#but unfortunately i realized that my project 6K was more like....9K+ total

[sabraeal]

a heart felled by you, held by you; Part 1

[Read on AO3]

Inspired by @onedivinemisfit's Lilias Charity Gala pieces; Annie had a strong idea coming into the challenge, and we had a lot of fun hashing through what we felt would most represent Northern vs Southern fashion, and academic vs noble fashion. We struggle bussed hard over some of the male looks, had some real experimental ideas for Haki's dress that Annie really made into something special...and then I realized I would not have enough time to even get to the gala portions of this fic. So this chapter is a bit of a prequel, with more to come later...

The message arrives via the traditional method: clutched in the woolly mitts of a street urchin, another paw already extended for payment. The university is rife with them, always milling about underfoot, loitering in the exact walkways one would most like to hurry through before students— or worse yet, other academics— could waylay them. It also contains the traditional summons, or rather, the traditional stay put.

A representative will be coming, it threatens in the usual, toothless way the board prefers, as if their approval means anything more than being saddled with more responsibility. Please make sure that you are in-office when we arrive.

It is Lata’s personal tradition to disappoint them. To imagine them arriving at his closed door, scowls furrowing deeper with each unanswered knock. Sometimes he can even hear his name being cursed on the wind as his cart rolls out the city gates, headed to quarries unknown. They might find him when he returns, twice as cross for having been made fools in front of the whole department, but at least they meet on his terms, not some…board of academics so close to titles he can nearly smell it in their stiff collars and even more starched opinions.

That is not, however, how it happens this year. Oh, he meant it too— he’d already been looking at likely quarries when Shidan shuffled into his office, wondering if he might pull the same disappearing act he had the past seven years running. Lata may have spent his nascent years at Wistal dodging the dire undercurrents of Kain’s court, but even without such a thorough education in ignoring the unspoken intentions behind spoken words, he would have heard the man’s insinuations loud and clear: stay, please, our funding might depend on it. Academics weren’t exactly known for their subtlety, and Shidan was among the least of them.

It’s not the sort of appeal that typically moves him. And yet somehow as the day grew closer, he found himself more interested in the edits on Shirayuki’s proposal than in locations of wunderock veins, pausing more often to correct the application of Suzu’s hammer than the supply lists he’d kept on his desk since last semester. For all that he hadn’t meant to stay, somehow he had, and by the time he realized it, it was far too late to do anything but wonder how much more the temperature would drop before the university would finally open the thermal vents. The whole place would smell of sulfur for a season, but at least it would be warm.

It helped, of course, that their representative came early. Two days, in fact; the knock landing on his door with an airy cadence, as if the knuckles did not so much rap on the panels but dance across them. He expected something more thunderous, to be honest; a declaration and a reckoning all in one. He'd almost be offended, if he wasn't hoping for some noodle-limbed pushover as his auditor.

“Come in,” he grunts before he can think better of it. If he’d kept his mouth shut, they might at least assume he was out to lunch, or had been dragged out to Shidan’s lab to clap over whatever little achievement they’d eked out of those plants of theirs, as if it had anything to do with him. But now they know he’s here, trapped behind the mountain of papers on his desk— that’s the problem with being a collaborator, all the paperwork— with no escape but out a second floor window. An attractive option for a much younger, more morally— and physically— flexible knight, but certainly not open to him.

He braces himself. There’s seven years worth of scolding coming, of classes he hasn’t properly bought himself out of and reviews he has yet to provide as ‘part of this academic community’, with only a thin oak door to separate him from it. Just a simple twist of a knob, and they’ll having him so thoroughly pinned he might as well be up on cork. Scholaris Forzenalis, it might say, elusive specimen found on university grounds. Never before caught.

So it confounds him when they knock again.

“Come in,” he says, louder this time, annoyance bleeding into the words. “What? Don’t they teach you how to open doors in this university? Or do you all just sit around, waiting for your assistants to—”

With all the delicacy of shears slicing through silk, his door slips open. Instantly, his teeth clack to a close.

“Forgive me.” Those pretty manners he once protested protect him now, hard-ingrained habit driving him to his feet where intelligence fails him. “My lady. If I had know you would be the one sent on board business, I would have, er…”

Been in another country entirely. But one does not say that to Haki Arleon, daughter to a duke, sister to the commander of the guard, mistress of Lilias in her own right— and most important, Clarines’ queen-to-be. At least, not if one would also like to continue to rely on the crown’s largess. At least two of his grants came backed by Clarines’ treasury, and Lata would like to keep it that way.

“Would you like something to drink?” He glances at the kettle perched on the sideboard, probably as cold as the cup quarantined to the corner of his desk. “I could call for something.”

“That’s quite all right.” The future queen does not sashay into the room the way her brideroom might— the way he did once, the single, unfortunate time Lata fell squarely into His Majesty’s interests— but peruses it, stepping through the stacks of specimens and pausing to read each tag. There is no urgency in how she meanders through the room, no destination; at one moment bending over a table to squint over a fine bit of shale, and the next detouring to the cabinets for a well-tumbled example of aventurine. It reminds him of the girl who used to be carried through these hallowed halls on her lord father’s shoulders, those same wide eyes peering through every case, curiosity so strong it nearly put her hair on end— only to hide the moment a scholar approached, burying herself in the safety of his neck.

But that is not the woman who smiles at him now, settling into the overstuffed chair across from him with all the ease of a bird alighting to a perch. Or at least, it hasn’t been, not for a long time. “Are you quite sure I can’t get you anything?”

“I believe I am supposed to ask you for your books,” she informs him, too sweet to put him at ease. “The ones with your expenditures for the last year, as well as your proposed budget for the next one.”

Lata grimaces. Her father had a grimmer countenance, to be sure, but that pretty smile of hers is twice as implacable. Disobey me at your own peril, it says, radiating the same ruthlessness as a desert sun. I love to see crows feast on the corpses of poor listeners.

“That is what I’m supposed to ask, at least.” He glances up at her, quizzical, hands half-wrapped around his accounts. “But what I wanted to talk to you about is the gala.”

“The—” his mouth barely knows how to wrap around the word— “gala?”

“The charity gala.” A Wisteria might raise one brow— mockingly, the way their kind preferred to communicate— but she raises both, surprise and invitation rolled into one. “The one the board hosts every year to help fund their more promising projects.”

The one he always skips, since if there is one thing he likes less than rubbing elbows with lords and ladies, it’s watching his esteemed colleagues parade themselves like débutantes before them, courting every eligible purse in the room in hopes one might open for them. “Ah,” he manages. “That gala.”

What that has to do with him, he can’t fathom, but—

“We would like this gala’s funds to go towards funding the further research of the Phostyrias.”

There’s nothing in his mouth, but Lata nearly chokes on it anyway. “Excuse me,” he rasps, clearing his throat. Last years contributions topped nearly three million dir before he stopped paying attention. Enough to keep Shidan’s little pet project in the black for the next three years. Five even, if he minds his expenditures. “That’s no mean gift, my lady.”

She hums, hands folding neatly over her lap. “The board has been quite impressed with the progress made in the last year.”

Or rather, the progress one particular scholar has made in impressing its importance on the local lords. If the rumor going around the commissary had even a grain of truth to it, this year’s guest list was nearly half again the length of the last, and every one of them would be wanting to put their name on that girl’s dance card. One can only hope His Majesty has invested a similar interest in her footwork, otherwise there might be quite the crush in the infirmary come morning.

“Although I am always happy to hear of my colleagues’ good fortune,” he lies, the pleasantries falling from his lips with all the ease of oil from butter. “I must admit I do not see why you have chosen to bring me the glad tidings. The phostyrias is, after all, Shidan’s project, not mine.”

“Ah, but you are a collaborator, are you not, professor?” One corner of her mouth hooks too slyly for the sweetness of her face. “As I understand it, your wunderocks are crucial to the formation of those phostyrias bulbs no small amount of Lilias scholars have been sent to plant along the North's roads. And as such, I imagine that a goodly portion of that money will be given to you.”

It’s the same mental arithmetic he’d been spooling through since that announcement dripped from her lips. He hadn’t hitched himself to Shidan’s wagon for the money; there hadn’t been any when that girl cornered him at His Majesty’s little fête, just the sort of pluck that showed promise-- which wouldn’t have interested him in the slightest if the little she-devil hadn’t twisted his arm. Or rather, let her knight do it. But now that there is— well, it’d all been fine and good to give some free pointers here and there, or let Shidan’s students run rampant through his laboratory, pillaging his specimens in the name of science, but now that he could be paid for his time…

Well, there’s some personal projects that could do with a little attention. A lot of attention, if that guest list proves as flush as one might hope. “I suppose that is the case. Still, I am not sure why you would bring the news to—?”

“There is a small problem with the gala.” There’s so much carrot in Lady Haki’s smile it can only hide a stick. “You see, it has always been my privilege to host the event at Wirant. Our staff has always been delighted to put in the sort of work it takes to make the night a great success. But this year, well…I’m afraid the ballroom is being renovated.”

No doubt to be just as resplendent as the one in Wistal. With the marriage between the North’s most darling daughter and Clarines’ king finally set, it would be the duty of the Arleons to throw the engagement celebration— and it wouldn’t do for these southern lords with their soft hands and snobby opinions to come up and find Wirant lacking. Half the collective North would fall on their swords before they’d allow it to be said that the royal palace threw a better wedding than they did an engagement.

“Most years, we might impose upon the university for the use of their function room, however—” her hands splay helplessly between them— “with the recent rash of guests who have replied to our invitation, it will hardly be large enough to hold them. So of course it falls upon us to find another location.”

“A pity. Perhaps one of your noble acquaintance would be willing to hold it, my lady.” They typically were, so long as they felt they would be appropriately compensated. And with the request coming from the Clarines’ next queen— well, there were few who wouldn’t clamor at the chance for her favor. “Preferably one who won’t have an interest in holding it over you once you become ‘Your Majesty.’”

“That is—” those wide eyes bat once, twice— “what I am hoping.”

 Lata blinks. “My lady, once again, I must ask, what does this have to do with…?”

All at once, it comes to him. Dreadfully, finally. “No! No. My lady, that’s hardly—” he coughs, trying to catch his breath and his thoughts—“That’s not my estate.”

“Ah, that’s strange, then,” she says, too innocent. “When I wrote to your lord father, the duke was of the impression it was under your care.”

His teeth grind hard enough he can hear the fissures forming. “My lord father…?”

“He was quite confused why I would inquire about its use of him when his heir was already in residence.” Her head tilts, resting on two of her slender fingers. “I thought it best not to mention that you had taken an apartment closer to the university.”

But she would, if he proved too troublesome. It’s clear in the way that mouth of hers hooks into a smirk, too like another in recent memory. “I haven’t been in that house in years— nearly a decade! The whole thing is little more than a moldering pile. And the ballroom— why, it’s probably in pieces by now.”

“Is that so?” she says in the precise tone that implies, it isn’t. “Your lord father told me that he just had laborers in last summer to repair the place top to bottom. ‘Not an original board in the place,’ I believe he said. Quite proud of it in fact.”

Lata smothers a grimace. There had been work done on the place; father insisted. A bachelor with a skeleton staff can’t be keeping the roof in order, the old man had huffed, just let a place in town and I’ll have the place tidy as the day it was built. He could hardly tell the stubborn old goat he hadn’t been using it in the first place. “I don’t keep staff.”

“I’ll lend you mine.” The answer’s too quick— she’d been expecting that one from the start. “As I said, they’re used to events of this scale. It’s the extra bodies that causes the most logistical problems for these sorts of things,” she admits reluctantly, “and this time of year, Wirant is full of them. They probably would jump at the idea of using a space that’s empty to start.”

His words curdle on his tongue, mouth pursing sourly around it. If Lady Haki is anything like her father, this whole conversation has been planned in advance, every reversal anticipated and its counter prepared. She came in here with him already well and thoroughly routed, he just hasn't seen the how of it yet.

“I wasn’t even planning on attending,” he grits out, more confession than caltrop. “That fool celebration is always on the solstice, and I can’t abide the costumes and the dancing and the kissing games—”

“Then we will have none.”

Lata raises a brow. “You think you can stop that crowd from having their fun? Stop them from causing mischief when they’ve been saving it up all year?”

“We remove the masquerade element,” she says, firm. “And the roka garlands. Without the garlands, kisses have meaning, and without the masks, they have consequences too. Which will be discouragement enough for most.”

That’s true enough; southern lords might revel in their rakishness, but those from northern stock valued tradition, reliability, wisdom. To be caught kissing the wrong woman at midnight would do more than scuttle a courtship or two— it could turn half the north against a man, leaving a house to flounder to make contracts, sending their interests south when their neighbors wouldn’t deal with a liar or an oathbreaker.

“And the dancing,” he grunts, warming to the topic. “I don’t want it. I’ve attended a hundred galas in my time, and never once has anyone truly cared to—“

“I afraid, my lord—” Lady Haki lays a quelling hand over his— “the dancing is a must.”

“But…” He glances down where her palm rests, the point of her nails resting next to the soft flesh of his wrist, the weight of it pinning him to the wood.

“Fine,” he sighs, settling back in his seat, flexing his hand to soothe the burn of it. “Dancing it is.”

*

There was no hour in which the Royal Pharmacy slept; even in the dead of night the back rooms buzzed, pharmacists weaving through every inch of the labyrinthine passages, droning on like bees in their hive. Each one of them would sigh in relief at the end of their shift, shedding their duties along with their coats, eager to slough off the hustle and bustle for a moment of silence. But after so many years of haunting empty halls, catching only shadows of the people he called his parents, Ryuu found the commotion comforting. At least, so long as he wasn't in the middle of it.

When sleep dragged at his edges, tugging at the end of his pen or bobbing the crown of his head, it wasn’t to his dormitory that he wandered. It might have been a kindness to the pharmacists with no place to go, a luxury to the apprentices who grew up sleeping three or more to a bed, but to him it had only been another empty room, a convenient closet to keep yet another body. There was no comfort to be found there, no warmth, just the cold, silent shell of solitude.

But beneath his desk— that had been just the right size. With his back pressed to the wall, he could feel the steady thrum of the palace’s heart, the regular bustle of its pulse beating right behind the plaster. Curtain drawn, it was dark as a womb, and when he closed his eyes, the warmth of his body trapped between wall and blanket, he could believe he was being carried by his mother still. A drowsing child separated from the world by only the thinnest membrane, always feeling, never understanding, but safe all the same.

It wasn’t until he had come here to the university, with its hallowed halls and its neatly kept hours, that he knew it could be different. That a place could be quiet without being lonely. That he could live without the membrane between him and world, and still hear himself think.

A heady discovery, for a boy not yet thirteen. Exhilarating. Terrifying.

He misses it, now.

“Oh my,” Shirayuki gasps, squeezed from the crush lingering outside the laboratory door. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crowd like that. Not in the university, at least. What is—?”

“The occasion?” Kazaha drawls, glaring up from his bench. “That would be Garrack Gazelt.”

“Garrack?” She follows the jut of his chin, but only so far as Ryuu, eyes rounding into a question. “Did she say she was going to…?”

“For the gala.” The very one he’s been dreading, now that Shidan’s informed him he’s old enough to attend. “The lab is being honored, and she’s come to—”

“Play plus one,” Suzu says, shouldering himself between them on the bench. “Shirayuki, do you think you could take over this distillation? It’s taking ages and I’m tired of—”

“Garrack Gazelt isn’t anyone’s plus one,” Kazaha huffs, nearly thunderous. “She’s the foremost expert on medical pharmaceuticals in the kingdom, if not the continent.”

“And Shidan asked her to go to this shindig, So she’s here.” Suzu shrugs a shoulder. “Plus one behavior, that’s all I’m trying to say.”

“That’s not—!”

“Really?” Shirayuki blinks, taking in the breathless crush. Scholars jostle each other, jockeying for their place in line, bony elbows taking the more determined further front. If they were wearing ball gowns instead of lab coats, Ryuu could have easily mistaken them for eager young ladies at their first soirée, ruthlessly trying to thrust themselves before the most eligible gentleman in the room. “All this for Garrack?”

“What’s that?” A cold breeze is all the warning they have before boots land on the sill, a disheveled uniform perched above them. “Don’t think the chief deserves the popularity?”

“I never said that,” she says primly, the smallest hint of a smile clinging to the corner of her mouth. “I just mean she’s more of a fixture here than she was a few years ago. You’d think the excitement might have banked by now. Just a bit.”

Suzu huffs. “Never underestimate the power of Head Pharmacist Gazelt. I shook her hand this morning, and I still haven’t—!”

“Wash it,” Ryuu tells him, wide eyed. “Now. Please.”

“Aw, but what if all the luck washes off?”

“You know how you always wonder why girls won’t give you the time of day?” Obi says, strained. “This is why.”

“But this many people?” Shirayuki murmurs, as if Suzu hadn’t spoken at all. “Who are all they, even?”

“Faculty.” Kazaha leans a hip against the bench, catching the crowd at a casual angle. “Students. More than a few fellows from neighboring labs. They’ve been coming in and out all morning with the worst excuses.”

“Oh, and your little not-really-a-question-more-a-comment was so clever?” Suzu snorts. “Maybe you should stop living in a snow house if you’re gonna throw ice like that.”

“I didn’t say—” Kazaha lets a breath hiss through his nose. “You’re just jealous that she said I had thought through the problem from every angle, while she only told you that yours was an interesting endeavor, which everyone knows means it’s stupid—”

Suzu’s close enough Ryuu feels him take a breath rather than hears it, rebuttal poised at the tip of his tongue— but the slam of the laboratory door startles it right out of him.

“There,” Shidan says, one hand still pressed to the paneling. “That’s enough of that.”

“Oh, come on now, it’s easier this way.” Garrack doesn’t so much perch on as prowl to his desk, improbably long legs stretching across the floor. “They’re not used to this sort of excitement. You gotta let them get it out.”

“You could get out,” he grumbles, ambling behind his desk. Ryuu doesn’t need to be as perceptive as Obi to know he doesn’t mean a word of it. “Then maybe they might find somewhere else to be.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” The scant few years he spent under her careful eye is more than enough to know the smart comment that smile hides, one that’s sure to slide right under Shidan’s skin and send him skittering for some science to hold before his temper can get the best of him, but—

But it all goes up like smoke when the door nearly bursts off its hinges, a bolus of black wool hurtling through.

“What is the meaning—?” Shidan’s teeth snap shut. “Professor, I didn’t expect you to—?”

“That woman!” Lata doesn’t so much rage as froth, pacing like a pot just before a boil. “Comes into my office, just to trap me in a corner. No! To flush me out of a my den, like a hound does a…a-- a fox would say she speaks out of both side of her face, that’s the sort of woman she is. And she came to me.”

“Ah.” Shidan leans back in his seat, hands folded over his belly. “I see her ladyship spoke to you about the charity gala.”

“Spoke? Strong-armed is more like!” Steam would be rising from him, if it could from a person. “Practically mentioned the thing in one breath, and then had me hosting it the next! As if I don’t have anything better to do than bring the glittering ton into my own home and let them pick over the place like locusts!”

“Host? You? In your poor excuse for a house?” Garrack raises a thick brow. “How are we all going to fit around the rocks?”

“Not my personal abode.” He scowls down at the chief pharmacist, clearly just have noticing her presence. “Her ladyship asked for access to the estate.”

“Your family’s estate?” Both brows hike to her hairline. “I thought you were disowned.”

“Dis—? You thought—?” Lata sputters, words rattling like a pot’s lid. “I went into academia, not— not gotten a girl in the family way!”

She lifts a shoulder at the precise angle meant to annoy. “Wouldn’t be the first noble boy to do both. Maybe you thought a book might shield you from a bad marriage as much as taking the cloth.”

He stares at her for a long moment, simmering, before turning back to Shidan. “In any case, the woman’s taken my whole household firmly in hand. Told me there’s to be dancing too, if you can believe it.”

It’s with practiced patience that Shidan manages a mild, “You don’t say.”

“Dancing?” Garrack drawls, arms folding across the stark white of her coat. “What next? Kissing at midnight?”

“No, none of that,” he huffs. “And none of those silly garlands either. It’s bad enough I have to suffer through the moon eyes children make during a reel, I hardly need them making worse decisions in an empty bedroom.”

“Or unlocked closet.” Her lips twitch, dangerous. “Or just a really nice, shadowed corner…”

Lata frowns, the sort that might be more forbidding if Garrack possessed the ability to be shamed. “If you’re quite done being a degenerate?”

One shoulder lifts, lazy. “Hardly.”

“In any case,” he huffs, putting his back to her— and Shidan square in his sights. “I suppose my one consolation is that I cannot be made to dance—”

“Lata!” The name bubbles out of her, escaping through the hand she claps over it. “You’re the host.”

“Yes?” His mouth pulls thin. “Oh, some will find it rude, I’m sure, but a man can’t be made to dance, not in his own home. Not even by that— that—”

For all that his mouth works, teeth biting around the start of syllables before abandoning them for the next, Ryuu finds he hardly needs words to understand what Lata is trying to convey. Not when his hands clench so eloquently before him, the way His Highness Zen’s does when Obi really has gone and done something unwise.

“No, I mean—” now it’s Garrack waving her hands, thought it seems she’s having a far better time than Lata is doing it— “it’s the host’s job to open the floor. So you’ve got to at least do it the once.”

His shoulders stiffen to an edifice even mountains would shy from. “I must do no such thing. If the host must open the floor, then everyone can spend the night with their heels firmly on the parquet. Why, who would even be my partner? There’s not a single woman in the whole of the continent that could compel me to—”

“'Not a single woman.' You poor bastard!” A guffaw tears out of Garrack, putting tears in her eyes. “Do you really not get it? Not only do you have to open the floor—” her voice burbles up to a pitch that blots out all Lata’s attempts at protest— “but you have to do it with the highest ranked woman in attendance!”

Lata stills. Blinks. Once, then twice. And with no fanfare at all, his whole face rumples up, twisted around a sneer. “Oh—!”

Whatever else the professor says is lost to him-- Shirayuki clamps her hands right over his ears, so hard it leaves them ringing. By the time he’s quite recovered— and Lata’s quite finished— the first thing he hears is Obi murmuring, “Well, Yuzuri’s not going to like this.”

*

“What do you mean there’s not going to be kissing?!” Izuru makes a good attempt to shush her, but Yuzuri refuses to be silenced on this, even if the whole commissary is staring at them. She even drops her utensils for good measure, fork and knife both, letting them clatter to the table in the growing lull. “I finally get invited to the most exclusive Solstice party in Wirant, and there won’t even be garlands?”

“It’s not in Wirant,” Kazaha adds, right at the same time Shirayuki offers, “It’s a charity gala, not a Solstice party.”

The both stop, sparing each other the briefest glance before Kazaha pedantically plows on, “I think the Forzeno estate is somewhere outside the main city. Before the checkpoint, at least, but not within the walls—“

“That’s not important,” she snaps, wishing she could take a pair of scissors and even out that terrible hack job he likes to give himself, as if a lack of skill and a proper mirror could pass for fashion. “It’s a charity gala on the solstice, which means it’s a Solstice party and there should be kissing.”

“We go to the university party every year and you find someone to kiss just fine,” Suzu comments around a mouthful of yams. “I don’t know why it matters so much that you can’t kiss someone there.”

It’s impossible to explain to him that she’s running out of boys to kiss— or at least, boys to kiss that aren’t Suzu. Which she can never do, because wanting to put her mouth on him is a new, debilitating mental illness she’d rather die than indulge. She just needs to go out and— and touch a little snow. Meet people who know that a quadrille is a dance, not some sort of…of duck species. Reintroduce herself into a dating pool where more of the mate selection know how to chew with their mouth shut.

“Because the university party is full of academics,” she settles on instead, as close to a confession as she can bear. “And this place will has a ton of guys— normal guys, who can talk about stuff other than…sediment layers and rhizomes and…and which side of the body your kidneys are supposed to be on.”

“They’re supposed to be on both sides,” Kazaha informs her with a concerned frown, just as Suzu adds around a swallow, “I thought you loved rhizomes.”

She does. That’s sort of the problem. “There’s going to be actual gentlemen at this party, with titles and money and good manners, and I’m not going to be able to kiss any of them! It’s demoralizing.”

“Well,” Obi hums, mouth already hooking into trouble. That what she like about him: he’s always ready to break the rules. Or at least scuff them up a little. “That’s only if you get caught.”

Shirayuki casts him one of her knowing looks, the kind that doesn’t say I know what you’re up to so much as I know you’re better than this. “If Lata isn’t comfortable with kissing, then you shouldn’t be thinking about sneaking around to do it.”

“Aw, Miss,” he sighs, fluttering his eyelashes; a poor way to hide the fondness in his eyes. “But sneaking around is the best part.”

“There’s going to be dancing,” Kazaha interjects, heading their frustrating not-flirting flirting off at the pass. “You can at least do that with your moneyed and mannered gentlemen. Aren’t there a half dozen novels you’ve read where romance blooms over a reel?”

“A waltz, usually.” Sometimes maybe even a schottische or a polka, if the heroine was more plucky than limpid. “And that’s still not the same as kissing.”

“Lata’s even opening the floor.” Suzu mulls the thought over as he picks at a roll. “Do you think he can dance?”

“Well, he is a lord,” Obi reminds him, loading up his fork. “Aren’t they born knowing how to cut a rug?”

“Well, sure.” His hair’s gotten longer in the colder months, the ends lingering down around his shoulders rather than up my his chin. Yuzuri hates how much she wants to run her fingers through it. “But I mean…he’s been holding up in his lab for years. He’s got to be rusty, right? Like if he breaks one of Lady Haki’s foot bones, is that going to come out of our—?”

“He did just fine when we danced,” Shirayuki adds with a pointed look. “That wasn’t so long ago.”

“Miss.” It’s more a laugh than her name, and Obi leans in, far too close for just friends. “Back then, anyone would have seemed like a master next to you. I think I still have bruises from that night.”

Pink chases up the column of her throat, settling right at the tips of her ears. By the way her eyes dart down before skittering away, Yuzuri doubts it’s from the teasing. “W-well, still. He hardly stepped on my feet.”

Obi’s grin goes sharp, wolfish, like she’s just a little frolicking lamb, and he’s hungry for lunch. “How could he when yours are always so quick on the draw?”

This is getting ridiculous. “I think we’re missing the most important part here,” Yuzuri reminds them, startling Obi back to a less ravenous distance. “Which is that there’s going to be no kissing! For anyone!”

“Wait, will I have to dance?” Suzu asks, worry slipping the last few syllables shrill. “I’ve never danced before. Not the real stuff. I don’t even know where to put my hands!”

“Maybe,” Kazaha drawls, angling himself toward her— and away from Suzu’s spiraling. “You could spend all that time you wanted to be swapping spit with rich boys and use it to kiss up to our donors instead.”

Yuzuri groans. “That is not the kind of kissing I want to do.”

His mouth twitches, threatening amusement. “But it is a kind of kissing.”

“Obi.” Suzu grabs his sleeve over the sweet potatoes. “You gotta teach me how to dance.”

Kazaha sighs, shaking his head. “Great. And now the blind are leading the blind.”

#obiyukidosido #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #ans #I had been hoping to actually get to the bits that had annie's designs in them since we like #spent a WHILE going back and forth about what we thought northern fashion would be #and i actually have a whole draft for what was supposed to be this ENTIRE fic #but unfortunately i realized that my project 6K was more like....9K+ total #and that just was NOT going to happen this week #while kids were sick and we had PLANS and such #but ONE DAY. maybe even soon. SOONISH. we'll see what the fates hold for this little project 🤣