Archive of Our Own

During the summer months, the bay windows of Ferdinand’s apartment had been nothing short of a blessing from the goddess herself. When he opened them, it not only created an airflow throughout the entirety of the apartment but also opened up his world to the people on the streets below. Living on the first level when he propped the window open, he could hear every happy sound wafting down the streets of Enbarr. The criers of three competing news rags promising prospective readers that their stories were the better written. Fishermen tugging back their latest hauls to the market uptown. And, of course, with the perfectly chosen proximity of Ferdinand’s apartment to the Enbarr University campus, the sounds of student life, bustling and lively. Even on the days Ferdinand didn’t have his own lectures to attend, the very energy of intellectualism still hung in the air—or, perhaps, that was just the scent of over-roasted coffee. Ferdinand has blessed those windows every balmy summer evening.

His landlord had failed to mention to him and his father how the windows shook and creaked in the winds of the winter months. The chill of the winter’s first snow creeps in through the windows as surely as the ivy spread over the building’s facade. Now, instead of happy green leaves out his window, there is only bitter wind and a light dusting of snow, the ivy’s bare roots a skeleton left behind. The only good thing about the weather, in Ferdinand’s noble opinion, was an excuse it provided to partake in an extra glass of wine at dinner, to warm him from the inside out. He sits as far from the window as possible at his dining table, which squarely situated the fireplace between him and the winter cold. The night is clear enough that he can see the snowflakes and frost building a small army outside the glass pane. There are no newspaper boys, no fisherman, no fellow students gathering after classes for the purposes of educational, social, or moral betterment.

But then, perhaps, there were other good things to come from the winter’s cold. A friendship, maybe. With the cold, those conversations between young intellectuals are oft moved inside, Hubert had told him.

A peer from my anatomy class Ferdinand had described the young man as in a letter to his father, leaving out whatever other suspicions Ferdinand might have. That Ferdinand suspected that he frequented the coffee houses downtown, where young people gathered to discuss all sorts of things. Gambling, the newest magical findings, gallery openings, even topics as subversive as political discontent.

And that scene—or at least what Ferdinand imagined of the scene, having never dared to visit such a coffee house himself—fit Hubert von Vestra quite well. He had a dark sort of handsomeness that Ferdinand can easily say with his sheltered upbringing, he hasn’t the chance to encounter often. While Ferdinand can hardly say he would want to find himself under the scrutiny of Hubert’s scalpel, he can tell the other young man’s educational choice was the correct one for him.

When Ferdinand watches Hubert watch Professor Essar perform autopsies and mock-surgeries in the theater, there’s a sense of curiosity in his eyes, an almost macabre fascination. Ferdinand confessed to Hubert that he has always been a little squeamish and that surgery will be his least favorite part of being a doctor, but it’s quite obviously Hubert’s favorite. Those first few weeks of classes, when Ferdinand could barely stomach the recently deceased cadavers during their perfunctory anatomy lessons, he had almost exclusively looked at Hubert across the room instead.

And then somehow, over the course of their strange budding friendship, there was to be the cafe date. Or salon outing. Coffee house visit. The word itself doesn’t matter anymore. It was a place where young people met to talk, and that’s precisely where he and Hubert would meet tomorrow. To talk.

They had tried to schedule it for last weekend, but the ocean had brought in a miserable cold front. Wednesday, a rogue crestology assignment ruined the plans of anyone in the medical track. But even with the heavy sky threatening to fill the streets with snow, Ferdinand would not be perturbed once again. Hubert wants him to come to the coffee house tomorrow. Ferdinand specifically.

It’s not like Ferdinand hasn’t had friends before, he mulls over in the cold of his dining room. The fireplace is falling to embers, and Ferdinand knows not to feed it another piece of firewood, and as he pours his next glass of wine, he tells himself it will have to be his last.

He had had friends before. There was one of the boys from his father’s stable. He would call himself a friend of one of the emperor’s daughters, though he’s unsure if she would describe him the same. And then, well, there were a few people that his parents had him spend time with as a child, though he would be the first to admit he wasn’t particularly close with any of them now.

So, maybe he didn’t have many friends. In a life filled with old, boring personal tutors and failed courting with various unenthused bachelorettes, Ferdinand’s little contact with people his age was often uneventful. Whatever friends he did have, though, none, none at all, were anything like Hubert.

The doorbell scares him far more than it has any right to. The snow makes the whole world quiet so even the clink of Ferdinand’s glass when he sets it down on the dining table seems loud. The sound of a fist on his door is as thunderous as a symphony.

After a split second of paralysis, he goes to the door, grabbing a metal poker from beside the fireplace on his way. He knows the peephole is too frosted over to make any use of, and he’s not hopeful. A robber, maybe. Most probably. Who would visit him at this hour? It was nearly eleven pm, far later than any respectful person should be out and wandering the snow-filled night. Any potential assailant will meet the wrong end of a medical student with a very rusty, oversized fireplace instrument.

Of course, it’s not a robber. Of course. Opening his door creates a gust of cold air, and like the entrance of a villain in an opera, there stands Hubert von Vestra, the snow like confetti in his hair. He doesn’t look real, the picture-perfect performer, even the rosiness of his cheeks from the cold looking like a well-applied rouge. This is when Ferdinand realizes that he is much drunker than he thought.

Just as the words, “Hubert, I was not expecting you tonight,” begin to pass Ferdinand’s lips, Hubert speaks over him.

“I need to come inside.”

There’s a moment where they both need to process each other’s words.

Ferdinand is the first to speak again. “It is awfully late.”

“I don’t have the time,” Hubert says, and, yes, there is an urgency in his voice. Ferdinand hasn’t seen him unsettled very often. At all, even. He’s always so calm and collected, and very, very handsome. Seeing him so uneasy is strange, Ferdinand begins to ponder, before Hubert bursts through the front door unceremoniously. Ferdinand stands aside for him because he does look awfully cold out there, and Ferdinand certainly doesn’t mind an evening companion—an evening drinking companion, of course.

And this is precisely when Hubert begins dragging a large mass of cloth through Ferdinand’s front door.

The bag—as, yes, that was the best word for it—was longer than it was wide. It looked heavy, much heavier than if it contained something benevolent, like equestrian equipment or toys for the orphans at the Lonato Home for Lost Children. But what did Ferdinand expect? He was the one you would expect to see dragging around a bag full of equestrian equipment or toys for orphans, not Hubert von Vestra. Because the options of what could be contained in such a heavy bag, shaped specifically like that, were very slim.

He watches Hubert struggle to carry the bag through the doorway, a much more challenging job than Ferdinand would expect. Hubert does have a very thin stature, so it shouldn’t be surprising, and yet, Ferdinand finds himself baffled with the way Hubert wrestles the bag into the doorway, unable to lift it fully off the stoop.

Before Hubert is even fully inside, Ferdinand is opening his mouth again. “I pray that is not what I think it is.”

“A shame there is little use in praying, then.” Something within the bag makes an uncomfortably wet thump when it hits the doorframe.

Ferdinand does his best to stop himself from cringing when what is undeniably a human foot pokes from the front end of the black wrapping. “Please tell me you did not kill someone.”

At that, Hubert turns his gaze from the body to Ferdinand. “Of course I didn’t,” he objects, sounding wholly unconvincing considering his cargo.

“Oh, goddess.” Ferdinand watches a few moments more, exhaling. His heart is beating almost louder than the knocking had been. Splendid. “I do not know if that’s a good answer or a bad one.”

An arm falls from the bundle of fabric, a dead, stiff hand thunking against Ferdinand’s polished Almyran Cherry floorboards.

“Not one that matters much if I’m discovered,” Hubert replies. Because of the angle he’s attempting to leverage the body with, he’s crouched lower than a man of his height should be, and actually needs to look up at Ferdinand for once. His eyes are so green they look yellow. The room is getting colder by the second. Ferdinand realizes that three glasses of wine might be too many.

“Well, let us get inside, then.”

With Ferdinand’s help and the fireplace poker dropped, they easily move the body, for he’s past denying what the mass of fabric is, from the doorway to the center of the room. As soon as it’s some distance into the room that Hubert seems to instinctually decide as far enough, he sets what must be the head down gently, before sliding over to the bay window quicker than Ferdinand has ever seen him move. He tugs the curtains closed, leaving only a sliver revealed which he presses his face against. Ferdinand can only imagine how cold his nose must be.

Ferdinand arranges the body on the floor without knowing how to do it, setting its arms down and making sure it’s feet aren’t twisted. He looks up at Hubert, who is still peering out the window. The body is very cold under Ferdinand’s fingers, and the snow collected on the black shroud begins to melt with its proximity to the fireplace.

“Do you truly think the constable will be after you?”

“You never know,” Hubert answers shortly as if that is that.

And maybe it is. Ferdinand notices that he’s still kneeling on the floor next to what is, very obviously, a dead body, and stands up, rubbing his hands against his trousers. He considers going to the window to ask for some further explanation of whatever in the goddess’ name was going on, but the nervous energy bubbling from Hubert is worse than he’s ever seen on the man. He could sit down on the loveseat, but the casualness of just sitting there like nothing is wrong seems even worse. There is a dead body on his floor. And the handsome visitor sitting in the cold of his bay window is proving to be more dangerous by the moment.

“Who, um,” Ferdinand says, clasping his hands behind him awkwardly like his father always had him stand when he was a boy. He should have sat down, he thinks. “Do you know who it is?”

“The headstone was marked,” Hubert says, but doesn’t say a name. “There weren’t any family members mourning it. A drunk, I think.”

Ferdinand turns his attention back down to the body. A stolen corpse, then. It...certainly wasn’t unheard of. As medical students, it was an unspoken truth that at least some of the cadavers they learned on were likely obtained by body snatchers—though Ferdinand would have assumed they were provided by two-bit criminals and not fellow students. He’s had his suspicions over the legality and freshness of some of the corpses that the elderly Professor Essar brought in for the surgery theater. But, the idea of a headstone, of people who cared enough about the deceased to pay for one, and it feels too real. He backs away from the body and falls to sit on his couch.

He’s seen bodies before. Well, everyone has, but he’s seen more of bodies than most people on the street. He’s seen the outsides and the insides, has a scientific knowledge of all of the organs and bones. While he has never gotten the chance to dissect a human body himself, he’s cut open the bodies of pigs many times and watched his professor do the same to humans. So he shouldn’t be disturbed by the corpse on his hardwood floor.

He looks back at Hubert and even looking at him from behind he can that the hand he’s brought up to scrub at his face. Was that a nervous tick? He always did it when he was paying deep attention in class, but now, it’s certainly more anxious, his eyes no doubt scanning the snowy streets for the city watch.

“The constable is not going to come to my apartment, you know?” he says more than asks, into the cold air of his living room. “So you can close that curtain, having it open makes the whole room feel colder.”

“You can’t be so sure.”

“I can, actually,” Ferdinand retorts just as quick as Hubert does. “Now, you are going to catch a cold.”

“Catching a cold is far better than being caught.”

“Goddess, Hubert, will you listen to yourself?” Speaking, Ferdinand notices, is calming both of them down. Just like sometimes, up in their steep seats at the top of the anatomy theater, Hubert would speak to him at a particularly gruesome moment of the dissection, talking now will help to ground them. “Someone peeking out my window will look more suspicious than us just leaving the curtains closed, and no one would expect me to be a part of something like this without you giving them a reason. Come over here and warm your hands up, you are going to give yourself frostbite.” Silence from Hubert, more talking needed then. “We can open up another bottle of wine, and talk through this like adults.”

And finally, Hubert pries himself away from the chill of the window.

Somehow, talking through this like adults turns into cleaning the dirt off Hubert like a child who got carried away while playing in the gardens. Grime and what appears to be cobwebs disguised themselves with the snow in his hair, but are nothing against a basin of water heated from the fire. They sit on the floor, right in front of the flames, with the body temporarily ignored behind them.

He watches Hubert remove his gloves, black this time, and start wiping himself down with a clean towel, luckily not one of the monogrammed display towels he had first reached for. Ferdinand fulfilled his promise with the wine, bringing another bottle from his miniature collection. He’s perhaps too drunk already, he knows, but he doesn’t think either of them will be able to get through this situation without a little help.

“Imported from Brigid. I have grown to enjoy their grapes, it has a fruitier taste than the Alliance stuff.”

He’s not even quite expecting Hubert to respond when he does. “The Alliance dilutes their wine with sugar water.”

“I would not call it that awful, but yes, this will be much better than that. What do you usually drink?” Small talk, small talk, don’t look at the dead body.

“Sreng Ice Wine, usually. I prefer harder liquors.” He looks down at the glass Ferdinand sets down at his side. “But this will do.”

Another long silence follows, filled with awkward sips of wine, the sound of Hubert washing, and the fireplace softly crackling. Ferdinand realizes that his night’s lifetime may be greatly extended, and stands up to fetch another piece of wood for the fire. He fetches the poker back from the doorway to arrange the piece of wood in a better place, trying to get it to catch. He notices Hubert’s eyes darting back to the window, once, twice, three times. Hubert takes another sip of the wine, and Ferdinand matches him.

“So,” the silence cracks like ice, and Ferdinand fears that they may fall into a conversion they can’t swim out of. “What are you going to do with it?”

Further clarifying the it isn’t necessary. “Dissect it, of course.”

Hubert looks at the fire while he talks, his hands busy with rolling up his sleeves and using the warm wet cloth to wash his forearms. How he got dirty there, Ferdinand can’t imagine, but he also can’t imagine digging up a grave.

“Don’t you get tired of only watching Professor Essar tell us what we should be doing on a patient from fifty feet away? I don’t know how Enbarr University expects us to learn anything like that. That we’re supposed to watch an old man with medical knowledge five years outdated dissect a body a few times, take a final exam with a team, and then suddenly we’re professional surgeons who can operate on any citizens. I want to be prepared. Before I operate on anyone breathing, I want to try on someone dead myself. Lest it be under my hands someone stops breathing. And no, vicariously watching an old man with a mustache do it is not an acceptable substitute.”

He’s heard Hubert speak this much before, though it nearly doesn’t feel like it. Usually, they talk about the coffee shops Hubert frequents, or their heritage, or what they learned in class, but never things like this. Not about their futures, about their professions. Ferdinand has been open that he wants to become a surgeon to help people of all backgrounds and classes, but also that it’s a temporary career before his father picks something out for him. Hubert, he knows, is interested in it mostly because he’s interested in bodies, crestology, the mechanics of how things work. But he’s never broached how he feels about the people he theoretically will work on.

“And my house?”

“It was closest to the graveyard,” Hubert replies quickly.

“Ah.”

Another few moments of silence, the fire crackling while it envelopes the new piece of wood. Hubert takes another sip of the wine, longer than the rest, and he doesn’t make a face, so Ferdinand guesses that he likes it.

“I was going to ask you if you wanted to dissect it with me.”

“Oh?” Ferdinand looks back at the fire, and not at how it illuminates Hubert’s still-damp face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ferdinand takes another sip of his own wine. “It is not supposed to mean anything. I am only surprised.”

“Surgeons rarely work entirely alone. And I know how easily nauseated you were towards the beginning of the semester. I wanted to make sure you had experience yourself, knew what you were getting yourself into. Before the exam.” Hubert also doesn’t look at him, instead looking into the fire just as Ferdinand is. No stolen glances between either of them.

Ferdinand doesn’t say anything about how he is a grown man, and how he does know what he’s getting himself into. That yes, seeing the organs and everything did make him a little faint at the beginning, but he got entirely used to it within a few days, barring the unexpected addition of a corpse to his household without warning. That it was more entertaining to act it up, just to have a peer—a friend—in class.

“You know,” he says, instead, “I meant, more specifically, what are we going to do with it right now? I do not think it is still bleeding, but it cannot be good for my floors.”

He hears Hubert exhale next to him, then laugh under his breath, throwing a look over his shoulder at the body behind them. “No, a day too late for blood. Still fresh, though.”

“This is not your first time doing this, is it?”

“I knew you were smarter than you looked,” Hubert says, and out of the corner of his eye, Ferdinand can see Hubert smile while he takes another sip of wine.

“I choose not to take that as an insult.” Ferdinand smiles back, drinking more himself. It was, after all, a very good wine. Brigid knew what they were doing.

The next few moments of silence were exponentially more comfortable than the previous ones. Ferdinand does his absolute best not to marvel at how the fire casts a light on Hubert’s features that makes him look like he’s carved from stone. Like a statue, or a very good-looking gargoyle.

“Kitchen?” Hubert asks.

“Pardon?”

“To put the body.”

“Heavens no, Hubert, I prepare meals there!”

“Bathroom?”

“My washroom is much too small for that, thank you.” Then, under his breath, “how big do you think my apartment is?”

“How about the bedroom?”

“I do not know your plans for the rest of the night, but seeing how it is nearly midnight, I do plan on retiring sometime in the near future.”

“There’s the dining table,” Hubert deadpans.

“You, my friend,” Ferdinand says, drunk and feeling electric just from talking to Hubert, “are much funnier than you look.” He’s surprised to hear Hubert laugh along with him. “No bodies are going on my dining table.”

“Then we leave it where it is,” Hubert concludes.

This time it’s Ferdinand’s turn to peak over his shoulder in the following silence.

“It just seems a little...disrespectful, does it not?” Ferdinand goes to take another sip of wine, only to discover the emptiness of his glass. He goes to fill it again. “When I was helping you carry it… well, it is less stiff than I was anticipating. Must we really leave it on the floor?”

Ferdinand is expecting another quick response from Hubert like usual. When one doesn’t come, he looks to the other man and is surprised to meet Hubert’s gaze head-on.

The look on Hubert’s face is… meaningful, is the first word that comes to mind. Affectionate, maybe. Empathetic. Ferdinand doesn’t know what to make of it, but a small smile follows.

“Yes. We can move it, sure.” He takes another look around the room, craning his neck, and Ferdinand’s eyes register how long his neck is before his brain does. “Shall we put it on the couch then?”

Hefting the body on the couch is more difficult than it looks. It probably doesn’t help that Ferdinand is reluctant to do it in the first place, but, of all the surfaces in his house, the leather upholstery will recover the easiest. Between Hubert and him, the lifting of the body is easy—Ferdinand’s years of through calisthenics paying off, no doubt—but getting it to stay is the tricky part. As the loveseat doesn’t have any arms, it keeps slumping over to one side, threatening to fall over. The shroud falls from its face a few times, but only after they’ve propped it up with all of Ferdinand’s nice sitting pillows, does he cover the face once again, assured it won’t fall over anymore. After a day or two of natural decomposition without any dressing, bodies barely look like people anymore, Ferdinand notes.

But then, the body is sat squarely on the couch, and while a little morbid, it does look much better that way than abandoned on the floor. More human.

Ferdinand decides, with all of his noble intellectual, uh, intelligence, that he is going to require more wine after that.

Seeing Hubert von Vestra in his apartment sorting through his liquor cabinet is stranger than seeing a dead body in it, though. Ferdinand has poured himself another glass of wine, and slowly nurses it, leaning against his kitchen counter while Hubert takes out bottles, inspects the labels, then places each back and continues his search.

“When were you planning on dissecting it?” Ferdinand asks, trying to sound as casual as he can. Just a typical conversation for Hubert von Vestra. Dead bodies and dissections, wine and whiskey.

“I had wanted to do it tonight, but I doubt either of our hands will be steady enough for the scalpel.”

“It is approaching midnight. I don’t think performing a necropsy on my imported Almyran towels while drunk is the best late-night activity.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

Somehow, even that felt too soon. A real body. He hadn’t even volunteered to be one of the students to sit on the stage of the theater to watch Professor Essar perform before. And soon, tomorrow, with his own student’s tools… Goddess, if he had his way, he would save a few days to read over his notes and prepare.

And yet, despite any trepidations, he nods in agreement. “Tomorrow.” He raises a glass, sort of a mock toast, before remembering that Hubert hasn’t picked his poison yet. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“Something that doesn’t look like it costs half a commoner’s paycheck.”

Oh, well then. “I do not partake in most of that myself, really, have anything you want. You should drink the Ancestral Pure Malt if you’d like.” If Hubert knew anything, he’d know that was the most expensive thing in the whole cabinet. “The only reason it’s there is to placate my father if he decides to surprise me with a visit.”

Hubert doesn’t even take the bottle from the cabinet. “It would be a waste on me, I can assure you.”

“Quite the opposite, actually,” Ferdinand mumbles out.

Hubert responds, even though Ferdinand wasn’t expecting him to. “What does that mean?”

“Huh?—I mean, pardon me?”

Hubert looks at him, and Ferdinand finds himself shying away from that gaze like a blushing maiden. He can’t be that drunk, can he? “What does that mean, ‘quite the opposite?’”

“Oh, um.” Ferdinand looks into his wine glass, gives it a few swirls to look at the dregs. “Just that I cannot imagine any of my wine or liquor being a waste on you.”

Hubert hums, and oh, that’s a sound he’s never heard from him before. Ferdinand decides he likes it. Hubert takes down a bottle—mid-high quality—and opens the top to pour himself a finger in a scavenged glass tumbler.

Ferdinand takes a breath, forces his attention away from the movement of Hubert’s hands. They both wore gloves in class, a sign of proper nobility, but in the privacy of Ferdinand’s home, Hubert’s hands are bare. “I actually cannot imagine anyone I would rather have drink my top-shelf than you.”

“Well, then,” Hubert says, and when Ferdinand looks up to him, he sees he’s smiling. Then, as only a drunkard can, he takes a large sip, too large a sip for that quality of whiskey, drains the glass, and refills it. He smiles again at Ferdinand’s shock. “I will happily empty your cabinets, then.”

Ferdinand has only ever seen noble men delicately sniff and sip and high-quality wine and liquor. The sight of Hubert treating it so brashly is shocking, refreshing, and somehow, goddess help him, alluring.

Whatever he has, he has it bad.

“And the coffee shop?”

This time, it’s Hubert’s turn to say, “what?”

Ferdinand leans against the counter once again, not even noticing when he had gravitated more in Hubert’s direction. “The coffee shop. We had arrangements to go together, um, tomorrow.”

“Ah. The salon.”

“You forgot.” Drunk as he is, Ferdinand can’t tell what tone that came out in. Did he sound too aggressive? Upset? Disappointed? He tries to come up with something to say, to save the impolite blunder, but Hubert speaks before he can.

“I hadn’t. To be quite honest, I thought you were going to cancel again.”

“Again? I have not canceled that much.”

“It’s been a few times now.”

“Well, the one time, we both had to cancel.”

“You’re afraid, Ferdinand. Of what I’m not certain yet, though I have a few educated guesses.”

“I am not afraid,” Ferdinand states outright. He speaks quicker than he can think. “What is there to be afraid of? It’s just coffee. I do not like it much, but I would not say I have a phobia.”

“You know there’s more there than coffee.”

“I can handle a little political conversation, Hubert. Anyway, I am excited to go. I am looking forward to it, even!” He sets his glass down, because suddenly his legs feel a bit wobblier than they did before.

“Do you want to sit back down?”

“Please.”

They sit at the dining table this time, close enough to the fire that Hubert doesn’t need to blow on his fingers to warm them up. The fact that he gets cold easily is strangely endearing to Ferdinand.

“How do you propose we get rid of the body?” Ferdinand’s glass isn’t quite empty yet, but he left the bottle of wine in the kitchen, which is probably for the best. Yes, that should stay there for now. He looks only at the glass in front of him, admiring the shine of the crystal in the firelight.

“That is the question, isn’t it?”

“Please tell me you have thought of a way and I am not going to spend the next few days carrying cut up body parts to different trashcans around the city.”

“As ingeniously stereotypical as that sounds, no. I do have a plan.”

“Would you care to illuminate me?”

“Maybe. It may be more entertaining to leave you in the dark, though.”

“Well, that is very reassuring.” Ferdinand’s eyes skitter around the room. He has half a mind to go get himself a cigar, but it is a bit too late for that, isn’t it? A snack would also be good. Oh, there was that shipment from the bakery, and those little small cakes would taste brilliant right now… No. Back on track, he was in the middle of a conversation.

He looks back at Hubert, who is looking at him, bemused.

“How do you even know how to get rid of a body, Hubert?”

“Practice.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Ferdinand says, noticing his speech slipping only as the words come out.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re a sinister villain from an opera. I know full well you are nowhere near that spooky.” Ferdinand’s speech is as messy as his eyesight, flickering back and forth between Hubert and the rest of the room, and his own half-empty glass. Goddess, he was drunk. He hasn’t been this drunk since his going-t0-university dinner.

“So you can talk normally.”

“Do not mention it.”

“I like it,” Hubert says, his voice gentler than it has any right to be. “Using contractions and words like ‘spooky’ like the rest of us.”

“I can’t imagine you using the word ‘spooky.’”

“You’re more imaginative than that, I know it.”

Ferdinand rolls his eyes, his face already too red from wine to blush. He notices Hubert getting red too, though whether it’s from cold, drink, or something else, Ferdinand has no idea. There is something freeing about getting to use casual words in conversation. Something he’d never do around anyone who he’d met through his father. Or another noble for that matter. But Hubert was a noble, wasn’t he? He closes his eyes, tries to imagine Hubert saying the word spooky.

“You’re drunk,” Hubert finally says.

Ferdinand won’t put up much of a fuss. “I’m drunk.”

“It’s not a bad look on you.”

Ferdinand breathes in. Hubert von Vestra was a dangerous man to be around, and not just because he knew how to dispose of a body. “When you say things like that, I’d almost think you’re drunk too. I really would think it if you didn’t look so,” Ferdinand waves his hand, trying to come up with a word, but the effort is lost on him.

“I’m just much better at hiding it. Practice.”

“Is that what you all do at the salons? Drink?” In Ferdinand’s heart, he feels like that sentence should be longer, but he can’t get his brain to muster up anything smarter-sounding.

“Sometimes,” Hubert says. He traces the tips of his fingers around the edge of the tumbler while he talks. “Sometimes we smoke things that would make your father scorn us. Mostly we talk about the goings-on in Fodlan, in the world. About where we stand with Brigid, about the crown prince of Faerghus, about the suspicious identity of the new Reigan upstart. About other political organizations, that work in the dark, that even your father might not know about.”

Ferdinand’s eyes stay on Hubert’s fingers on the edge of the glass. He’s talked to people about politics his whole life. He knows his father will try to get him into government, probably wants him to be Prime Minister too someday. But the political talk Hubert promises, the sort about things he specifically shouldn’t be talking about, based not on official reports or history books, but rumors, he doesn’t know what to make of it. And yet, looking at Hubert mulling it over like it’s nothing, like it’s what he talks about all the time, it makes the whole business seem more attractive. And Ferdinand does want to know. He knows after the Insurrection, that there was something going on, or maybe many somethings, he didn’t know about. He tries to imagine Hubert in his favorite salon, drinking or smoking something unmentionable, in a nice fitting suit, talking about politics with some other handsome young men...

He puts his hand on his temple. Focus. “I only ask about the disposal of the body, as I was so looking forward to going to the coffee house with you. I won’t hide my apprehensions about it, but. I do want to go.”

“And here I thought you didn’t like coffee.”

“I do not.” Ferdinand’s hand comes up to his hair, sweeping it over one shoulder. It was cold in the room, and yet, he finds himself hot under the weight of it. “I am more amenable to it whilst in good company, though. I may even enjoy it.”

Hubert nods and finishes his glass. How many was that now? “I think you will enjoy it far more than you think you will. And a good culture shock every so often is healthy, isn’t it?”

Ferdinand wants to ask how Hubert knows that, what sort of culture shocks he’s gone through in his life, but his tongue doesn’t seem to work in his mouth.

“Maybe it is bedtime,” Ferdinand says, finally. He doesn’t even notice how heavy his eyes are until he says it, and then. Yes, obviously. It’s far past his bedtime. He is exhausted, isn’t he?

“Maybe it is.”

Ferdinand stands up carefully like he could topple over at any moment, which is fair because currently he really could. “This sounds splendid. Tomorrow, we will dissect the body, I can get some rags and bleach from my landlady so I don’t ruin my towels. And then, um, we will go your disposal scheme, which, if that goes wrong, I can’t imagine it’ll be too bad. The constable will mean nothing up against my father. And then, the coffee shop, together.” He nods his head, as if making the plans with himself, and clasps his hands behind his back. Hubert stands as well. “That sounds perfect. Now, I must go to bed.”

And with that, Ferdinand about faces and turns to his bedroom. His legs feel sluggish as he walks, and only when he’s gotten through the doorway does he notice Hubert right there behind him.

“Where are you going?” He finally gets out after struggling with his words for a bit, turning to face Hubert.

“To bed, obviously.”

“To my bed?” Ferdinand asks, incredulous.

There are a few moments, and then Hubert gets redder than he was before. Oh, that definitely wasn’t just because it was cold. Ferdinand registers that Hubert doesn’t really know what he’s doing, either.

Hubert tries to recover, albeit clumsily. “Yes? I mean, do you really expect me to walk all the way home now in this state, in the cold, only to return tomorrow morning? I don’t have the pocket change for a lantern carrier.”

Well, that was right, making him go home at this hour would just make a bad host of Ferdinand.

“And so you think to sleep in my bed?”

Seeing Hubert in his bedroom is stranger than seeing him in the kitchen, stranger even than seeing him with a corpse in the doorway. All of Ferdinand’s sheets are whites and reds, and the black of his clothing and hair stands out even in the dim candlelight.

“Where else is there to sleep?” Hubert responds, which means, yes. Goddess.

“The couch, obviously,” Ferdinand retorts, feeling smart even through his drunkenness.

Hubert actually laughs aloud. It’s not as sinister as his usual laughs are, though, and is, in the kindest way, a little ugly. Ferdinand wants to hear more of it. “In case you’ve forgotten, Ferdinand, the couch is taken at the moment.”

“Oh.” Yes.

Of course. The body.

Ferdinand remembers. He didn’t forget that there was a dead body currently slumped over on his couch. A body that was the whole reason for this night-visit anyway. He lets his drunkness power through the embarrassment. “You’re not sleeping in those dirty clothes, at least.”

“Ferdinand von Aegir,” Hubert says, and Goddess does it sound much worse when someone else says his name, “are you telling me to strip?”

“No, no, oh my—no!” He turns away, just at the very idea of Hubert stripping for him, face surely crimson. He marches over to his drawers. “Just take a nightgown.”

He procures nightgowns for both of them and turns squarely in the other direction while he changes. The room is silent except for the noise of buckles and fabric falling.

“Are you decent?” he asks, waiting for an affirmative before he turns around, and oh. That is Hubert wearing his nightgown. It’s much too short on him, leaving a bit too much leg exposed, but also a bit too loose, the dip of the collar off-center as it tries to settle correctly on his body. This was the strangest dream Ferdinand has had in a while. He should not drink with dinner anymore.

They both settle into bed somewhat silently. It’s good that Ferdinand sleeps with multiple pillows, as one or two are easily spared for Hubert. He blows out the two candles on his side table, unable to locate his candle snuffer, and Hubert blows out the one near the bedroom window, and then they’re both plummeted into darkness.

Luckily, Ferdinand is drunk enough that the sound of the blood in his own ears is louder than Hubert’s breathing. Yet his bed is small enough that he can feel the dip in weight on the other side of the bed. He closes his eyes. He is tired. Giddy with alcohol, but tired. Just go to sleep.

Of course, sleep doesn’t come to him, so within a minute, he’s opening his mouth again. What if he kicks during the night? Or forgets that Hubert’s there, and—touches him accidentally or something? What if he snores, or passes wind, or accidentally wakes up early?

“I have not shared a bed with another person in many years,” he says. “I’m not sure if I remember how.”

“I have,” Hubert says. His voice feels so loud in the darkness of the room. “With my younger sister, sometimes. She’s afraid of the dark.”

The words linger in the dark for a while. A younger sister. He supposes it makes sense. Lots of nobles have more than one child. But the idea of Hubert having a family, a younger sister, especially, that he cares for. A little girl sneaking into his bed at night, afraid of the dark, coming to Hubert of all people for comfort. It was absurd. It was adorable.

“Remind me how you do it?”

Hubert laughs before he even says whatever witty thing is about to come out of his mouth. “The first step is falling asleep.”

There it is. “Very funny.”

“Don’t worry,” Hubert says, his voice gentle again. Is this the voice he uses with his younger sister, afraid of the dark? “I’ll wake you up and tell you if you do something wrong.”

“Oh, Goddess, no that’s even worse. Just let me sleep through it and never mention the indiscretion to me again if it comes to that.”

“I can do that,” Hubert must have turned his head, not speaking to the ceiling anymore, but to Ferdinand directly, almost in his ear.

“No, no, do not, just—” he begins, before Hubert cuts him off.

“Good night, Ferdinand,” he says, his voice so close still. “We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”

And that’s that. They did have a big day ahead of them tomorrow. A day they would need rest for. A real body, not a diagram on a handout. A real coffee house, not political lessons from the tutor his father hired. A real person, a peer, a friend, a crush, not just a strange character from class.

“Good night, Hubert,” he says, finally, though he’s sure Hubert is asleep by now. Hopefully, he is, or else he might be able to hear Ferdinand’s heart beating in the silence of the winter snow.