Chapter Text
Leo prided himself on his knowledge. There was hardly a question that he couldn’t answer with perfect confidence, hardly a dilemma that he could not solve. Well, save one. However, that was in the past, and it had been resolved in the best way: a ring on his finger and a promise in his heart. But there were certain things Leo discovered about Corrin after they were married. Certain facts that he hadn’t known before, simply because their proximity wasn’t close enough to allow it.
One of those was the fact that she had an… irregular heartbeat.
“That’s far too fast to be healthy,” he murmured, his ear still pressed against her chest. He’d discovered the phenomenon when they’d laid down to go to bed, and his fingers had brushed against her neck. Instead of slow, even pulses, he’d felt rapid pushes against his fingertips. Not fast enough to concern him too much, but far faster than a normal human being.
Except Corrin was not a normal human being. She happened to be a dragon.
She chuckled a bit. “Well, now you know why the doctors fussed over me so much when we were little.”
As a child, Corrin had been ill frequently, enough to frighten all of the Nohrian siblings on occasion. He remembered visits spent in fear, sitting by her bedside as she struggled to eat, to speak, sometimes even to breathe. Fevers, colds, and diseases that they had all overcome in childhood plagued her, only exacerbated by her quarantine in a damp castle with limited resources and physicians. Those times were long past, however, and the woman who sat next to him in bed was one of the healthiest and strongest people he knew.
“I wasn’t sick all the time, you know,” she continued, leaning back against the headboard of the bed. “Sometimes, the servants just shoved me in bed when they felt my pulse or my temperature. Eventually, they got used to it. Felicia could always tell when I had an actual fever.” A small grin quirked her pink lips up. “She claimed that if she could brew tea on my forehead, I needed to stay in bed.”
He chuckled at that. Then, almost reflexively, his hand brushed against her forehead, and he caught her restraining a laugh as he checked her temperature. Sure enough, it was hotter than normal, not hot enough to burn his palm. But she was warm enough to make him pull back and check her cheeks to ensure they weren’t flushed from fever.
That was the other fact that he’d discovered: Corrin’s warmth.
It made sense, logically. Due to the faster heartbeat, she’d have a higher metabolism, which meant that her body would expel more heat. His medical studies and tutors had prepared him for those facts.
But they hadn’t prepared him for her warmth blanketing him, warmth that he secretly craved, especially on cold nights where strong winds blew through the Astral Plane. Her warmth meant that the blankets were thinner than he was accustomed to, and some nights they would only use the sheets to shelter themselves from the cold. Her warmth was a comfort, a reassurance that she was near, alive and safe.
It washed over him now, and he felt his muscles relax from their previous anxiety as she laid down in the sheets, her head resting on the pillow. “Well, Doctor Leo,” she teased. “What’s the diagnosis? Am I going to die in a fortnight?”
“You know that Elise was always the doctor when we played,” he reminded her. “And I was always the patient.”
She laughed, grinning as she remembered the many, many games of Doctor that Elise had conjured up when they were all younger. “She wanted to be a healer even then. And you always had the weirdest diseases like…” She pursed her lips. “Didn’t you have some sort of rare fever one time? One that makes people take all their clothes off?”
His face exploded red. “I don’t remember that.”
“No, I remember,” she said innocently, her crimson eyes narrowed as she nodded to herself. “Yeah, the patient gets all cold at first, but then the body gets confused and so they start taking all their clothes off because they think they’re warm.”
“That’s not a rare fever; that’s a possible symptom of hypothermia,” he corrected, his face still burning.
“Oh, right,” she murmured. Then, she stared up at him and laughed. “Speaking of fevers…”
He sighed, closing his eyes. “Must you be like this?”
“Yes,” she said sweetly, and he blinked as she lifted her head from off the pillow, pressing her lips to his forehead. They were warm, as always, and he exhaled slowly as she pulled away with a grin. “Well, your temperature feels perfectly normal. Maybe a little cold.”
“Anything would feel cold compared to you,” he pointed out. “It’s only by comparison.”
She pursed her lips. “True. But still…” And he gasped as she threw her arms around him, snuggling up to him with her head pressed against his chest. “It gives me a great excuse to cuddle.”
His cheeks were burning again. But slowly, he wrapped his arms around her, closing his eyes as she relaxed in his hold, her body settling against him perfectly.
“Warm enough yet?” she asked, looking up at him with a sparkle in those lovely crimson eyes.
He nodded mutely, watching as she grinned triumphantly.
And if he listened close, he could hear her heart beating rapidly against his. He smiled as her breathing started to slow, a small yawn escaping her mouth as she curled up slightly, cradled in his arms.
She wasn’t just warm. She had a warm heart.