so immediately crestfallen Wriothesley almost wants to take it back, but he holds firm and gently sets the box back into the man’s hands. He notices as he does that for all their grace, this stranger’s hands are longer and larger than his.
“... I see.”
“Drink your water,” Wriothesley tells him, not unkindly. “And thank you for the gesture.”
The stranger doesn’t say much more, but he does drink the cup of hot water in a single gulp before standing with an odd look of determination on his face. Taking the box tucked under his arm, he leaves with only a nod. It’s not until he’s out the door, Wriothesley realizes that the stranger left his coat on the couch.
It’s a beautiful thing, a deep azure blue that shimmers when Wriothesley picks it up. The fabric has the worn feel of something loved and well-cared for. It’s that thought, more than the apparent expense, that has Wriothesley throwing his own jacket on and jogging down the road after this handsome and apparently forgetful stranger.
(It’s a little like something out of the cheap novels Clorinde loans to him sometimes, but since Wriothesley is neither in his twenties nor a single mother, he discards the thought immediately.)
“Hey, hey, hold up a second—”
The stranger turns almost too smoothly, too elegantly, and Wriothesley is struck by how tall the man is. t is rare that Wriothesley does not have to tilt his head down when speaking to someone. Maybe that’s why he feels his heart hammer in his chest, despite the cobbled path to the road not being nearly long enough to even count as light cardio. Maybe that’s why it takes him a moment to remember his thoughts, while those expectant eyes hold him in place.
Wriothesley isn’t usually rendered tongue-tied and stupid by particularly beautiful men, but then again, prison did not exactly serve him Fontaine’s next top models.
He forces himself to focus as the stranger tilts his head quizzically, and clumsily, gracelessly thrusts the coat out in front of him with both hands, back towards its owner.
“You forgot this. It smells like rain today. You don’t wanna get caught without your coat when it starts up again.”
The stranger stares at the coat in Wriothesley’s hands in open confusion, then at Wriothesley, perplexed.
“You are… returning my coat?” he asks, and Wriothesley frowns at the idea a simple courtesy would be so surprising.
“Yeah? It’s yours. I didn’t go to prison for theft.” Wriothesley’s joke lands with an appalling thud, given how this stranger stares blankly at him. After a long moment, the stranger does take the coat, and their fingers brush light against one another. Once more, Wriothesley is reminded of Clorinde’s cheap romance novels, and tries to remind himself that he is far too old for those kinds of shenanigans.
And then the stranger smiles at him, and Wriothesley promptly decides he’s game for any shenanigans the world offers him, if it involves a smile like that.
“I am Neuvillette,” the stranger says, and pulls his coat on before turning to continue down the path to the sidewalk and away.
Dimly, Wriothesley notes he walks towards the pier and wonders about that, since no boats are running so soon after a storm, but he can’t focus on that at all. He wishes he had more than a name, but he couldn’t find his tongue to ask in time.
Neuvillette is a strange enough name to give—it sounds like a surname out of a fantasy novel and not something used casually. But then again, Neuvilette looks like the sort of man who should be called by a grand title, like Your Eminence or Your Royal Highness or My Sovereign.
Wriothesley has not truly minded his idleness since he was released from prison, but he finds he does a great deal today—if he had something to do, he could distract himself from the memory of eyes as clear as the winter sky, and the long, silk-smooth fingers on a hand just that bit larger than his own. He wouldn’t be kicking himself for not asking for a phone number, an email, even an address.
Instead, Wriothesley burns his breakfast, swears, works out twice, holes up with the latest box of novels Clorinde sent him, and tries not to imagine that the handsome strangers have pure white hair and smell like an oncoming storm. If he doesn’t do a very good job at it, well, he’s in the privacy of his own home and nobody has to know.
The night is quiet, and a little melancholy, but it’s the sort of quiet loneliness Wriothesley came to Meropide for, and he knows, given time, that it will settle comfortably back into his bones. He goes to bed a little early and lets himself feel that ache just for one night.
Come sunrise, there’s another knock at his door.
Wriothesley isn’t sure if he’s more surprised to find that Neuvilette has returned with another, equally beautiful box in hand, or that the man has returned at all, but he still stumbles a little over inviting him inside. He has no chance to ask if Neuvillette wants something more than boiled water before the box is, once again, presented to him.
Wriothesley eyes the box with a slightly sinking feeling before carefully opening it.
Instead of coins, this time the box is filled with an absolute embarrassment of jewelry, glittering in gold and silver, showing only slight signs of tarnish that hint to their age. Their stones wink at him, and Wriothesley gawks , before looking up at Neuvillette. Neuvillette stares back with such expectant pride that Wriothesley feels a little bad when he closes the lid of the box and settles it back into his hands.
“I’m sorry, I can’t say I have much use for jewelry.” Wriothesley tries to say it gently, and reaches out to pat Neuvillette’s shoulder when he looks immediately and obviously crestfallen. Wriothesley can’t understand why this is happening, but he can tell that these gifts are meant genuinely. It’s just that an ex-con with an entire box of priceless antique jewelry is more suspicious than one with an entire box of ancient solid gold coins, not less.
He pats Neuvillette’s shoulder again, and smiles warmly. “Let me make you some toast to go with your…water.”
Neuvillette stares at him in a bit of a shock, but accepts the (slightly burnt) toast with some tart jam, drinks his cup of hot water, and then stands up to leave with a stiff nod and that same bright, determined look in his eye. This time, he makes it out the door and is a good five minutes away before Wriothesley spots his coat draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.
He finds Neuvillette near the docks, lingering as stares out at the sea. He looks like something out of a painting with his hair the same color as the crests of the waves, save for those long blue streaks of the deepest ocean blue; his startlingly white shirt paired with an azure vest, and the deep navy of his trousers blending seamlessly into black spats (and who outside a fantasy novel or a movie wears spats, in this day and age? Clorinde’s little gaming group she mentions in her letters does not count). Truly, Wriothesley is not sure a more beautiful man exists anywhere in Fontaine.
Which is why it startles him that the first thought he has when Neuvillette turns to him, and his eyes widen in clear surprise, is cute. But he is—Neuvillette is cute in his shock, lips parted slightly, and his eyes flicking to the coat in Wriothesley’s hands in consternation.
“It’s a little too cold for you to be forgetting this, isn’t it?” Wriothesley asks him as he presses that coat back into Neuvillette’s hands—hands that seem curiously hesitant to close around his own fine clothes—and smiles, feeling something within him ease. It’s not just because Wriothesley is glad to have seen Neuvillette again, but the thought of such an unearthly man being so mundanely scatterbrained is relaxing. It makes Neuvillette seem more real.
The way Neuvillette’s graceful eyebrows scrunch together is also oddly cute, though that frown should be, by all rights, deeply intimidating. It is as though some of the otherworldly distance of Neuvillette has been scrubbed off by the quiet, thoroughly normal air of Meropide. Not enough to make him seem less strange or wonderful, but enough to seem a more companionable sort of strange.
Oh, I am too old to be twitterpated like this, Wriothesley thinks. He doesn’t stop smiling.
“I…see.” Neuvillette finally takes the coat, and shrugs it back on, and the magic of him seems to snap back into place. Maybe it is because the long coattails seem to almost shimmer and shift in color. Maybe it’s because they’re the same color as the mist-darkened sea before them. Maybe it’s the strange, determined look on Neuvillette’s face as he flicks his hair out of the back of the coat and nods to Wriothesley.
“I thank you again for the return of my coat,” he says, and turns, strolling off down the beach and into the thickening mist that is entirely out of season for this early in the summer.
Wriothesley watches until he cannot see the shadow of him any longer, then he turns and wanders into town, stopping at the store to get a package of bagels and some canned tuna on a hopeful hunch. The hunch is rewarded later that afternoon when his little neighbors finally return. Wriothesley spends the time feeding bagel pieces smeared with fish to the otters with his feet dangling off the abandoned little dock attached to the lighthouse. He doesn’t see his wounded friend, but he gets the sense that it can’t be too far, watching over the little parliament as it always does.
When there is a knock on his door at the crack of dawn the next morning, Wriothesley finds he is not at all surprised to find Neuvillette standing there with another box and an expectant look. This time, it’s an entire box of pearls, and Wriothesley manages to persuade Neuvillette to stay long enough for a couple bagels and two whole cups of boiled water.
“Is there something insufficient about these boons?” Neuvillette asks when Wriothesley passes the box back to him. This time he sounds so dejected, that Wriothesley can’t help casting his mind about for something better to say than, ‘I am nearly forty, what would I even do with an entire box of pearls?’.
“Dinner?” Wriothesley pauses warily at the sudden, alert gleam in Neuvillette’s eyes. “Neuvillette, I don’t really have any use for riches, but everyone appreciates good food.”
“I…see.” Neuvillette nods to himself, hand tapped to his chin, and Wriothesley is not convinced Neuvillette sees at all, actually, but the man excuses himself to stand before Wriothesley can say anything. Neuvillette puts his plate and his cup in the sink himself, and smiles as he reaches the door.
“I understand. My thanks, Wriothesley.”
Wriothesley goes about the rest of the morning on autopilot and burns his eggs and the tips of his fingers before he notices the coat draped over the back of one of his chairs. By now, he knows he won’t catch up to Neuvillette, wherever he goes during the day, and he’s starting to think this isn’t an accident. He might have gone to prison instead of any institute of higher education, but Wriothesley isn’t an idiot. His suspicions might be outlandish and fantasical, but Neuvillette is outlandish and fantastical.
Wriothesley does the only natural thing he can—he goes and asks Sigewinne how to find the man, with the coat in hand.
Or, at least, he intends to. Sigewinne takes one look at the coat and immediately bursts out laughing. And laughing, and laughing, and laughing, until she finally pats Wriothesley’s wrist and wipes tears out of her eyes.
“Just wait,” she tells him, and dissolves into another fit of giggles.
This isn’t a particularly satisfying answer, but after combing the docks, Wriothesley must admit that he doesn’t have many other options. So he goes home, does his routine workout, and tries not to think about the coat folded neatly and waiting on his table.
Come sunset, there is a familiar knock at his door.
It is a little surreal to see Neuvillette in the light of the setting sun, the orange colors teasing out subtle new shades of blue in his vest and eyes. Wriothesley feels even more underdressed than normal, until he notices that Neuvillette is carrying a small bucket in one hand and a still-wriggling salmon in the other.
“May I come in and make dinner?” Neuvillette asks after a few minutes of Wriothesley staring goggle-eyed at the wriggling fish.
Wriothesley can only nod mutely and step aside to let Neuvillette in. He drifts after him into the kitchen (not that there’s any separation from the galley kitchen and the rest of the lighthouse–the whole thing is so open it couldn’t really be said to have rooms), curious about the contents of the bucket. It turns out to be full to the brim with clams, and Wriothesley vaguely fears another round of pearls, until Neuvillette locates one of his pans under the cabinets and filches butter from the dish.
As surreal as it is to haveNeuvillette standing in his kitchen steaming clams, it is more so when Neuvillette tends to the salmon. He does not bother finding a knife, and simply snaps the head clean off the spine. With a delicate grace, he peels the meat away from the skeleton with his own hands, portioning it out into generous steaks, which he then turns to offer, still raw, to Wriothesley.
“Uh,” Wriothesley says intelligently, and eyes the steak. “Do you…usually eat it raw?”
“... Do you not?” Neuvillette tilts his head in obvious confusion. “The flavors are most clear when it is fresh and uncooked.”
Wriothesley searches for an argument to refute that, fails to find one, and sighs. “... Cut it into smaller pieces. I’ve got some leftover rice.”
The resulting dinner of clumsy sashimi and steamed clams is not something Wriothesley expects to find on the menu at Hotel Debord anytime soon, but it is surprisingly tasty. Neuvillette turns out to be right about the flavor of the fish when it’s fresh, even if he had to be bodily returned to the kitchen to wash his hands before they ate dinner. Better yet, Neuvillette does not rush through it to leave, seemingly glowing with gratified pride that he has, finally, gifted Wriothesley something he’s accepted.
It almost makes Wriothesley feel bad when he picks up the coat when they move from the dining table to the couch for tea-and-hot-water, because he can see Neuvillette eyeing it with some dismay.
“Listen, Neuvillette, you can’t just be leaving this here. I’m not going to steal your pelt from you.”
Neuvillette startles, and it becomes suddenly clear that he had been trying to seem more human than he is, for as he snaps his head up to look at Wriothesley, he becomes an unearthly thing once more, ancient and shimmering as the sea.
“You knew?”
“I suspected,” Wriothesley says, and tips his head. “Your hair—those long blue streaks are just like that otter’s fur, and I hadn’t seen you with the colony since we released you. I was a little worried about that, you know.”
Neuvillette sighs, and makes no move to take back his pelt. “I have survived much worse than a human fishing net,” he says dryly, and puts a hand over Wriothesley’s. “Though you had no way of knowing that, and helped me in all earnestness. That is worth repaying.”
“Is that what the jewels were about?”
“Ah. No, those were… I was told it is traditional to use gems and coin to court humans.”
Wriothesley just about chokes on his tea. It is only by sheer force of will he does not spray it out over poor Neuvillette. “Courting?”
“Well, yes.” Neuvillette looks at him, head tilted, until a faint smile begins to pull at his lips. “I was told it might do better to take things slowly, with you.”
Wriothesley can’t quite begin to fathom how gold and pearls is taking things slowly, but he doesn’t dare ask Neuvillette—he’s very afraid he’ll get an actual answer. Instead, he shakily sets the teacup down, and looks at the coat still between them, which Neuvillette still hasn’t taken.
“Wriothesley?” Neuvillette’s voice takes an edge of concern, when Wriothesley doesn’t say anything in return. “Have I overstepped my bounds in this? I thought…that you were not opposed to these attentions.”
Wriothesley manages a snort, and shakes himself back to the present, having processed the fact he is living in a romance novel as best he can. “I’m not opposed to it. Not at all. But I still can’t take your pelt from you—it’s too important.”
“Too important, is it?” Neuvillette murmurs it, almost to himself, before picking up the coat. But instead of shrugging it back on, he slings it over Wriothesley’s own shoulders, and smiles at him. “Then I shall come fetch it back in the morning.”
He leans in, and presses his nose to Wriothesley’s cheek, and a rough, too long tongue follows it in a gentle lap. It takes Wriothesley a couple seconds to realize this is Neuvillette’s best idea of a kiss, and he laughs out loud, turning his head just enough to bump his forehead to the selkie’s.
“As long as you stay for breakfast, too.”