Chapter Text
“Gods-damned - rutting - fuck!”
Aravis was sadly out of invectives that were up to the task for Cor’s latest stupidity. When words failed her, she seized the nearest bit of gear and flung it at a poor innocent wagon parked in a dark corner of the barn. It made a satisfying clang but did little else to convey the breadth and depth of this new fault. She had only just got here! How could he already be so awful?
“Aravis,” began Hwin meekly.
“He deserves it and worse!” Aravis picked up a riding crop and thwacked it against a sturdy barn post. Of course she would never use it on Hwin. She wasn’t a monster. Not like Cor! (Was his transgression on the level of hitting a Talking Horse? Almost, in her opinion.)
“I know, but he loves you- ”
“It doesn’t matter, I don’t care, I don’t care!”
A new voice made them both look up, startled.
“Let me guess. My courteous brother?”
Letting out her held breath, Aravis gave the crop another thwack. Of all the people in this place, she probably was the least guarded around Corin, not counting his feckless twin. It was safe to rage around him. Not the least because he did the same around her. “Are you guessing, or did you already hear?”
“I haven’t heard a thing. Other than, of course, you two have had a quarrel. But that is not news at all.”
Well then. Corin usually heard the gossip on its very first round of circulation. Was it possible that their small audience hadn’t spread the news?
She turned to face him, fury written all over her features. “It’s bad this time. Worse than usual.”
“I’ll believe it when I hear it.”
He was daring her. She glared back. “I don’t want it to leave this barn.”
Corin placed a hand over his heart, mock-reeling back. “You wound me.”
“Oh don’t play coy!” But she was snorting like laughter in spite of herself. It took the faintest edge off the cliff that was her anger. She knew Corin delighted in anything new at court, anything to bring a little livening to the daily monotony, and his excitement at learning his brother’s latest misdeed danced in his mischievous eyes. And yet, for all his love of all things new and newsworthy, he knew more than one of her deepest secrets, shared under Narnian stars during midnight astronomy lessons lying side by side on mountain balds, and she had never heard them bandied about Anvard.
“I wouldn’t dare.” He sidled up to Hwin’s stall and drew a flask from the inside pocket of his surcoat. The Horse’s nostrils flared and she thrust her nose against his shoulder. “I only play very serious with great Ladies. Which is why I only bring the finest of the summer beer.”
“Sir Prince,” Hwin said with a stamp, “now you are just teasing and you know how that upsets Aravis. You had best give it here, and now.”
Aravis nodded, looking arch. “It is very upsetting when you tease.” She lightly tapped her crop against the palm of her other hand for emphasis. Corin matched her brow raise with two of his own, wide-eyed. “Beer for Hwin first, then I will take some if there is any left.”
She didn’t adore beer the way Hwin did, but any alcohol would do right now. And it was sweet, the way Corin remembered how much Hwin loved her rare treat of liquid hops. Aravis even smiled, rage or no rage, to see how politely he poured the flask like a little waterfall into Hwin’s upturned open mouth, until she had drunk her fill and licked her lips with a great pink tongue.
And when he came to her in turn and lifted the flask as if to pour it for her just like he had for her Horse, Aravis gave another little snort but turned her face up too. Corin was perhaps an inch shorter than Cor, she thought, incongruously, as she let her tongue catch the wheaty drops, which meant that he was still taller than her now, but his hair was curlier, and a darker shade of blond—more like honey, or the wheat stalks after the harvest. She wondered if that was his mother’s hair.
When she had swallowed and licked her lips, she found that his eyes were fixed upon her face. He looked sun-dazed.
Oh. Aravis didn’t know what to do with that. So she nodded and took a little step back, bringing herself into storyteller mode with a straightening of her back and a setting of her shoulders. “Now I am ready to tell my sad tale in the deepest of confidences.”
Blinking, Corin gave himself a slight shake and folded his arms. “I’m ready.”
She supposed she needed to provide the context for this to be a proper story. Even if it was slightly embarrassing. The formality of a narrator could give it a bit more gravitas, perhaps? “Given your relationship, Cor has perhaps already told you that I indulged with him in…certain unexpected liberties right before my journey to Marna?”
“If you’re talking about the kiss,” said Corin bluntly, “then yes. Are there more liberties that he didn’t tell me about?”
“It was just a kiss when we parted!” She wasn’t going to go into detail about how nice the kiss had been, or how unexpectedly competent Cor turned out to be at kissing, especially with a little encouragement. It didn’t surprise her that he would kiss and tell with his thick-as-thieves twin. I will have to tell him not to reveal all our secrets should we continue further, was her first thought, and then the bubble of anger gave rise to the second: Not that I will ever give him the opportunity! Ass!
“I see,” Corin said, waggling his brows at her. “And on the way home?” He hadn’t missed the discreet phrasing of her answer, damn it.
“Mind your business!” She swatted away his distraction attempts and regrouped for her story. “We corresponded often while I stayed with the Wise Women, and as much as I delighted in my time amid their village, I found myself missing Cor very dearly. And so when he told me that he was coming himself to escort me home aboard the Zephyr, my heart was full of joy. We would have so many days together, nearly all to ourselves, other than the crew.”
“And I’m sure you used them well,” Corin observed with a playful leer.
“Corin. I am a Lady. I would never do anything improper.” Lies, all lies. “Besides, we were not courting - we are not courting - and so this journey home was simply to get to know each other better as potential lovers.”
“Uh-oh,” said Corin, grinning. “I think I know where he went wrong. But go on.”
“I am sure you do. I missed the part where he asked me to be his sweetheart. I come back, expecting to simply pick up where we left off, only to find that everybody assumes we are practically betrothed!”
She snorted, and Hwin huffed in indignant solidarity, while Aravis rubbed her side and thought daggers at her erstwhile lover.
“And you and he did not talk about a courtship before you left, or in your letters?”
“We did not,” Aravis said. “He said nothing of the sort. That was all right with me, with the kiss being so sudden and impulsive, and I don’t know truly how I feel about him as a potential suitor and not just as a boy to kiss, and when you might become a Princess out of the matter, courting becomes a great deal more serious.”
“I understand. There is no such thing as a little dabble when people know you might be their future Queen.” He sounded unexpectedly serious himself, even sympathetic. It was a side to Corin that Aravis did not get to see much except when they were alone. It was as if he felt he had a reputation for mischief to live up to, and this quietly thoughtful side did not fit with the image he wanted to maintain for the general public. But in fact, she thought Corin could very much understand the weight that fell upon the Crown Prince’s shoulders when it came to every decision, much less one as consequential as one’s consort. He had had to carry that weight as a small child and youth, until Cor was discovered. Was humor Corin’s way of coping with it for all those years? “
“Precisely.” She could have hugged him. “And this is why I was perfectly fine with taking our time to be apart and then reunite and spend some time exploring the potential of the new situation between us.”
Just like that, the veil of seriousness fell away - or the veil of humor fell back into place - and Corin grinned. “Exploring the po– OW!” He rubbed his arm where she had actually hit him with the crop. “Not fair! I’m unarmed!”
“I don’t care. Impertinent boy. As I was saying… I was content to wait for any discussion about our current status. It seemed the wisest plan to me, even. Cor, on the other hand, did not seem to have any plans at all to discuss that with me! He just assumed I was his sweetheart now that we were on kissing terms, decided my fate for me, and he had the gall, the utter balls, to say so in public during my absence! When I couldn’t even set the record straight!”
She raised her crop as if to whack something again with it, like Cor’s balls, and Corin took a reflexive step back, sensing the threat. “Appalling, absolutely appalling,” he agreed.
“It was. It is. And now I have to explain to your father why I am in fact not his son’s sweetheart and probably cause an international ruckus if not an outright war, and all because Cor was too thick-headed to talk to me!”
She was getting tired of swatting the air—she needed to actually hit something—and as she looked around for a suitably satisfying target, crop hovering in the air, she heard the Prince clear his throat from a safe distance away.
“Would you,” said Corin, “like to learn how to box?”
Boxing was a skill Aravis had never particularly considered learning. It was all right to watch the boys at it—and she usually didn’t mind that, especially as they got older and their limbs grew hard with muscle and the layers of clothes came off—but neither Calormene nor Archen ladies were encouraged to take up the sport. This was something she had bemoaned to Hwin, who thought that it was probably different in Narnia and that she was sure ladies there could do just as they pleased, including learning to box.
But the point was, Aravis had never been specifically forbidden it here, and so what was the harm?
She repeated this question to herself as Corin stepped closer and took her hand, shaking his head. “No, not like that. The thumb goes there, see?” Impatient with her inability to copy his precise fist shape from visual modeling alone, he arranged her thumb in a tight shape that felt completely unnatural to her. His fingers were warm around hers, warm and calloused, and the sensation distracted her from the thread of irritation that would have otherwise coiled up out of the pit of her already stirred-up rage-vipers. Instead, she felt a thread of something no less hot but far less identifiable.
She grumbled and stared at her fist. “It feels strange. I still want to tuck my thumb in.”
“NEVER do that!” Corin looked horrified. “That’s the surest way to break your hand at the first punch. This is the way you do it. Trust me.”
“You’re the best boxer I know, so I’ll trust you.”
“That’s only because you haven’t met my boxing master. All right, let’s move on to stance. Drat your skirts. Can you…” He gestured to her to lift her hem a bit, and Aravis did not feel shy at all about showing him her booted feet, while feeling very shy indeed about staring at his legs and trying to emulate his stance without being distracted by the muscled shapes visible even through the fabric of his trousers. A little thicker than Cor’s, she judged, from all the training he did while Cor had to endure a more well-rounded education of pastimes and sports, in addition to all the courtly and academic studies, both of which were somewhat more rigorous for the future King.
“Not great,” said Corin honestly, “but it’ll do. Now the knees…”
As he worked his way up with form instruction in almost agonizing detail (light heels, loose knees, strong buttocks - yes please - agile hips, it seemed to never end), she became more and more tense, which was exactly the opposite of what he was telling her to do—“You have GOT to relax, Aravis. You need to be loose to box!”—but she just couldn’t help it. Whatever her body was doing to her right now was out of her control. Taut and quivering like a bowstring pulled to draw, alternating between flashes of frightening heat and sudden chill, nerves and blood all on the knife’s edge of something she knew was not frustration, or not the kind of frustration she’d had before this.
“Can’t you just get to the punching part?” she finally snapped.
He gave a sigh but didn’t seem offended. “Fine. But you won’t be able to do anything in that fancy court dress. Your feet alone…”
Without another word, Aravis went over to the door of the stable wing and latched it from inside. Then, returning, she reached for the laces of her bodice. Thank goodness the fashionable restrictive boning was built into the outer gown, as was the current style, while underneath she could wear her everyday stays over her chemise. The effect with low-necked dresses was alarmingly ample, which today’s was not, and her chemise was thin but covered enough.
Still, Corin looked startled by her sudden disrobing. “Er—I meant—”
She shed the top half, dropping the corseted bodice with a happy groan, and started in on the skirt. “I wouldn’t be able to throw a punch in that thing anyways.”
“Quite right.” Was Corin…blushing? His cheeks were not tanned enough to hide the spots of red appearing on them. “I think there are some, ah, breeches in the closet…”
“No need.” With the last of the buttons, Aravis pulled away the heavy embroidered outer skirt to reveal the split riding skirt that functioned as the under skirt of all her court dresses, so that she could go riding at a moment’s notice. Lucy had helped her design them, and thanks to the Pevensies’ influence, they were no longer scandalous to ride in throughout the more populous parts of Archenland. Pockets of the more traditional and rural provinces, far from the progressive court, still looked askance at it, but their judgments didn’t trouble her.
She examined the billowy swirl of fabric around her ankles. No, still too much of a tripping hazard. Her fingers worked the buttons of the riding skirt, and it dropped with a soft swish at her feet. She stepped out of them, clad from the waist down only in the thin fitted breeches she’d grown so used to during her journey North that she’d adopted them as part of her standard undergarments.
It gave her a strange pleasure to watch Corin take her all in with his eyes, which were wide with surprise, approval, and not a little admiration, she thought.
Aravis gave a single-shouldered shrug. “I brought my own.”
How fortunate for her, for the breeches fit like a glove as an overly-warm Corin guided her through the actual motion of the throwing of a punch, standing far too close, half-beside her, half-behind her, even turning her hips with his hands to guide her through the needed momentum when observation alone did not suffice. Though her heart threatened to beat straight out of her chest, her body melted into the pooling heat of his hands and the power they suggested. Boxing, it turned out, was power: building, driving, releasing. The creation of it, the expenditure of it. With sweat beading down her forehead and trickling down her back, Aravis felt a sense of exultation shout in her veins at wielding so much of this new power in her very hands, without any weapon or even gloves needed.
“I never knew,” she panted, at the next break, “why you liked this so much. But I think… I understand now.” She spread her fingers wide, wiggled them, releasing tension, before practicing her boxing fist again.
When she met his eyes, there was a dance in his gaze that she had never noticed before. A living quality. This was where he felt alive too.
He reached out and discreetly tucked her thumb into place against her knuckles. “This is just a taste.”
Inadvertently, her eyes fell to his lips. The urge to taste them was unbearable. Her heart pounded in her ears as she gave into the instinct to reach out, pull him close, put her hands on his face, put her mouth on his mouth. He went still for only a moment, before drinking her in with parted lips. She could taste the salt of sweat, the sunlit warmth of his soft mouth, and the wicked flicker of his tongue. She wanted to bite his bottom lip, so full and pouty and -
So like Cor’s.
She broke away at the very moment that Corin pushed away too. They both stared, wordless, panting, realizing.
“Let’s call that an accident,” said Corin, with pupils blown so wide his grey eyes looked almost black. “You have unfinished business, Aravis.”
And just like that, their boxing session was over. She watched him walk away, doing the right thing, and a part of her loved him for it, and a part of her wished they need not be so honorable.