Corvo finally finds some space to try and tell Piero about his feelings, and Callista has a helpful talk with each of them.
[CW: suggestive scenes, references to physical abuse, Corvo and Jessamine had an open relationship]
-/
Notes:
Sorry for the delay posting this, had some stuff come up and a reviewer suggested a rewrite of an important bit.
Stating it again just in case, this is an AU version of Piero and I wrote a sort of failed romance with him and Callista instead of him being a creep. I appreciate this may not work for some people, its just what worked for me for an AU interaction.
-/
Corvo spent a few days tossing the idea around, considering how and if to approach Piero, wondering if he'd even be receptive to hearing the idea out loud.
Emily was safe, and the space that had been taken up by worrying about her had room now for other fears and other considerations.
The Loyalists hadn't said anything direct, as yet, but he guessed they'd be feeding him the next bit of information soon. Asking him to go out and do something else that would risk his life nine times over.
But there was still the matter of Piero and Callista's feelings toward each other. The way Callista spoke and acted towards Piero, it seemed like whatever there had been between them had passed, but Corvo though sometimes she still looked at him wistfully.
He sat down to a late breakfast, hot tea and bread and pickled... things. He wasn't sure what all of them were.
"Callista?" He said quietly without looking up, when she brought him tea. "You and Piero..."
"Oh." She said, and slid into the seat opposite his.
"No. its... nice to dream sometimes, you know?" She sighed. "But I'm done with men who spend all their time there. Not that he's not brilliant, but he's got his head in the stars too much for me, anymore. Spends most of his nights up inventing new terrors of science and comes down at one in the afternoon wondering where breakfast is."
Corvo picked at his plate and stabbed a pickled sea onion. He ate it slowly.
How to address this?
Callista did it for him. "I know he's got eyes for you too, you know."
He tried to look nonplussed. She smiled slightly.
"Has ever since you first washed up here, and I can see why. Six months in prison and you've still got wanted posters prettier than the cover off a penny romance. Dark hair, moody eyes, good looking in a tight pair of pants..."
Corvo almost inhaled his tea.
Callista's eyes glittered.
"I can talk to Piero if you like." She said, getting up and moving to take a second whistling teakettle off the stove. "Make sure he knows there's no lost feelings between us."
"No, I was just..." He said slowly, not quite sure how he intended to finish.
Callista sighed and gave him a pitying look. "I can see Jessamine didn't pick you for your skills at court intrigue."
She wasn't wrong and it wasn't something he took offense at. Corvo still set his tea down and stared into space for a moment.
"That... yes. Thank you."
--/
As it turned out the next mission was a lot simpler and closer to home- search the sewer connection under the hound pits for possible encroachment by spies.
Corvo dropped down through the trapdoor and muttered the charm for darkvision, moving down the tunnel with easy silence.
He paused.
Voices drifted down through the drain in the floor. Callista's voice, stern but not unkind.
"If you have feelings for him you ought to say so, Piero." A pause "No, but you ought to say it anyway. see what..."
Corvo kept moving. He didn't really want to eavesdrop on their conversation.
Havelock's fear of spies turned out to be terminal but not yet dead plague victims. Weepers, in the common slang.
He spotted them through the wall with darkvision. They were a sorry pair, one sitting and one standing listlessly just around a corner. But he couldn't approach directly without risk of being seen and attacked, and Corvo didn't want to hurt them fighting them off if he could help it. The sleep darts for his crossbow still needed a while to take full effect. Piero had said something about buying an additive that would make them instantaneous but they didn't have the money for it yet.
So knocking them out required more wading, more swimming in the filthy water. It took a deft bit of movement, but he managed to knock both of them out peacefully with the tranquilizer darts. Havelock had said Piero would want to know, that he had an acquaintance out in the wider world looking for humanely procured plague victims.
Corvo retraced his steps and stopped at the bottom of the ladder leading up to the basement. He thought of going to clean up first but settled for wringing his clothes out so he didn't track quite so much water everywhere instead. The sewers here were more river than anything else but they were still nasty.
The plague victims would stay asleep for some hours but it would be better to let Piero know sooner, he might need time to arrange getting them out or whatever else it was he had planned.
--/
Piero was in his workshop, fiddling with something that looked like a pistol attached to a waffle iron. He looked wistful.
"Found two weepers down in the sewers and put them to sleep. Havelock said you'd want to know."
"Oh, yes thank you. That's very convenient actually, I'll just send another wire to the institute..."
Piero stood up and turned his back to Corvo, setting the device and tools aside. He paused. "Corvo, there's something I..." He sighed, seeming lost. "Something I wanted to tell you."
Corvo really wanted to clean up before having this conversation, but Piero's confidence seemed tenuous at best. It wouldn't be right to excuse himself, not now. He leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, crossing one leg casually.
"Callista..."
"...said something?" Corvo said, looking down and to the side as he said it.
Piero turned, leaning back against the workbench, and jumped right into it. "Corvo, I didn't want to hurt you by asking. I thought..." He grimaced a little and continued. "You and Jessamine..." He looked like he badly wanted to be somewhere else but didn't look away.
Corvo blew out a breath. It was his turn to be thrown off balance. He sidestepped the knife edge of pain that mention of Jessamine's name brought up, pushing it away.
"Yes, but not... not like you might think. Um..." How to explain. "I wouldn't be betraying her memory, if that worries you. She liked giving me the freedom to share the company of pretty men at court." And I hers to share with women too, but that's not for you to know about. "We had a number of reasons for not making it official I was her consort, one of them was what worked for us might have been scandalous to too many people, if it got attention."
He wondered how strange that explanation might sound. Why did people on Gristol have to be so uptight about these matters? Just navigating a simple conversation could be like trying to run over the tops of pilings in the river, sometimes.
Jessamine at least hadn't thought much of abiding by those standards, in private anyway. She'd enjoyed giving him freedom and watching him be flirtatious and romantic with other men, had trusted him to follow his heart to wilder places and trusted it would always lead him back home again. And it always had, he'd loved her hopelessly and it had never seemed contrary to him that it didn't occupy a monogamous place in his heart. He'd have been fully content to make it one but she'd enjoyed defying conventions as much as he thought of them as unfamiliar.
Several different thoughts had seemed to cross Piero's mind at once and combined into a kind of baffled expression. "Ah."
Piero blinked a few times. The look on his face changed to uncertain hopefulness. "So, you...?"
"Piero I may very well die tonight, or the next, or the one after that." Corvo said bluntly. A mischievous grin crossed his face. "And we're both too pretty to waste the time we do have left, eh?"
"Oh, void yes." Piero breathed, with easy relief. He looked Corvo up and down, perhaps finally realizing he was dripping water and had bits of greenish slime stuck to his clothes. "But Corvo, you badly need a bath."
"Well you can join me if you like." Corvo said in a low voice full of salacious possibilities.
--/
[that was not intended as a reference i just liked the dumb line too much please do not @ me]
--/
A few days later Corvo woke with a start, one hand on his sword on the nightstand before he quite knew where he was.
It was dark outside. The edge of the moon shone cold and white through the window in Piero's room. He listened, muttered the charm to see hidden things, but couldn't hear or sense anything amiss. He dismissed the spell.
He breathed, relaxed. Piero stirred from fitful sleep next to him, tensing at the worry of danger.
"Its okay." Corvo muttered. "bad dream."
"Want to talk about it?" Piero's voice was quiet, soft.
"Not really, no."
Corvo settled back. The slanted square of moonlight fell across them, bare skin half covered in a blanket. The height of summer was too warm for modesty.
He breathed quietly in the dark. Sleep eluded him. He set a curled hand in an absent, protective way across his stomach, over an old scar there.
Piero's hand moved and brushed his, covered it gently.
"I meant to ask you about that one."
"Mmh." Corvo made a small, noncommittal noise. He appreciated the gesture, it wasn't the nicest memory to turn his attention to, but better than the subject of his latest nightmare.
He let Piero thread fingers through his, turning his hand upward to meet his palm. Piero's fingers moved to follow the line of the scar, bright white under the moonlight.
Corvo's breath caught a little, but it was a pleasing sensation, letting someone he trusted do that.
The scar was a few inches long, with regular dots on both sides where stitches had been. The exit wound had left a matching scar, slightly higher, on his back.
"Not many men get run through and live to tell about it later." Piero muttered softly.
"Sokolov's work. Brilliant man." Corvo said with very little trace of admiration.
"I gather whoever worked on you before wasn't terribly kind about it."
The collective pain of a number of less than fond memories drifted through him. And one slightly more enjoyable one of grabbing Sokolov by the throat and threatening to murder him, when Jesssmine had gone into labor with Emily, if he didn't do everything in his power to make it easier on her.
"Sokolov likes to run nasty experiments on people who can't fight back."
Piero laid his head on Corvo's shoulder, made an unhappy sound but evidently couldn't think of anything to say in response. He threaded his fingers through Corvo's again, their hands held softly together. Corvo leaned his own head against Piero's a little and closed his eyes.
"I'll tell you about how I got it though. That's a better story." Corvo murmured. But sleep came to him before he could begin.
-/
Notes:
Consort is a fun word.
I've only seen one of those wanted posters once in the game and I can't remember where it is, but yeah. Its danged pretty.
And the timing with Callista trying to set them up was a bit weird but please don't think about it too hard I didn't want to go back and rewrite things after I came up with the idea.
Re: the deal with Sokolov. My headcanon for this AU is Sokolov was the royal physician because he was ]extremely[ good at that job but he was also kind of a nasty and unethical person and tended to see Corvo as not being off limits in the same way as hereditary nobility. I wanted to play with a dynamic of "what do you do when you owe someone for fixing you when no one else could have, but also harming you severely in other ways." I don't know if I managed to pull it off like I wanted really.