Two days was all it took for that stupid nickname to catch on, and Takumi didn't think he'd ever be upset about something so stupid. Yet, there he was, shooting over and over into the same target without fail, hitting every mark and cursing when his arms gave out under the pressure of the bow. He was unsure of how long he'd been there, but his arms burned and there was sweat pooling on his forehead, so he assumed it had been at least an hour, maybe two.
His hands shook as he reached his quiver, grasping at the fletching of another arrow before the shake of his hands caused him to drop it to the floor. He stared woefully at the arrow for a bit, whining in the back of his throat when he bent down to grab at it. From the corner of his eye he could see one black polished boot, and when he turned, he could see two, sitting in one of the spectator chairs behind him. He had a feeling he already knew who it was, and when he straightened up once more, hand grasping his dropped arrow, his mouth turned up in a sneer.
"What are you doing here Niles?" Takumi turned back to the target, nocking his arrow and firing without hesitation. It hit the outside circle and Takumi grimaced as he glanced at Niles again. The bastard was just sitting there, chin propped up on his hand and eyelids lowered in a seductive look that just made Takumi uncomfortable.
"Watching you." Was Niles' only reply, and he uncrossed his legs to lean back, bringing one knee up to rest his chin on. "Please continue."
"Fuck no, stop being so creepy and go away." Takumi stalked past Niles' sitting form to place his bow on the rack.
"Aw, killjoy. You're no fun." Niles is standing now, and he's a good head or so taller than Takumi, and the eyepatch makes him look intimidating, but Takumi doesn't budge. That one piercing blue eye is giving Takumi shudders down his spine.
"Why are you following me around like this?" He stalked towards the target at the other end of the range, pulling the arrows out one by one. Niles followed behind.
"Why, I would never follow you around, Taco Meat." Takumi fumed. There was that damned nickname again, and there goes his pride. He turned to point at Niles with an arrow.
"Stop calling me that, you perv!" He could feel his face flush red with anger. Well, he thought it was anger, but it could just as easily been embarrassment. Stupid nickname. He hated it. "If you have nothing of purpose to say to me, then just leave!"
"Something of purpose?" Niles echoed, and Takumi turned back to the target. He pulled one more arrow out before Niles spoke up again. "If I'm not mistaken, your brother wanted me to - how should I say this - uh - take you out." And the fire in Takumi flared up.
"Take me out, huh?" Takumi dropped his arrows onto the ground, rounding on Niles with his fists raised. "Alright then, if it's a fight you want, come and get it." But what he saw on Niles' face wasn't pre-fight arrogance, nor was it the overconfident smirk that he usually saw. It was raw red embarrassment.
"Not.. Not like that. That came out wrong." Niles said, one hand covering his face, but Takumi could see the red tips of his ears, and he eased up on his stance. "He wanted me to take you out to talk to you, one on one." He looked towards Takumi, attempting to gauge his reaction, and Takumi gaped.
"Talk to me one on one? Why?" He could see Niles flinch, looking everywhere but his eyes.
"He said you should know some stuff. About.." Niles frowned, as if it were difficult to get the words out. Takumi used the time to pick up the arrows off of the floor where he dropped them. It was a good ten seconds, and Niles was looking like he wanted to take what he said back.
"Just spit it out, eye patch." Takumi's growl seemed to knock Niles out of whatever trance he had been in, and he glared.
"Kamui wants me to talk to you about Leo."
'Leo he… he had a hard childhood.'
'If he ever stops eating, I need you to tell me. If he stops sleeping, I need you to tell me. If he seems different from usual, I need you to tell me.'
'Why are you asking me to do this.'
'He's good at hiding when he hurts and he can be extremely self-destructive. He's learned how to dodge me. It might be easier for you to see the signs before I do because you live with him…. I - I don't want him to fall apart again.' Again?
'I'm asking you to do this as a personal favor. You can say no if you want.'
'My brother wanted you to ask me to do this?'
'Yeah, that's… what he said anyways. You can say no.'
'... I'll do it..'
'Thank you Takumi.'
He had no idea what kind of childhood Leo had, but it must've been bad. Niles didn't really go into the details of what happened, claiming it wasn't his story to tell, and Takumi had to give him props for that.
It sure as hell wasn't his story to tell. It was Leo's story. And a hell of a story it seemed.
But now he had Niles' phone number in his phone, which he didn't particularly want to have. Though it seemed like an important thing to have, even if he'd said no to his personal favor, so he wasn't going to get rid of it.
It was late in the afternoon when Takumi returned to his dorm, stomach full of food. Niles had bought it for Takumi, claiming he owed it to him, whatever that meant, but Takumi wasn't about to turn down free food.
An energetic yell broke him from his thoughts and he turned towards the common room, hearing the whoops and hollers of a smash bros fight in process. He decided that was far more interesting than a weekend night spent studying.
"Hey nerds." Was his entrance line as he strode into the common room, but he immediately stopped in his tracks when he saw a familiar head of blonde hair. He cursed when Leo turned towards him, but Leo's presence wasn't what froze him. It was… the position.
Leo was sprawled over the couch with his head on the armrest and an arm thrown around Owain, and Owain laying on top of him, back to chest. Inigo was on the floor with his back to the couch and Severa sitting on the opposite armrest, both looking very unperturbed by the two on the couch.
Well, now they were all looking at him. Say something, fuck.
"That's some of the gayest shit I've ever seen." Takumi bit his cheek as Leo scowled over the couch at him.
"You're just jelly I've got myself a cuddle partner and you don't." He stuck his tongue out and Takumi scowled to try to hide his blush.
"You're free to join in dude." Owain said from Leo's chest, and Takumi just stared at him. Free to join what? The cuddling? Because he definitely wouldn't mind that. Hinata had said he was touch-starved, so maybe some cuddling wouldn't be too bad - it was just very unexpected coming from -
"Extra controller. Leo's not playing right now, so we don't need to swap off." Severa piped up from the other armrest, holding out a controller towards Takumi and halting his traitorous thoughts. The game. Of course, they meant the game.
"Thanks." He managed to squeak out, dropping down in front of the armrest the Leo was lying on, trying to ignore the weird look from Inigo to his left.
As the map was loading, Leo's hand came down on top of Takumi's head. Not too hard, but not light enough that Takumi couldn't just brush it off as random. And the hand was still there, petting through his hair like it was supposed to be some sort of comforting gesture. It only made Takumi's flame-red face and stomach butterflies worse.
"Is this okay?" Leo whispered to him, too low for Inigo or Severa to hear, and he emphasized his question with a small tug. The fingers there tangled with his hair, the nails trailing along his scalp, and he couldn't help but give a small affirmative nod. They stayed there, Leo's hand petting and pulling at Takumi's hair lightly, just little movements that no one else really noticed, but it those same movements were driving Takumi wild.
He lost every game he played, and everyone seemed to notice but said nothing. It didn't matter though, because that foreign hand in his hair was the best thing he'd felt in a while.
Severa was the first to leave, claiming early morning fencing workouts, then it was Inigo, who claimed to have to call his mother.
Once they were gone, Leo's grip on his head vanished, and for a second he thought he was safe before two legs bracketed his shoulders where he sat. One was Leo's leg, black socks paired with black jeans, and the other was Owain and his shitty socks and sandals getup. The heat as they pressed against him was nice.
There was a conversation going on just above him, but he only caught snippets of it through the haze of the previous hairpetting escapade. Man, that fucked him up in all the best ways.
"- sound okay, Takumi?" Leo asked, and he nudged his left shoulder with his knee. Takumi just looked up at him with a confused frown.
"Marth only battle." Owain said from his right, and he nodded and picked Marth.
" Hero-king Marth, you heathen." Leo said snidely, quickly choosing the stage to start the fight.
It was pretty even, all things considered, though Takumi's face never seemed to cool off, he could usually play it off as anger at the game. But it was Leo's comment, halfway through the eleventh round, that stopped play altogether. The other two groaned in annoyance when Takumi paused the game himself, turning all the way around to look up at Leo.
"What did you say?"
"Huh?" Leo rose an eyebrow, looking more and more confused by the second. "What are you talking about?"
"You said something about being gay?" Takumi said, and Owain groaned as he flopped back against the couch, as if he knew the game wouldn't be unpaused for a while.
"You mean when I called Hero-king Marth my 'smol gay'?" Leo asked, tilting his head as he looked between the TV and Takumi.
"Yeah, but Marth wasn't gay." Takumi said. "He was married to Caeda of Talys."
"Uh, have you ever heard of political marriages?" Leo scoffs, throwing his hands in the air. "I bet you're one of those people who buys that 'Hero-king Marth and Caeda power couple' schtick, am I right?"
"Fuck yeah I am, Marth and Caeda were the O.G. power couple." Takumi knows he's shouting, but he can't bring himself to care, and the flush on his face is finally from anger instead of embarrassment.
"Are you kidding me? Hero-king Marth was totally in love with Sage Merric! It's totally in all his letters!"
"Don't you think you're reading a little into that! And Sage Merric was in love with his sister !"
"You wanna bet on that?" Leo's smirking, and Takumi wants to just wipe it right off his face. With a kiss , shit, no, stupid brain, stop that! Holy fuck, where did that come from?!
"You're on!"
"Guys, guys." Owain pipes up from the back of the couch, groaning as he snaps his neck back to look at the two of them. "If you really care that much, Lucina is basically an expert at anything Hero-king related."
"How 'expert' are we talking?" Leo asks, and Owain smirks.
"She's very, very obsessed with the Hero-king."
It's a brisk walk down the hall and one loud knock later that Lucina opens her door. She looks confused between the both of them, fuming and scowling, and Takumi understands why she leads the conversation with "There are no other rooms available."
"This isn't about the room arrangements." Leo assures her, and Lucina lets out a visible exhale.
"Oh thank god." She says, and looking relieved and then immediately worried. "If someone clogged another toilet, I swear to god-"
"It's nothing like that!" Takumi can't help but laugh. This poor girl. "We actually have some questions about Hero-king Marth, if you don't mind." And just like that Lucina's eyes light up.
"Ask away!" She says, and she looks so ready and happy to answer that Takumi immediately lays it on her.
"Did Marth love Caeda or Merric?" He asks, and both him and Leo lean in towards Lucina in suspense for the answer.
Lucina just blinks once or twice and then smiles. "Yes." The vague answer confuses them.
"What do you mean 'yes'?" Leo asks, his brow furrowing. "It wasn't a yes or no question." Lucina's smile just widens.
"I mean he loved them both." She says, and Takumi and Leo both curse to themselves.
"No, I mean, which did he love romantically ?" Takumi adds, and Lucina's smile turns into a half smirk.
"Both. Records show that Hero-king Marth had multiple partners at the same time, and most were either close friends from childhood, like Merric and Caeda, or people he met during the war, like Navarre or Linde."
"So, the Hero-king had.. a harem?" Leo looks like he's having trouble processing this, and Lucina's smirk has instantly turned into a full-fledged frown.
"The Hero-king's romantic relationships were not a harem!" Both Takumi and Leo flinch as Lucina crosses her arms over her chest. "It's most likely that he was polyamorous. It was common of most of the Archanean nobility to have more than one partner, so it would've been accepted in that time period too. The word harem suggests that his partners were forced into it, but from what we've uncovered, Marth and several of his significant others had a large romantic polyamorous relationship that spanned half the continent. And polyamory is not the same as a harem!"
"Right right, I'm sorry, I know that." Leo hurriedly apologizes, and his face is all red now. "So Hero-king Marth was both bisexual and polyamorous." Leo's muttering to himself, and Lucina nods slightly, still looking just as pissed as she did before. "Interesting, very interesting." Lucina's phone buzzed, and she cursed through her teeth when she looked at the text.
"If that's all you guys wanted to ask, I'll have to excuse myself." She grabbed a couple objects around her dorm, then closed and locked her door. "My idiot brother lost track of the time at the library and is scared of walking outside by himself when it's this dark. If you guys ever have any questions regarding the Hero-king, don't be afraid to ask!" And she was gone, practically running down the stairs.
Takumi turned to Leo. He was still just muttering about records or something, and Takumi cleared his throat.
"So I guess no one won the bet?" He asked, and Leo scoffed.
"We didn't even shake on it! Not a real bet if you don't shake." Takumi couldn't help the smile that came to his face.
"I'll keep that in mind for next time."