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“I am glad it was you.”
The words fall into the peaceful quiet between them and become tension. Damen’s hand, which has been tracing the shape of Laurent’s collarbone, stills above his heart.
“Auguste was never going to live. I understand this, now.”
Their eyes meet, and for once since he stopped punishing them both, Laurent is not prompted to smile.
He has given words to it now, to this one last piece of knowledge. It settled into his bones as his uncle’s head was cut from his body, as his own sword found Kastor’s chest, then his throat. “My uncle did not hesitate to kill my father, but there were two of us left still between him and the crown.”
Damen drops a small kiss onto the top of Laurent’s head, and Laurent knows this is not a new thought to his lover. There is uneasiness, still, in being in his arms. He knows they will both spend a lifetime chasing away shadows. Still, his words are not a lie. “I would rather have him die at your honest sword than my uncle’s betrayal.”
Damen breathes out, a warm current of air that gently ruffles Laurent’s hair.
“Still,” he says, his first words since exhaling ecstasy onto Laurent’s shoulder blades, “you might have been-…”
…older.
Laurent extricates himself from Damen’s embrace, feels his arms release him willingly. It does not need to be spoken. It is the first time it has been spoken between them. He settles on his side a small distance away facing his lover, and Damen echoes him.
There is light in the room, but it is little more than a far-removed candle, still flickering after the rest of them have burned down. Outside, the moon is new, an empty space in the sky. Damen’s eyes are quiet and deep in the dark. Laurent half wants to run his own fingertip over his cheek, press into the soft remains of a sweet dimple presently not used to full effect.
“You haven’t asked,” Laurent says and finds his voice calmer than his heartbeat, stuttering away inside of him even in the quiet, in the peace. So unsure within the unyielding certainty of the love of a good man.
He watches Damen’s chest expand, a calming silhouette despite its mass. He lays his hand on top of proud muscle, and Damen exhales again underneath his palm.
“I did not feel it was my place,” he finally responds. Beneath Laurent’s fingertips, Damen’s heartbeat is steady and slow, and Laurent wants to dismiss the topic, dismiss conversation altogether and let himself be lulled into its gentle rhythm.
Instead, he allows one more truth into the warm Akielon night between them. “I could have spared you much, had I told you myself.”
Damen gently takes up Laurent’s hand, and presses a soft kiss to it.
“You were walking to humiliation and death, in trade of a child’s safety. In trade of mine, in the end. I would feel shamed if you apologized.”
Laurent looks at him for a long time.
“I wasn’t going to,” he says at last. Then, in a different tone, “I did not wish for you to know.”
The tension comes without prompting, claiming all of Laurent’s muscles at once. It is unusual, still, to be raw in front of anyone.
Damen’s eyes remain on his, and he does not speak until Laurent has willed the rigor from his limbs.
“I know,” Damen finally says, in deliberate ambiguity.
“You do,” Laurent affirms. He permits himself the slightest wrinkle to his forehead. “You don’t touch me differently.”
And Damen does touch him then, a single large palm settling over Laurent’s heart. “I trust you to tell me to stop or to change my approach,” he says, and Laurent thinks of the first time they were together like this. Unequal still, by name and title. Damianos of Akielos inferior in status and not behaving as such. Laurent of Vere inferior in every other way and not treated as such.
Damen called him the truest man he knew, once. Laurent would like to echo the sentiment, because it reverberates inside his body until he is thrumming with the knowledge.
“I love you,” Laurent says instead. “Not because of this.” Then, deciding, “Yes, because of this. You’ve never behaved to me as to one broken. Even now, you don’t look down on me.” And with a quirk of his mouth, “Except when we’re standing, and this can’t be helped.”
Damen kisses him, then, a simple, devastating motion that bridges any remaining distance between them. Words follow, of course, spoken into Laurent’s hair, against his lips, against his fingertips. Privately quiet and genuine and utterly unneeded, because Damen did not make a secret of his feelings even when everything including Laurent would have commanded him otherwise.
And the point stands. Laurent has known two men as true as this, and they can never meet as friends for as long as there is a moon for one of them to witness in the sky. And there are no apologies to make it right, no grief enough, not for either of them.
But there is a different kind of knowledge, deep and measured and without parallel.
“I am glad it was you,” Laurent echoes once more.