Corrin enjoys the tavern's amenities. Leo babysits.
Corrin sat in the middle of the tavern, longing for the soft comfort of her bed. It had been a long day, as all her days had become, but it stretched longer the more time she spent listening to jokes with dick in the punchline. It wasn't the first time she'd sat with Silas' friends, but it was the first time she didn't find herself charmed. Their raunchy humor and crude stories held little interest for her. But she endured it to spend the time with Silas.
Nights in the tavern were the only significant time she got with him anymore. Her busy schedule pulled her in five different directions at once, but she did all she could to get a few minutes between traveling from place to place to share a kiss.
Though the kisses have turned to hugs, Corrin thought.
On more than one occasion, she'd considered inviting him to stay the night, but each suggestion towards achieving a deeper intimacy was met with awkward misunderstanding. Their relationship was tearing at the seams and she couldn't help but place the strain at the night spent staring into the face of the enemy through the bars of a jail cell.
Every so often, she would catch sight of Leo from across the room where he scowled and glared at the mirth around him. Sometimes, he would meet her gaze and make a show of rolling his eyes or sticking out his tongue, but he never moved to join her.
I don't blame him.
Braying laughter broke out around her. She didn't laugh. She didn't even understand the joke.
Now, she stared at Leo, but he didn't return her gaze. She could see contempt wrinkling his face and then she couldn't see him at all as a throng of chattering women passed in front of her in pursuit of the bar. Each one wore a variation on the same sheer dress with their hair coiled intricately atop their smooth, sweeping necks. Their legs seemed to get longer and longer as they moved past. The cloying scent of perfumed sex tinged the air in hues of lust and admiration.
When they'd passed, Corrin tried to imagine what she'd look like with dark rimmed eyes and artistically styled hair, but she'd never been taught and certainly didn't have the time to learn.
Banishing the ill-fated whim, Corrin looked across the room to the little table Leo occupied. For most of the night, his compatriots had consisted of his retainers and their associated friends, but Odin and Niles had since left him. Camilla had taken Niles' seat and now stirred her drink and bared the same stiff-jawed, hooded-eye distaste as Leo.
Charlotte sat to Leo's right and talked animatedly to the pair of siblings, but Corrin guessed she wasn't saying much of anything beyond gushing compliments. It had taken months for Corrin to crack the blonde's relentless flattery in order to meet the brilliant woman beneath and, judging by the quintessentially Nohrian scowls adorning their faces, Camilla and Leo hadn't quite warmed up to Charlotte yet.
Maybe I should go over and try to break the ice a little? she thought, itching for a reason to excuse herself, but then she saw the source of Camilla and Leo's annoyance as the crowd parted to herald the arrival of a fourth member. He claimed the open seat before Charlotte and then offered a modest glass of wine to her.
Some cruel fate drew his attention and he met her gaze. He smiled at her in friendly recognition. She blushed and then she dropped her stare to an imperfection in the table's surface before her. She traced it dully with her finger until the beat in her ears fell beneath the tempo of the music again.
Of all nights to make a debut here, he picks tonight, Corrin thought, drawing the flat of her finger off the edge of the table so that it fell to her lap with a thunk. Neither Silas or any of his friends noticed. Her face was hot. She didn't know how to cool it.
Something had happened the night before. A slip in her subconscious that had led to full blown, ridiculous, stupid fantasy as she slumbered.
But it didn't mean anything.
To prove her indifference, she chanced another glance, but Charlotte's svelte form blocked much of her view. She didn't shift her vantage to get a better look.
It doesn't mean anything, she thought, but her stomach rolled and her fingers balled into fists atop her thighs.
It doesn't mean anything.
No matter that it had been a welcome change in her dreamscape. No matter that her guilt sat high and heavy within her ribs. No matter that the sight of him now had sent phantom, imagined memory sparking inside her chest and tensed her hands against the smooth of her leggings. No matter that Orochi had hummed in haughty acknowledgment of it and then said nothing else.
It was a passing attraction, but it gnawed at her heart. It felt like unconscious betrayal. She loved Silas, genuinely and sincerely, but everything else kept getting in the way.
"You can't trust a thing they say, Corrin," Silas said, nudging her with her elbow.
She jerked upright. A quick sweep of the others' faces revealed no clues of what had been said. She offered a laugh.
Silas smiled. The others jeered.
"Oh boo, don't lie to the poor woman! You know damn well you drank me under the table that night in Nestra!" one of them cried, shaking their beer at Silas in accusation.
Silas chuckled, saying, "I remember you getting very drunk, but that's all."
The same one shouted in indignation, slamming their flagon against the table and crying in mock offense, "Are you also gonna lie about the night we got shitfaced and stole old McVaney's horse?"
"I have no recollection," Silas said, but he smirked.
Corrin smiled, but it cracked before it could reach her eyes. She couldn't imagine Silas as a drinker. She'd never seen him indulge more than two drinks in a night. Plus, he had never mentioned anything of the sort.
But there are things he doesn't know about me, she thought. Her gaze dropped to a string fraying from the end of her sleeve. She pulled at it, but it only unraveled further. The conversation around her shifted into another retelling of Silas' drunken escapades, but she only listened with her expressions, taking her cues from the bouts of laughter and scoffs that erupted from the men around her. The space between her shoulder blades grew as the story went on.
Silas' arm snaked around the back of her chair, dusting the tips of her shoulders with fleeting touch. She glanced at him, hoping to find gentle reassurance in his stare, but he didn't look at her. He nodded animatedly and then threw his head back and laughed from his belly at whatever had been said.
Corrin didn't listen at all anymore. She watched him grin and chuckle and blossom while she shrank farther into her chair and thought, I can't make him laugh like that.
The musicians started up a waltz she didn't recognize. The traipsing chords cascaded between the breaks in the conversation and laughter enveloping her. One of Silas' friends lit a cigar, saying, "I hope no one minds a little smoke!"
And Corrin minded very much, but she didn't say anything as they lit the cigar and began blowing smoke rings. Another story was told, but she didn't even attempt to follow it. Silas laughed again. It was the loudest noise in the world.
The smoke burned her nose and the conversation crushed her throat and she was sinking into the vivid, jittering anxiety that crested against the backs of her eyes over and over.
Not here, not now, Corrin thought and then she was jerking up from her seat and the backdrop of sweating, dancing bodies stagnated into blocks of formless color and Silas looked at her but he didn't say anything and his silence screamed at her more than his words ever could and then she was moving for the door and maybe she said something but her voice seemed like a wisp instead of a sound and everything was so goddamn loud and her fingernails carved strips from her palms and then she was outside.
The door thumped shut behind her. The sound, muffled and drowned and bloodied, oozed from the cracks in the doorframe. Her eyes seared from unshed tears.
Stop it, she thought, bringing her arms hard and tight over her chest to ease the stabbing there. But, the more she tried to control it, the more she slipped away. Her legs bent until she was on the ground and crumpled against the wall and her breaths came in haggard, frenzied, desperate gasps and her hands shook and shook and the muted colors of the night smeared and blurred until they were a blank canvas for her rolling, unstoppable panic and the black of the sky was streaking from the heavens to crush her and she drove the heels of her hands against her mouth to keep from shrieking, but the sound came out, wet and gasping, and her fingers fisted against her brow and her hands smashed her nose between them and all she wanted to be was better.
When it was over, she uncurled from herself and stared up into the sky. The stars were hidden behind a veil of rolling clouds. She watched her breath vaporize. The frigid air froze the salt of her tears against the curvature of her face.
I thought I was better.
But she wasn't. She probably never would be.
Corrin stood. Her head hurt in the black behind her eyes. She rubbed at her temples, but it made no difference.
She swiped at the lingering moisture in her eyes until it was gone and, when she blinked, there was only a dry ache. She straightened her shirt, shifting it so that it clung in all the right places instead of the wrong ones. She ran her fingers through her hair, but they were tangled in seconds so she tied it back instead. Then, she took a deep breath and opened the door.
As the sound hit her and she stared out at the dancing mass, all she wanted was to go to bed.
But I don't want to leave Silas.
She found him through the crowd. He glanced her way and he waved, but he didn't seem the least bit concerned that she had left. Her mouth wobbled so she took her lower lip between her teeth.
Stares burrowed into her exposed flesh so she held her head high and straightened her spine until she stood as tall as she could manage. She began the trek back to the table with leaden feet, but, before she could reclaim her seat, someone shouted, "Hey Corrin!"
Turning, she found Hinata waving at her. Once, she'd spent her nights being entertained by Hinata's drunken antics as he sang and joked and pranked his way through the tavern, but it had been months, no over a year, since she'd last passed the time in his company.
She walked to him, an inkling of escape nibbling at the tension coiled tight in her stomach. He grinned at her. His face was shiny from sweat and from drink.
"You look like you could use a drink," he said as he fisted his fingers except for thumb and pinky and made a gesture of drinking.
"Yeah," she said, "I think I could."
For years, Leo had thought there was no greater hell than bearing the brunt of his father's disappointment, but, now, sitting alone with his brother and Charlotte, he knew that hell came in all kinds of forms and faces. He longed to rend his ears from his skull to be spared from Charlotte's bleeding admiration.
He watched as Charlotte directed his brother's attention elsewhere, pointing her manicured finger and brushing up against him ever so slightly. Then, she feigned embarrassment at the small touch, chittering and chirping like a bird in spring.
I am actually going to vomit.
For a while, Camilla had sat in solidary disgust with him, but she'd since found her own prey and left him to deal with Charlotte's saccharine, ooey gooey flirting with his brother on his own. He'd tried escaping, but Corrin had since vanished and there was no one else he was comfortable enough with to sit with as Niles was currently knocking back shot after shot in a drinking contest against Subaki with no end in sight and Odin was striking out with Selena for the third time that week.
Leo did his best to focus on his retainers' antics, but Charlotte's trilling voice was in just the perfect register so that, no matter how hard he tried to tune her out, he heard every little amorous compliment and innuendo she made.
"Oh, I bet you have to spend a lot of time at the hot springs, what with how dirty you must get from all that hard work," Charlotte cooed, flittering her illogically long lashes as she sipped from her glass.
Leo dropped his head back to glare up at the ceiling and suppress a groan threatening to draw their attention to him. Through the din, he could only hear his brother's nervous chuckle and not whatever gratingly polite response he gave.
Just tell her to leave, Leo thought as Charlotte's tinkling laugh launched a barrage on his ears. But Xander would never do that. He was always exceedingly kind to the women that fawned over him to the point that it drove Leo insane. In any other instance, his brother was capable and, often, more than willing to behavior curtly and coldly.
But gods forbid he be rude to gold-diggers.
Leo stared up at the candlelight gyrating on the ceiling and tried not to think of his mother and the nine vials she'd kept hidden and labelled with each of his siblings' names until there'd only been three left.
"You're so funny!" Charlotte trilled. Then, she was giggling again and he could imagine her twirling a strand of her hair around her finger like Elise used to when she'd been younger.
Leo's stomach turned. Charlotte's attempts to infantilize herself struck him in the soft of his chest and hardened his belly. He wondered if his mother had used a similar approach to entice his father. Surely, she had to have masked her true demeanor somehow.
Unless father really only cared for her worth in bed.
Leo felt like a looming maw of darkness amid the bright merriment surrounding him. He wanted to leave. He wanted to rise up and throttle his brother. He wanted to disappear.
The tendons in his neck began to cramp and strain so he lifted his head before craning it from side to side. The motion did nothing to alleviate his discomfort so he sat slouched and irritable, no longer bothering to mask his glare.
"Are you alright, Leo?" Xander asked.
Leo saw bald, virulent annoyance wrinkle Charlotte's painted face before it vanished beneath an imitation of concern.
"My head hurts," Leo said without a hint of inflection. He levelled his stare on Charlotte, attempting to indicate the source of his annoyance without naming it outright. His brother's brow furrowed. Charlotte pounced.
"Is it the noise?" she asked. "It always gives me such a headache, not that I come here often."
He glared at her. Her pert lips flattened into the ghost of sneer as she suggested, "Sleep is really the best cure for such a thing, milord."
He kept his arms crossed tight over his chest so that his clenched fists were hidden beneath the swell of his sleeves.
"Somehow, I don't think you have my health in mind," Leo drawled. Charlotte's heavily shadowed eye twitched. Her lashes cast a quivering shadow over the crescent of her cheek. Beside her, Xander inched away.
"Milord?"
Her voice was fatally sweet. Her form was perfectly still beyond that single, twitching eye. Leo had seen her in battle once and the raging calm she exemplified now was the same she'd displayed as she'd launched a thrall twice her height and size nearly thirty feet across the battlefield.
But Leo wasn't scared of her. He felt like fighting.
I hope she flips the table, he thought, but he never got to push her to her breaking point as his ensuing insult was lost in an explosion of rhythmic pounding from the opposite side of the tavern.
It was a lead in to a Hoshidian drinking song, Leo knew from all his nights spent as Niles' keeper, but it had never been this damn loud before. The pounding spread towards them and then Corrin came rushing past in a blur of black and silver, slamming her hands twice on their table and making half full glasses slosh with beer. Then, she was assailing the next table in the same manner, encouraging its occupants to pick up the rhythm. Takumi's retainer, the annoying one, Hinata, followed after her, giving the table a good slap in her wake and calling after her to slow down.
Leo watched her in open-mouthed shock until she disappeared back into the crowd. Normally, she stayed to the shadows, like he and all the royals did, rather than mingling with the rabble, but tonight, she had entered the fray. And he had no idea why.
Has she completely lost it? he thought as Charlotte began to shout over the racket. She'd lost all interest in him, fixating his brother in her sights once more.
The words began, loud and barraging, and everyone in the venue that knew even a little bit of it joined in as the pounding faded to the shouted, slurred lyrics.
He could see Corrin, sitting up on the stage by the musicians, her legs dangling off the edge, directing the crowd. Hinata stood by her side, belting the lyrics out to the eager crowd. Leo watched Corrin's mouth twist around the words before she gave up entirely and spent the rest of the song nursing a bottle and he thought, Oh gods, she's drunk.
He glanced at his brother, to see if he'd noticed, but Xander's attention lay with avoiding Charlotte's increasingly forward attempts at physical contact. Leo rolled his eyes as the song died down around him. In the lull, he heard Corrin shout, "Do the one… the one about the bloody business!"
Leo squirmed. He knew that song well. It'd been one of his father's favorites. As murmurs of discontent rose, on the stage, Hinata bent down to whisper into Corrin's ear. Leo watched him teeter towards the edge and wondered if the samurai would even notice if he fell or if he was too drunk to feel the world around him.
He watched Corrin wave her hand at Hinata and then take another long draw from the bottle she held. He wondered who'd given it to her as she set it down beside her and then laid flat on her back. Beside her, Hinata shouted the name of another drinking song and the crowd screamed.
Leo glanced at the exodus of Nohrian patrons streaming through the doors. He would have joined them if Niles wasn't currently knocking back his twelfth shot and slurring, "Punk ass bitch" at a pink-faced Subaki.
Charlotte seemed to have a similar idea, loudly suggesting to Xander, "Maybe we should take this conversation elsewhere?"
The uncertainty on his brother's face made Leo's skin crawl.
Do you want a bastard? Because that's how you get a bastard, Leo wanted to say as Xander's gaze roved towards him, but he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from giving a voice to his glower. Xander's stare moved past him.
Leo turned to find the crowd splitting to make way for Camilla and a stumbling Corrin. He saw Camilla's hand wrapped tight around Corrin's waist, keeping her in step behind her.
"Somebody doesn't know how to hold their liquor," Camilla said, sticking Corrin in the chair beside Leo.
"I was holding it just fine before you took it from me," Corrin grumbled. Her words weren't quite slurred, but they stuck together. Strands of her hair had fallen from her ponytail, framing her face like sparse curtains. She sat in the chair with her legs splayed and her arm strung along the back while she leaned into its left edge, only a small shove away from a tumble. Her eyes were dim as she stared out at the line dance that had broken out on the floor.
Leo turned to his sister and saw her gaze fixated on Charlotte and Xander. Charlotte had begun to whine about leaving while Xander floundered. Camilla scoffed and then turned to Leo, announcing, "I'm going to get Silas."
"Why?" Leo asked.
Before Camilla could answer, Corrin scooted her chair to the table beside them and began chatting zealously with the soldiers seated there. Camilla shook her head, but didn't intercede. She said, "Because she won't listen to me and her retainers are nowhere to be found."
Leo scowled.
"He's not her keeper."
Camilla frowned, insisting, "She'll listen to him."
During the argument, Corrin had begun arm-wrestling one of the soldiers. Within seconds of a shout to begin, she laid his arm flat.
As the man shook out his arm and shelved his pride, Corrin took his drink and gulped it down. Her face soured immediately and then she demanded, "What is this?"
But no one paying attention had an answer to give her. She drank the rest of it with a shrug.
Camilla scowled and stepped forward, hooking her hand around the top of Corrin's chair. Then, she dragged Corrin back to Leo's side, dragging the chair's legs along the wood floor so that they screeched. Corrin sat dumbfounded throughout her entire move, staring at Camilla in slow wonder.
Then, Camilla left, grumbling incoherently to herself. Corrin stared after her in silence.
"Corrin," Leo said and she turned on him, wiping foam from her lips and crying his name like she hadn't seen him in years.
She wasn't quite sloppy, but she was definitely drunk. Her eyes were bright and her words were loud. He couldn't imagine how much she'd had to drink to overcome her massive daily caloric intake. He feared for her liver.
"We're always too busy for each other," she lamented, scooching her chair closer. She smelled like whiskey. She laid her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Her grip was ironclad. He winced.
"But we gotta make time for each other," she said. "What's the point of saving the world if you can't hang out with your friends?"
Leo couldn't think of anything to say. She was the one who was always too busy, not him. Her hand fell away from his shoulder.
"You're my best friend," she announced, voice syrupy with sincerity.
Then, her expression sobered until all the glittering emotion had tucked back into the ruby red of her irises. Leo followed her line of sight to his brother and Charlotte. She began to chew on her lip and he wanted her to share her annoyance so he could share his, but she didn't say anything. She shifted her focus past the point of return when a man approached challenging her to another arm-wrestling match. And Leo knew that he should have interceded but it seemed a decent enough way for her to keep entertained so that he didn't end up chasing her around the tavern.
But then there was another man lined up behind the first and then another and another as she burned through each. As the list of losers grew so did her stash of alcohol as they deposited half drunk flagons on the table after she'd dispatched them.
Camilla's going to kill me, he thought, but he didn't know what to do. It could only have been five minutes and her access to alcohol had increased tenfold. But the ever-growing line of challengers kept her from imbibing and each resounding thump of her driving a man's arm into the table brought a twitch to Charlotte's otherwise impeccable expression so Leo posited, It isn't all bad.
A crowd was growing around them and Corrin began to make a show of arm-wrestling, allowing the men to push her arm nearly to the point of defeat before swiftly laying their arms flat in only a few seconds. As his personal space diminished, he scooted closer to Corrin, hoping that the onlookers wouldn't push so close as to disturb her. From the other end of the table, he heard Charlotte's emphatic requests to leave grow desperate.
As Corrin's next challenger, a man that looked more like a bowling ball than a human, took the position across from her, Leo stood from his chair, peering over the crowd for his sister's purple tresses but seeing only an ever-expanding circle of spectators.
Shit.
He sat back down and, watching Corrin toy with her opponent by rocking his arm back and forth in a pretend test of strength, he began to pick at the raised skin around his gnawed thumbnail. He glanced at his brother, but Xander seemed completely oblivious to the situation despite his proximity to its drunken epicenter. Charlotte had gone into a full pout and waxed poetic about having to make the trek back to her room alone.
Chivalry is dead, Leo would have told her, but he never got the chance for Corrin slammed her challenger's arm against the table with such driving force that the wood shook in its bearings and knocked over every glass on the surface, showering Charlotte in an entire still's worth of beer and wine.
The world went quiet as the petite blonde shot upright and the bow of her lips lost all pretense of sensuality, curving into a feral snarl. Leo was familiar with the expression, but had only ever seen it on rampaging Faceless before. Unnaturally slow, Charlotte turned her smoky eyes on Corrin, staring with an intensity to rival his father's.
Leo jerked away instinctively and so severely that he tore off a thin strip of skin from his thumb. The injury bled so he wrapped with the hem of his shirt and then thought of it no more.
I need to get Corrin out of here, he thought, franticly formulating an escape before Charlotte enacted her berserker rage. He wished for Camilla to emerge from the dense crowd and match Charlotte's malevolent energy with her own, but his sister was nowhere to be seen.
Corrin seemed completely oblivious to the danger. She stared at the spilled drink and Charlotte's soiled dress before smiling good-naturedly and saying, "Oh! I'm sorry Charlotte!"
Then, she turned to the amassed crowd, asking, "Does anyone have any napkins?"
Benny, who Leo only knew because everyone always spoke of his ferocious appearance, came forward, a plain handkerchief in hand. Leo watched him approach Charlotte as if she were a wild animal, taking slow steps and raising his hands before him to ward off an attack.
"Remember your breathings," he murmured as he carefully dabbed at Charlotte's soaked arm. Her nostrils flared. The natural nude of her face had gone bone white with fury beneath the rosy hue of her rouge.
Benny handed the handkerchief to her when her arm lay dry, but she slapped it from his hand. Leo watched it flutter until it disappeared beneath the table.
Charlotte stood, suddenly. Her chair shot out from beneath her, scraping against the wood. She stalked towards Corrin, who only scowled.
"Cat fight!" someone cawed, but they were immediately shushed.
Leo's bloodied thumb throbbed with his unsteady heartbeat as he watched Charlotte take the seat across from Corrin and jab her elbow into the table's hard surface, flexing her fingers in an open declaration of aggression.
Corrin met Charlotte's challenge, clasping the other woman's hand in her own. Someone called, "Go!"
Neither woman's arm moved. They stayed perfectly balanced. An unsuspecting onlooker might have thought they were still waiting for a command to begin. The only thing that had changed was Corrin's placid expression, now twisted in confusion and consternation. And then her arm ticked back towards the table.
Muffled gasps rang out.
Thank gods I didn't piss her off earlier, Leo thought, staring into Charlotte's unblinking eyes.
Beneath the thin fabric of her sleeves, Leo could see Corrin's muscles clench and strain as she pushed Charlotte's arm back. The blonde woman bared her teeth. Her bulging arm began to quiver. Even as she lost ground, Leo feared, She could crush me like a grape without even trying.
He had never feared the same of Corrin. He'd seen the bruises she'd given his brother and knew that she could turn him into dust with a single, well-placed kick, but he had faith that she would never turn her immense strength on him.
But Charlotte would absolutely kill me if given the legal opportunity, he thought as she reestablished equilibrium with Corrin.
Leo looked to his brother for a template of how to react, but found only rapt amazement and couldn't fathom how to construct his face in the same way. If it was unbecoming on Xander, he couldn't imagine how foolish he'd look.
He returned his attention to the match, watching Corrin and Charlotte's arms struggle against the other like coiled snakes. In the flickering light, they almost seemed to share the same, monstrous appendage crafted of molded steel and shaped into a poor approximation of humanity.
And then Corrin pinned Charlotte's arm in a single, fluid surge. The eruption of rapturous applause deafened him. Corrin and Charlotte's hands still lay intertwined, Charlotte's blotching pink from the pressure of being driven into the table. Then, she released her grip, standing with more dignity than Leo had known she possessed.
Benny ushered her away quickly, but she held her head high, even as the dim light made unfortunate shadows of the alcohol stains on her dress. Then she was gone from his midst, heading towards the exit of the tavern. As the crowd pressed in on Corrin in chirping delight, he caught only a brief glimpse of Charlotte's façade cracking as she shrieked and sent her stilettoed heel into the wall paneling.
Corrin looked to him in bewilderment as she drowned beneath drunken congratulations. Her eyes were still hazy from drink.
I wonder if she even knows what just happened, Leo thought as he rubbed at his temples to alleviate the headache that yawned between them.
I wonder if I even know what the hell just happened.
"What's all this?" Leo heard as the cheering died out.
Relief pulsed in his chest as his sister broke through the onlookers with a knight in tow.
"Shoo!" Camilla cried, waving her hands at the crowd like she had always done at the crows that liked to congregate beneath her window back in Krakenburg. Begrudgingly, the mass scattered until only he, his two siblings, Silas, and Corrin were left.
"Silas!" Corrin cried, standing up so fast that she wobbled. She stumbled towards him, throwing her arms around him to catch herself and hugging like he was the mast of a sinking ship. Then, she took Silas' face between her hands and kissed him sloppily.
Leo tried to keep his face free of disdain, but judging from the look Camilla sent his way, he'd failed.
"I love you," Corrin announced, pulling away from Silas. "I love you more than I've ever loved anybody."
For just a moment, Silas blanched. Corrin didn't seem to notice. She looked at him through soft, doe eyes and fluttering lashes. Vicarious embarrassment churned the acid in Leo's stomach.
"I love you too," Silas said at last. "Now, why don't you let Camilla get you in bed?"
Corrin laughed and a night spent in Charlotte's company prepared Leo for her following, slurring suggestion of, "Why don't you get me in bed?"
And that's about all I can take for tonight, Leo thought, turning from them to his siblings as Silas said, "Maybe another night."
Xander's brow was furrowed and Camilla's lips were pursed and Leo knew that they both had something to say, but he didn't care to listen. Babysitting drunk Corrin had sapped all his energy to be civil and accommodating. He scowled at their pressing expressions and then trudged to the table where Niles drunkenly babbled to anyone that had the misfortune of drawing near, bracing himself for a deluge of double entendre and drunken antics. But at least he knew what to expect.
I'd take a drunk Niles over a drunk Corrin any day, he thought, rubbing at his forehead and hoping that he wouldn't be spending the night in the infirmary as Niles detoxed. Again.
A/N: We've reached the point in the original where it absolutely went off the rails into "oh shit, I gotta write a convincing romance too" territory lol. Hopefully, the same thing doesn't happen as I'm working with some more complex themes & characters this time around, but we shall see.
So I know that Leo comes off as a total presumptuous asshole for wanting to gatekeep his brother's sexuality, but I imagine being a bastard borne from a loveless, awful union to a mother that only wanted him to achieve power and dominance probably gives him some deep seated trauma and seeing a similar situation playing out in front of him brings out the worst in him. Also, I know in canon xander just hits charlotte with the "i see what you're doing and you best shape the fuck up or get the fuck out" but that just always struck me as exceedingly harsh because she's not really doing anything wrong? Like sure, she's being deceitful and currying favor with the men but like? That's not a crime and it's not like the men are fistfighting over her (which they aren't because she behaves the way she does just to get people to like her, not because she's inherently petty or drama oriented) so like, yeah, xander would absolutely be aware and cognizant of what she's doing, but i also can't see him being anything but incredibly awkward about the whole thing (especially since she'd undoubtedly be very into him), but that's just my 2 cents. I also just love Charlotte to the ends of the earth and I wanted to showcase her in all her two-faced glory so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hope y'all enjoyed!