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"You come here, instead of the war room?" The 'even now' hung unsaid in the air between them. Leandros kept his head bowed in prayer as familiar steps came to a stop behind him at the base of the chapel stairs. The modulator of his helm’s external vox hid the rasp he could feel in his throat as he looked up to the framed scrolls and prayers displayed across the sanctuary’s wall. "Poor form, Lieutenant, however did you make Captain?"
“Improperly filed paperwork, My Lord. The true bane of any Chapter.” Titus replied without missing a single beat. “And,” his voice went strangely soft, “the debriefing is not set to start for another thirteen standard minutes.”
They both knew that it would only take eight of those minutes to get across the ship to their destination, even with the halls crowded as they were with the wind-up of quick redeployment.
Five minutes.
Leandros didn’t bother to hide the faux despairing shake of his helm even as a wave of pure relief swept over him so entirely that only his armour kept him upright.
‘Even now,’ Leandros could almost hear how Titus would say it.
It was an old pattern between them. A trading of jabs built over years, grown familiar from their early days of bitterness smoothed out into familiar grooves, edges that rubbed instead of caught and cut. As familiar as the smell of prayer wax and gun oil, but so recently strained beyond any point it had previously bridged between them.
‘Perhaps,’ the thought had whispered in his mind, gossamer thin for how bitter it tasted, ‘maybe even beyond repair.’
“Then speak, Lieutenant. Tell me what brings your still-smoking hide to these halls.”
In theory; duty sent the both of them out to the field for days, sometimes even weeks, at a time with no contact between them. When they were on campaign together however, they were above and beyond a reliable unit. Neither of their prides would have suffered to be anything but, even decades ago when resentment had still run strong between them. Success rates with both of them in the field climbed a consistent 16.8%.
In practice; since the day Lieutenant Titus had been dropped back into his hands, no matter where they were in the galaxy, he always seemed to be by the Chaplain’s side. In the chapel itself, kneeling and pious and ever in Leandros’ sight as he fortified the spirits of their brothers. As quietly eager as any neophyte and just as under foot as he tended to the candles and the braziers late into the night when Leandros finally took time for himself to pray. In the halls running scrolls and reports and anything else that the Chaplain could reasonably, and sometimes even not so reasonably, push into his brother’s arms to force him out the chapel doors and into the ship beyond to give himself a moment’s peace from the man’s very presence.
Calm and steady, an immovable stillness in the eye of Leandros’ storming fury.
It had nearly driven the Chaplain to paranoid apoplexy in the beginning, that constant nearness.
No matter what Leandros did, no matter what he said, no matter to who or to where the Chaplain sent Lieutenant Titus, he always returned to settle back into his usual well-worn place at the bottom of the chapel steps, turned just enough to keep the entirety of the room in his sights. It wasn't until their seventh mission together that Leandros had resigned himself to the reality of the Lieutenant’s intent to remain close at hand for the foreseeable future, to keep to what so many of the company serfs had come to titterginly call his 'customary place.'
That was where the rumours had started, he was sure.
Leandros wasn’t blind, no matter what their brothers whispered when they thought he couldn’t hear. From the outside, he too could see what they thought they did. The blatant, almost indecently so at times, attempts to keep Leandros’ attention, to make himself personally useful to the Chaplain. Lieutenant Titus carried out Acts of the Mind on the daily, as openly as he carried the chaplain’s missives across the ship. None could argue the Acts of the Body that ran between them on the battlefield, fighting the Emperor's enemies back to back, power and heat and the roar of battle pressed into the Chaplain’s side, pushed down and kept down in cover against a sniper by the Lieutenant’s own body.
It was all very romantic, if you asked their brothers, though he also knew from their whispers that there was a divide amongst their watchers. Some thought their Act of the Soul already complete, the final of the courting trifecta already sworn between them in private intimacy. Most of them thought the Chaplain simply stringing the Lieutenant along.
A cruel prude, stringing poor, beloved Titus along on vague promises and maybes. He cared not for their judgement, he told himself, they were simply creating practicals from flawed theoreticals.
Leandros knew differently, he'd told himself. It was all platonic at best and, at worst, unintentional. It was just the sort of man that Demetrian Titus was, the Chaplain had grimaced, carefully staring at the spot just to the left of the Chapter Master when the conversation had been dragged out of him in the man’s private office. Chief Librarian Tigurius, the only other in the room, had at least had the decency to look away.
He knew Titus was not serious because Leandros had tried. In the beginning, after an arguably healthy amount of horror, confusion and then grudging curiosity, he'd decided he would not discourage the Lieutenant in his quiet, clumsy courting. Would see where it went and let the man down gently, he’d earned that much from Leandros at the very least.
The fluttering in his gut at the thought had only been natural, a reaction to unknown parameters.
So he’d waited. And waited. Their routine carried on around them, each playing their respective parts, and never once did the Lieutenant push for more. Never declared Intent, never made even an attempt at an Act of the Soul. Throne take him; he didn’t even blink in Leandros’ direction when they shared countless showers with their brothers post-mission.
There was nothing there. It was just the sort of man Demetrian Titus was.
Leandros could feel his eyes on him now in the quiet that settled between them, knew the colour of blue they'd be, bright in the candlelight as he looked up at his back. Still, focused, intense. The Lieutenant had never been a patient man, he was a creature of action; he pressed the attack, he saw an opportunity and he took it, damn the plan, damn regulations, damn fear. It's what made him a good Astartes, in truth. It had served him even better amongst the Death Watch, Leandros was sure. A tendency to liberal interpretation of the Codex, of sanity, was one Titus had been prone to even when Leandros had still been his Lieutenant. Serving amongst their cousins had done little to curb that perpetual motion he seemed to carry with him. So sure of action, even when the practicals ran aground of the theoreticals.
How could a man like that court like this?
That had been all the truth Leandros had truly needed. He let his eyes fall closed, let the darkness of his helm envelop him completely as he counted down the seconds of silence between them in the chapel. Let the Lieutenant keep his silent vigils. Let him keep his helpful nature.
Let him keep it. Let him keep all of it far, far from Leandros’ aching hearts.
The silence stretched. Leandros could still smell the blood and ash on Titus’ armour. Battle-fresh and alive and there.
"Did you mean it?" The Lieutenant's voice was soft but thunder-loud in Leandros’ ears. "What you said to me when last we spoke."
The mission had needed to succeed, critical in a way that only a few moments in a campaign truly were. It had needed to succeed, but no matter how they’d planned and theorized the practicals had been the same, the numbers pulled right from screaming machines.
Projected Mortality: Absolute.
The risks had been calculated, the cost weighed, found acceptable, and so four Angels had gone to die.
Leandros had been the one to put Titus' name forward for the mission to Zsah'uj. He had been the one to sign off on the Lieutenant’s mental and spiritual capacity to attempt this calculated strike maneuver with any chance of success.
He had chosen to send Demetrian Titus to die.
The Chaplain had gone to the Lieutenant's private chambers to deliver the orders himself, helm in hand as he’d waited at the door. Had walked into the man’s space when it was opened to him and felt his mouth say the words, the parameters and objectives and statistics. Had stood there as Titus had simply nodded and moved to ready himself without a word of complaint or question, as if his life was just another scroll to deliver for the Chaplain. He'd paused when he realised Leandros had yet to move aside or back out into the hall to let him prepare. Titus’ head had tilted ever so slightly, clearly anticipating the instruction of secondary objectives or directives.
Instead, Leandros had waited too long, wrestling internally with what to say, if anything at all, and blue eyes had finally lifted from their polite lowering to meet his own grey. He’d watched as those eyes had met his, held, and dilated into heated halos of blue.
That-
Oh.
"Make it back alive,” he’d hissed instead, face flushing as his world rearranged with new practicals and theoreticals, “and I’ll allow you to make an actual attempt at an Act of Intent."
Then, they hadn't shared any more words. Leandros had simply stepped back out from the Lieutenant's chambers and marched away without waiting for a response.
Now, Leandros blink-clicked away the partial locks on his armor's joints that he'd imposed while kneeling, trying to control the remnants of a minute tremble that had started almost the moment they'd learned the mission had been a success. He looked up at the litanies and scrolls above the pulpit, allowing himself one long, slow drag of breath.
"Don't ask stupid questions. You know I don’t like to repeat myself."
Titus had managed to keep not only himself alive but brother Metaurus as well. He'd holed them up and held the enemy off until an evac squad had been able to get them to the somewhat safety of the skies and then back up into orbit. His previous experience had been critical to that success rate, that survival rate, as pitiful as it was.
There had been no one else on the whole campaign that would have been a better choice for the mission than Lieutenant Titus. Leandros had known it, so had the other members of the Chapter Master’s council. No matter their history together, no matter what had and had not been said between them.
Titus had been the only choice.
Titus had been Leandros’ only choice.
The chapel was silent as Leandros rose, turning to face the battered Lieutenant, unbothered to hide how the red lenses of his helm took in every new detail of damage scratched and scuffed across the blue of Titus' armour, the laureled helm dulled with dust and mag-locked to his hip, the blood of the Imperium's enemies that he dripped across the floor like a sacrament.
"Of course." It was quiet, almost awed in a way that made Leandros’ temper flare indignantly. He was not the one who’d spent the last three decades circling his objective so poorly it’d been received as a platonic meander rather than the Act of Intent it had been.
"Never shall any life be above my duty, Demetrian Titus.” Even from the bottom of the stairs, Leandros felt the weight of those eyes. “Not mine, not the Chapter Master’s, not yours. My honor is my life.” He spat, the servos in his gauntlets whining as he clenched them. “My duty is my fate." The words came out rough, sticking. A flush rushed over Leandros, under his armour. “This changes nothing.”
“I know.” Leandros cursed that mouth as Demetrian smiled ever so slightly and the old scar over his lip curled.
“I am a soldier." Titus said it quietly, and Leandros felt pure, cold shock as he realised what the other was doing, was saying. Gaze steady but heated, a weight to his words that Leandros had only ever heard from him so many years ago when he'd risen an Ultramarine once more. Looking up at the Chaplain, Titus wove vows of the Soul into a blatant Act of Intent, so completely and unexpectedly that it could only ever be done by Demetrian Titus as he spoke the traditional words and then made them his own. "I have no titles, nor riches to lay at your table. Our cleaving will win you no favour, no allies to your cause. All that I have to offer you, stands before you now." A pathetic offering by Macraggian standards, but for one who only ever had what his body could give him? To an Astartes?
“I am no great speaker and my musicality will bring no coin.” He said it solemnly, eyes calm, hands turned so the rough grip-plates of his gauntlets faced up and open. "I am no great poet, nor writer, though I shamed us both by courting you as one.” The Chaplain snorted.
"I do not have to prove myself to you, Leandros." Demetrian continued, low and so openly aching it made something inside Leandros squirm as he took a single step forward, eyes never leaving Leandros’ own. A single step onto the very first of the chapel stairs, a boundary between them never before crossed. Faintly, cultist blood continued to drip from his dirtied battleplate onto the grating below as he looked up at Leandros from the bottom step. “I do not have to,” he whispered, “but I want to.”
"My honor is my life." The Lieutenant’s head dipped piously, blue eyes looking up at him through dark lashes. The words burned through Leandros like a holy fire, every part of him focused entirely on the other. "My duty is my fate. My fear is to fail. My salvation is my reward. My craft is death. My pledge is eternal service." It felt like there was nothing else in the hall except those words; that solemn, doubled vow and eyes so very, very blue.
“That,” Leandros muttered, a slide of heat spreading through him even as his mind spun, “might actually be the most you’ve ever said at once.” The Lieutenant, bastard that he was, made no attempt to hide a sharp grin in return.
The silence that fell between them then was different from before, thick and anticipating, nervous and wanting. Delicate. Aching.
Slowly, quietly, as his theoreticals and practicals rearranged, Leandros nodded, stepping down a single stair. “I acknowledge your Intent.” A soft whirr of servos was the only tell that Titus had shifted his weight forward at all. “I take it as my own.” Demetrian took in a sharp breath, eyes wide, awed.
That moment held between them, new and familiar at the same time, but-
"Then we had best leave now, My Lord." Leandros blinked rapidly, caught off guard at the shift in tone even as the look of wonder in Demetrian’s eyes remained and softened into something the Chaplain had no words for. Boot still on the bottom step, armour purring as he allowed Leandros a clear path to the chapel doors behind him at the far end of the hall, the Lieutenant’s smile returned in full force. "After all, there are only seven minutes before the meeting is set to begin and we are still eight minutes out."
Leandros’ hand spasmed, momentarily ruing his Crozius in its distant armoury cradle and inability to be thrown at the Lieutenant’s head. He snarled, the moment broken and spitting like a boiling kettle, the Chaplain cursed his Intended’s bloodline back to its primordial foundation as he descended the stairs in three large steps. He swept past Demetrian out into the ship beyond the chapel, uncaring of those that had to throw themselves back to avoid his warpath. Behind him, radiating quiet satisfaction, the Lieutenant followed.
Somehow, they made it to the debrief on time with twenty-three seconds to spare.