Chapter Text
There are very few things in this world that manage to catch Wriothesley off guard.
He prides himself on this, quietly, in the way that he prides himself on most things — without fanfare, without announcement, simply as a fact of his existence that he has come to rely on. Running the Fortress of Meropide has a way of sharpening a person's instincts. You learn, fairly quickly, to read a room before you've fully stepped into it. To notice the shape of trouble before it announces itself.
And yet.
"Your Grace."
Neuvillette's voice carries even in the relative quiet of Wriothesley's office, which is perhaps unfair, given that it is a voice built for courtrooms and verdicts and the kind of pronouncements that echo. It has no business being quite so arresting in a space this small.
Wriothesley looks up from his paperwork. "Monsieur Neuvillette." He sets his pen down, leaning back in his chair with the easy unhurriedness of a man who has learned that projecting calm is half the battle. "This is unexpected. I don't recall anything on the schedule today."
"No," Neuvillette agrees, folding his hands before him in that particular way of his — composed, deliberate, as though even his gestures are considered in advance. "There is not. I apologize for the intrusion. I found myself with…a matter I wished to discuss, and I'm afraid it is not one that lends itself well to formal correspondence."
Wriothesley's curiosity, already present, sharpens considerably.
In his experience, things that don't lend themselves to formal correspondence tend to be either very bad or very interesting. He gestures to the chair across from him. "Sit down, then. I'll have someone bring tea."
"Please, allow me." Neuvillette says it simply, without ceremony, already moving toward the side table where the tea things are kept. Wriothesley watches him with a mild sort of bewilderment as the Iudex of Fontaine — the highest legal authority in the nation, a man before whom entire courtrooms hold their breath — locates the kettle with the quiet efficiency of someone who has done this before, or has at least observed it closely enough to manage.
He doesn't comment on it.
He is, however, paying attention.
Neuvillette brings the tea to the desk and sets a cup before Wriothesley with a careful precision — two sugars, no more, placed without being asked. Then he settles into the chair across from him with that characteristic stillness of his, the kind that doesn't read as stiffness but rather as a person who has simply never felt the need to fidget.
Wriothesley picks up his tea. "So," he says. "What's on your mind, Monsieur?"
Neuvillette's gaze is level, as it always is, though there is something in it tonight that Wriothesley can't quite categorize. Not discomfort, exactly. Something more like the careful look of a man who has rehearsed what he means to say and is deciding, in real time, whether to say it the way he planned.
"I find myself in need of advice," Neuvillette begins.
"I gathered as much."
A pause. Outside, rain taps lightly against the window — Fontaine's skies in one of their gentler moods. Wriothesley has lived here long enough to find it soothing rather than dreary.
"It pertains," Neuvillette continues, unhurried, "to a personal matter."
"Alright."
"Specifically—" and here, for just a moment, something almost imperceptible shifts in Neuvillette's expression. Not quite sheepishness. Not quite hesitation. Something that looks, remarkably, like a man bracing himself. "—to courtship."
The word lands in the room like a stone dropped into still water.
Wriothesley sets his teacup down. Picks it back up. Sets it down again.
"Courtship," he repeats.
"Yes."
"You're asking me for courtship advice."
"I am."
He looks at Neuvillette. Neuvillette looks back at him, perfectly composed, as though he has not just said something that Wriothesley's brain is currently attempting and failing to properly process. Of all the things he'd mentally catalogued as possible reasons for an unscheduled visit from the Chief Justice of Fontaine — a legal issue, a security concern, news from the surface — this had not made the list.
Not even close to the list.
"Well," Wriothesley says finally, and he is pleased to note that his voice comes out entirely even. "I won't pretend I saw that coming."
"I thought you might not." Is that amusement in Neuvillette's voice? Subtle enough that he almost misses it. "I apologize if it is an uncomfortable subject."
"No, no — I'm not uncomfortable, just—" he makes a vague gesture with one hand, "—recalibrating." He leans forward, folding his arms on the desk, and fixes Neuvillette with a look of genuine interest. "There's someone, then. You've found someone you're interested in."
Neuvillette is quiet for a moment. Then, softly, "Yes. I have."
He says it the way a person might say something they've been turning over privately for a long time — not with embarrassment, but with the careful steadiness of someone handling something they consider precious.
Wriothesley finds, unexpectedly, that something in his chest does a strange little thing at that.
He ignores it.
"I'll be upfront with you," he says, settling into the familiar ground of honesty, which has always served him better than anything else. "I'm not exactly a seasoned expert on the subject. Never really done the whole courtship song and dance myself."
Neuvillette blinks. It is a slow, considering blink, the kind that on anyone else might pass for ordinary but on him reads as genuine surprise. "Is that so."
"Afraid so. With my charm and good looks, you'd think someone would've come knocking by now, but—" he shrugs, mouth curving, "—the Fortress tends to put people off."
"I find that difficult to believe," Neuvillette says, with the earnest certainty of someone stating a well-documented fact. "That no one has come knocking, as you say."
Wriothesley opens his mouth. Closes it. Picks up his tea.
"Thank you, Monsieur," he says, very diplomatically, into his cup.
"I am merely being accurate."
"Right." He clears his throat. "Anyway. I know the theory, if not the practice. And I'm happy to help however I can — though I'll admit, you might get better mileage out of someone like Clorinde. She has a reputation for being all business, but I have it on good authority that she's a hopeless romantic underneath all that."
Neuvillette considers this with the gravity of a man being presented with evidence in court. Then, after a measured pause.He adds,
"I appreciate the suggestion. However, I suspect her perspective may not be the most…applicable, in this case."
Wriothesley tilts his head. "How so?"
"Because," Neuvillette says, with the same quiet evenness he might use to deliver a verdict, "the person I find myself drawn to is a man."
Oh.
Wriothesley processes that.
Then he processes it again.
Something shifts in him — subtle, like the turning of a tide, not yet fully legible to him but present all the same. He is aware, in the span of a breath, that his interest in this conversation has gone from genuine to something considerably more invested, though he'd be hard pressed to explain exactly why that is.
He doesn't examine it too closely.
"Well," he says instead, and is proud of how unbothered he sounds, "that does make me the more practical choice. Alright then, Monsieur. I'll do my best."
The faintest suggestion of a smile crosses Neuvillette's face. "I had hoped you would say that."
"Tell me about him, then," Wriothesley says, settling back into his chair with a comfort that is only partially performed.
Something in Neuvillette's expression settles, like a held breath slowly released. "He is," he begins, and pauses, as though the shape of the words requires more care than most, "not an easy person to know. I think he would be the first to tell you so himself, and probably with some detrimental amusement." A beat. "But I find that I am not deterred by that. If anything, I find it—" another pause, "—compelling."
Wriothesley considers this. A guarded man, from the sound of it. The kind who's had to build his walls from the inside out. He knows the type rather intimately, as it happens.
He ignores, with great professionalism, the small and entirely irrational flicker of something unnameable that passes through him at the description.
Not his business. Not relevant.
"Someone who doesn't let people in easily," he says, nodding slowly. "That does change the approach."
"How so?"
"Well—" he leans back, thinking it through properly, the way he would any problem worth solving, "—someone like that, you can't go in swinging with the grand gestures. Flowers and declarations and all that. It'll read wrong. Too much, too fast, from someone they haven't had the chance to take stock of yet." He taps the desk once, absently. "What works, with someone like that, is just showing up. Consistently. Without making a production of it. You're not trying to impress them — you're just making yourself…known. Safe, even. Letting them figure out that you're someone worth trusting at their own pace."
Neuvillette listens in that way of his — utterly still, utterly focused, the way he probably listens to testimony. Like every word is being weighed.
"Presence," he says, after a moment. "Rather than performance."
"Exactly." Wriothesley points at him. "Presence over performance. That's the whole thing, right there."
Neuvillette nods slowly, and there is something in his expression — quietly thoughtful, almost warm — that Wriothesley finds he doesn't have an easy name for.
"That," Neuvillette says, "is very helpful. Thank you, Wriothesley."
It's the use of his name, without title, that does it — the small and probably unintentional intimacy of it. Wriothesley covers the resulting pause by draining the rest of his tea with an air of great calm.
"Anytime, Monsieur," he says easily. "Whoever he is — he's got good taste, at least. In the person pursuing him."
He means it as a light thing, a throwaway compliment to round out the conversation.
But Neuvillette looks at him for just a moment longer than necessary, something unreadable and soft in his ancient eyes, before he inclines his head and says, simply.
"Yes. I like to think so."
Wriothesley sees him out, returns to his desk in the study, and spends the next ten minutes staring at a document he is absolutely not reading.
He is not thinking about anything in particular.
He is certainly not thinking about who, exactly, Neuvillette might have meant.
Or why, for some completely inexplicable reason, the description of a guarded man who doesn't let people in easily had felt, for just a moment, uncomfortably familiar.