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“Where have you been this time?” Tom the Thug snapped as Lionheart paced slowly up to their Bloodstone house.
The building had two floors, but the furniture was worn and the stink of the city crept into everything. Tom loved it here. Lionheart hated it.
He didn't answer his husband--he never did--but his silence was different this time, quiet and long suffering. Head down and Nobleman's Hat pulled low over his eyes, with the collar of the accompanying coat flipped up, he trudged past Tom. Lionheart walked straight up the stairs to their bedroom. Away from the voices of the whores in the streets, away from the propositions, and away from people clamoring for his attention. He looked away from the children's beds that stood empty as they always would.
“Dear, what's wrong?” Tom asked roughly, coming up the stairs behind him.
Lionheart shook his head and tugged roughly at the embroidered cuffs of his coat. He kept his back to Tom as he shrugged the heavy, offending garment off and threw it unceremoniously onto the worn bed.
Tom watched him throw the matching hat down as well. The silence in the room was thick. And then Tom heard Lionheart make a strangled noise and saw with shock that his shoulders were shaking.
“Dear, what's wrong?” He asked again, voice rising in shock. Lionheart had only been gone for a few days at most while running around Bloodstone and the nearby Wraithmarsh at Reaver’s behest, or so rumor said and rumors in Bloodstone were disconcertingly accurate for a cess pool of thieves and crime.
Lionheart turned slowly to face Tom. His hands were covering his face and his broad shoulders continued to shake.
“Dear?” In a rare show of concern Tom took Lionheart's hands in his own and lowered then from his husband's face. Tom froze in shock and horror and stared into the face he had seen just a few days before, the face of his husband but hideously changed.
His eyes flashed red, the wrinkles that lined his face looked impossible deep, the scars that ran beneath them seemed to worsen them, and the Will markings crackled across his skin from excessive magic use. Lionheart was no older than thirty, but he looked as though he had aged no less than thirty years.
Tom dropped Lionheart's hands and the Hero froze. Fear--an emotion Tom had never seen on Lionheart's face, even when he has battled his way through the Crucible. Tom gingerly cupped Lionheart's face in one hand and took one of Lionheart's hands in the other. He could feel his husband shaking. He was afraid even though he had never appeared to be so in Tom’s eyes before.
Tom leaned up and kissed him as gently as a thug could kiss. He pulled back and said gruffly, “Stop it. I waited for you ten years when you were in the Spire. I'm not going to leave you just because you look an old man.”
With a cry of relief, Lionheart crumpled and buried his face in Tom's shoulder. He held onto his husband like a lifeline as he positively howled. His stringy greying hair fell out of the ponytail Lionheart wore it in.
Uncomfortably, Tom patted his shoulder said decisively, “We'll go to Bowerstone and you can get it cut and dyed. Can't have the great Lionheart aging badly.”
With a weak chuckle, Lionheart stepped back and gave Tom a half-hearted thumbs-up.
“You better work on that,” he admonished Lionheart and swatted him as he walked over to the bed. There was at least one round of less-than-spry dancing before Tom could convince Lionheart to come to bed “for a little fun.”
“You're a dancing loon,” Tom chuckled as Lionheart dropped into sleep.
Tom remained awake for a while yet, watching his husband sleep. He was deeply age and changed from when they had been married ten years before, just after the Crucible, but that happened to Heroes, didn't it? The world treated them horribly unfairly and then threw them to the wayside.
“I'm not going anywhere,” Tom muttered fiercely to himself. Back in Oakfield Lionheart had found him many a time yelling and swearing at their neighbors. He would do so again. He would protect Lionheart now like he had before; when the Oakfield villagers had accused him off running of with someone else. He had waited ten years for Lionheart in Oakfield, he could handle these new and frightening changes. After all, he was a thug and thugs weren't afraid of anything.