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DMCL Week 2024 - Cold and Warmth
Dimitri truly does despises the heat.
He's never really done well with it, even when he was first allowed into the saunas that are built in some places in Faerghus. The heat simply makes his blood feel sluggish, his stomach churning, and that feeling always goes straight up to his skull. It's only stumbling straight out into the snow to lay right in it that makes him feel something approximating a human once more.
And then there's the sweat. It isn't that he's unfamiliar with it of course. In the heat of battle, it's normal for a person to sweat. The more vicious the battle, the more you sweat. However, Dimitri would argue that it's different. In battle, the heat only lasts for as long as you are fighting. Once you stop, once you let the air settle all around you, then that is it. The only place that traps it is the armor one wears. The air all around is often at least a little bit cooler, and that offers some relief.
So Almyra is, needless to say, a bit of a problem in this regard.
Unfortunately, diplomacy is important, and Almyrans care about appearances too in their own way. He knows that he can't dare to show he can't handle it so he has to just deal whether he likes it or not. Dimitri reminds himself of that with every bead of sweat that drips down the back of his neck.
...But Claude - Khalid - is here as well. Which makes all the difference in more ways than one.
Gifts of new clothes, breathy and loose and still covering him, are left along his bed in the guest area that has been provided for him. Someone is given the work of simply following him about, always at the ready with a bowl of surprisingly juicy fruit which wipe away every trace of dryness in his throat. Their trips through the city are carefully planned so that shade is always within easy reach if they are not in it already. Of course the heat still a constant, always bearing down on his skin to leave him feel as though he is to be made jerky... but in many other respects, he has been spoiled.
And he is spoiled all the moreso when Khalid secrets him away after all the official formalities and there are no other eyes on him, takes him to his own private area of the palace where a small pool is available for his pleasure. Night in Almyra can be brutally cold sometimes, depending on the season, but the early evening is still warm yet. Perfect for the boiling blood beneath his skin, and Dimitri slips into the water with a sigh.
Khalid doesn't join him. Not immediately. He just sits on the edge, with that pleased little grin of his. When Dimitri goes to join him, crossed arms along the edge besides him.. Claude dips his hand into the water, and then into Dimitri's hair. Chilled and clever and comforting.
Love is the kiss of his fingertips tracing along Dimitri's eyelid.
Claude haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates the cold.
That's it. That's his grand thesis statement. He hates the cold, it's bad, he's not wholly sure why snow was ever allowed to be made honestly besides, like... Okay, fine, the snowball fight stuff is pretty great, up until you get nailed with one yourself, and then you remember it's bad. Like the Goddess intended, or however that goes.
So, you know. Of course he goes and falls for the crown prince of a northern kingdom who, when gaining control of the entire lil' continent, doesn't even have the good graces to make the capital somewhere a little more in the middle.
He doesn't think he's asking a lot there. (He's asking a huge amount, he knows people nearly threw hands over the decision of the Capital - mainly Felix, of course, going after the then head of the Gloucester family, which may or may not be why Lorenz got an early status bump in his family.) Unfortunately, his prayers go unanswered, and so, woe is him, he's left to fend for himself when diplomacy calls him up to Fodlan's capital.
Only, that's a lie... isn't it? And it was always going to be a lie.
Because Dimitri is there.
Dimitri, who ensures that his carriage is well insulated, and pulled only by the stockiest and most prepared of Faerghan horses - the kind of horses that were meant to bulldoze through snow no matter how high it built up on the roads. Dimitri, who welcomes him officially with an honorary feast that's deep in the castle away from cold winds and with a massive fire tended to which chases away the numbness from his fingertip. Mages and magic are still precarious commodities as ever, even post-war, but there's a magic fireplace in his room that's guaranteed to always keep his room a certain warmth.
At some point - and he does not know how, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd has a more silver tongue than some may think - he is convinced to go out on a ride with him. On those big stocky horses which can't be stopped by a blizzard, even. Khalid thinks they might be part goat.
But more importantly, he thinks on the thick and gorgeous fur cloak that Dimitri gifts him. Enough he could probably hide in it to weather out a storm. It must have taken a lot to make it - effort, material, money, all of it. Dimitri gifts it to him without hesitation.
Love is in the way his hands settle it there against his shoulders with all the weight of a promise.
He's never really done well with it, even when he was first allowed into the saunas that are built in some places in Faerghus. The heat simply makes his blood feel sluggish, his stomach churning, and that feeling always goes straight up to his skull. It's only stumbling straight out into the snow to lay right in it that makes him feel something approximating a human once more.
And then there's the sweat. It isn't that he's unfamiliar with it of course. In the heat of battle, it's normal for a person to sweat. The more vicious the battle, the more you sweat. However, Dimitri would argue that it's different. In battle, the heat only lasts for as long as you are fighting. Once you stop, once you let the air settle all around you, then that is it. The only place that traps it is the armor one wears. The air all around is often at least a little bit cooler, and that offers some relief.
So Almyra is, needless to say, a bit of a problem in this regard.
Unfortunately, diplomacy is important, and Almyrans care about appearances too in their own way. He knows that he can't dare to show he can't handle it so he has to just deal whether he likes it or not. Dimitri reminds himself of that with every bead of sweat that drips down the back of his neck.
...But Claude - Khalid - is here as well. Which makes all the difference in more ways than one.
Gifts of new clothes, breathy and loose and still covering him, are left along his bed in the guest area that has been provided for him. Someone is given the work of simply following him about, always at the ready with a bowl of surprisingly juicy fruit which wipe away every trace of dryness in his throat. Their trips through the city are carefully planned so that shade is always within easy reach if they are not in it already. Of course the heat still a constant, always bearing down on his skin to leave him feel as though he is to be made jerky... but in many other respects, he has been spoiled.
And he is spoiled all the moreso when Khalid secrets him away after all the official formalities and there are no other eyes on him, takes him to his own private area of the palace where a small pool is available for his pleasure. Night in Almyra can be brutally cold sometimes, depending on the season, but the early evening is still warm yet. Perfect for the boiling blood beneath his skin, and Dimitri slips into the water with a sigh.
Khalid doesn't join him. Not immediately. He just sits on the edge, with that pleased little grin of his. When Dimitri goes to join him, crossed arms along the edge besides him.. Claude dips his hand into the water, and then into Dimitri's hair. Chilled and clever and comforting.
Love is the kiss of his fingertips tracing along Dimitri's eyelid.
Claude haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates the cold.
That's it. That's his grand thesis statement. He hates the cold, it's bad, he's not wholly sure why snow was ever allowed to be made honestly besides, like... Okay, fine, the snowball fight stuff is pretty great, up until you get nailed with one yourself, and then you remember it's bad. Like the Goddess intended, or however that goes.
So, you know. Of course he goes and falls for the crown prince of a northern kingdom who, when gaining control of the entire lil' continent, doesn't even have the good graces to make the capital somewhere a little more in the middle.
He doesn't think he's asking a lot there. (He's asking a huge amount, he knows people nearly threw hands over the decision of the Capital - mainly Felix, of course, going after the then head of the Gloucester family, which may or may not be why Lorenz got an early status bump in his family.) Unfortunately, his prayers go unanswered, and so, woe is him, he's left to fend for himself when diplomacy calls him up to Fodlan's capital.
Only, that's a lie... isn't it? And it was always going to be a lie.
Because Dimitri is there.
Dimitri, who ensures that his carriage is well insulated, and pulled only by the stockiest and most prepared of Faerghan horses - the kind of horses that were meant to bulldoze through snow no matter how high it built up on the roads. Dimitri, who welcomes him officially with an honorary feast that's deep in the castle away from cold winds and with a massive fire tended to which chases away the numbness from his fingertip. Mages and magic are still precarious commodities as ever, even post-war, but there's a magic fireplace in his room that's guaranteed to always keep his room a certain warmth.
At some point - and he does not know how, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd has a more silver tongue than some may think - he is convinced to go out on a ride with him. On those big stocky horses which can't be stopped by a blizzard, even. Khalid thinks they might be part goat.
But more importantly, he thinks on the thick and gorgeous fur cloak that Dimitri gifts him. Enough he could probably hide in it to weather out a storm. It must have taken a lot to make it - effort, material, money, all of it. Dimitri gifts it to him without hesitation.
Love is in the way his hands settle it there against his shoulders with all the weight of a promise.