Chapter Text
It was early summer, and Delfeur was already hot as a hearth. For the better half of the year, this was where Damen and Laurent spent their time, ruling their kingdoms from the center and debating with councilmen on the proper unison of their lands.
The air was scooping ladles of sweat into Laurent’s back, gluing his hair to his face in insulting stripes as he sat in a stiff posture, legs crossed on his chair in one of the smaller halls of the palace. After a three-hour long meeting about the reinforcement of Veretian borders, the council had finally adjourned, leaving him and Damen to continue their discussion in private.
He heaved a sigh of relief. Being forced to reiterate why it was beneficial not to build a fort on open meadows, as if the fact wasn’t self-explanatory enough, had drained his tongue dry. His council wasn’t foolish, but their only joy seemed to come from contesting Laurent’s every decision, making him feel like a child being quizzed on military strategy after his first lesson. In their eyes he was a spoiled prince who knew nothing but frolic and protest, untouched if not for his coital trysts with his enemy and his brother. So it was a blessing, now, that Laurent was allowed a moment free from the perpetual urge to defend himself.
The tragedy of being left to his thoughts, however, was that the idleness also allowed his mind to wander, today even more so. Laurent had grown more adept at keeping his private concerns from leaking into moments where his intelligence was required, but being with Damen alone meant Laurent couldn’t help reminisce on how he’d trampled on Damen’s attentions the night before.
They had lain together, soft hands parting veils of moonlight on skin. It had meant to be pleasant—and it was, until Laurent had hauled the word stop like a careless knife into the air, caught between a kiss to the neck and a shove at large shoulders. And of course Damen had obliged without hesitation—scrambled back without a demand for answers, offered his arms as a sieve for Laurent to soak through. They had shared an embrace on the covers until Laurent’s breathing had slowed.
This offended Laurent, who hadn’t meant to turn himself into a shield against enjoyment. But after the years spent gasping for air in a corset of isolation, it was overwhelming to unhook all his restraint at once—to welcome the hot, avalanching inhale of one man’s desire without growing sick with a fever. It was terrifying, sometimes—and if he sifted through his thoughts with enough diligence, he could still find the overwhelmed sliver within him that wanted to spit Damen’s offerings out with an insouciant invert of the throat.
But he didn’t want to. He thought of what could have been if he’d allowed Damen to continue his onslaught, even as Laurent shook him off like a dog shaking rain from its pelt. He didn’t think it would be wholly pleasant—it hadn’t been pleasant with his uncle, onto whom Laurent had clung with a masochistic ingenuity that compelled him to shut his eyes and believe in comfort. Only years later did he realize that it had been no genius—but a foolish delusion.
He thought he’d been done with delusion, but here he was, wanting to reconstruct his disgrace, as if humiliation was a prize he could learn to manufacture on his own terms. But if he had wanted it, why did he tell Damen to stop?
To aid his search for answers, Laurent considered possible courses of action. He considered asking Damen to slap the thoughts out of his body. Then he considered asking Damen to indulge him instead. He was unwittingly turning these over like a dice in his head in the middle of his own meeting hall when Damen’s voice rang beside him.
Laurent whipped his head around, studied the furrow in Damen’s brow—belatedly realizing that he must have been speaking for a while now, hands shifting animatedly across the maps of Vere and Akielos on the desk, pointing towards a chain of cities in quick succession. Laurent nodded absently, agitation frothing with each second.
Damen had stopped speaking at one point. Laurent hated to admit he hadn’t been paying attention. Had he been asked a question? “Repeat that.”
Damen frowned. “I said, did you have any input on constructing the new fort between northern Bayeux and Chambery? By the mountain range bordering Vask.”
Laurent bit his inner cheek. “Oh.” He blinked rapidly at the map before him and stared at the scant notes in the margins. He scrambled for an answer based on what he could discern about the relevant territory, hoping it sufficed.
Damen paused for a moment. He set down the pen he’d been gripping. “Should we continue this in the evening? You seem preoccupied.”
Laurent’s shoulders fell; he shouldn’t have attempted to sequester his ignominy by scrambling for plates of rationality to weave armour from, when he knew with full clarity they were no more than defenceless costumes when worn before Damen. But he’d rather innovate an excuse for his inattention than relinquish the truth, so he said, “You could simply tell me I am being nonsensical.”
Damen blinked. He studied Laurent through a tourmaline-bright gaze. “Is that the unique brand of self-concept you have taken on for today?”
Was he asking if Laurent woke up every morning to decide, with the meticulous care reserved for a choice between garments, the exact method in which he’d martyr his intelligence? “Don’t make it sound like I was searching for one of those on purpose,” he said.
“No, it searches for you,” Damen told him. Then, frowning: “If I had thought you were nonsensical, you’d know it unequivocally.”
Laurent ran a finger along the edge of the table, gathering dust. “Please. There’s no need to lie.”
“Why do you think I’d find pleasure in deceiving you?”
“Everyone does.”
“And so?”
Laurent sighed. Damen was not everyone; he was the most honest man Laurent had met. Laurent could ask him to confess to his most unforgivable of crimes, and Damen would comply, nothing less, nothing more. But he’d offer them with an impeccable conviction that was difficult not to admire, a disdain for self-flagellation that was impossible not to envy, and a confidence that carved into your skin before you could find yourself a beautiful cloak in which you could flirt cruelly with him.
Laurent might as well have told Damen he was not the king Laurent adored him for. But the act was up. The only thing he could do was persist on its stage.
“You know what my courtiers think. Deceiving me as if I were a child is awfully funny.”
Damen said, unhesitating, “Am I your courtier?”
Laurent chided himself for thinking he could tempt Damen into anger when the tactic had scarcely worked in the past. “I misspoke,” he said, hoping his expression conveyed more sincerity than his mouth did.
“When I said you seemed distracted,” Damen said, ever-patiently, “I was referring to the fact you are clenching your fists so tightly you could be crushing a bone inside them. Are you all right?”
Laurent bit his lip. “My head is perfectly intact. Unless you would like to invent new worries for me?”
“I think you do enough of that on your own.” Damen’s voice was gentle, but matter-of-fact. “Clearly something greater is bothering you today. Would you like to—”
Laurent interjected, “Why would I need to waste my scarce supply of breath attempting to narrate the illogical?”
“It is not wasting if there is—”
“There isn’t,” Laurent snapped. Panic tampered with the fragile candour he’d only freshly learned how to hang out for viewing; times like this, the grapple for familiarity was instinct.
“I haven’t finished.”
“I don’t think you need to.”
Damen said firmly, “It would be more productive if you could stop inventing your own endings to my sentences.”
“I don’t invent,” said Laurent, “I am only—predicting. Or would you like to tell me you weren’t about to suggest you could derive for me a solution?”
Damen’s silence was his answer.
“See,” Laurent said icily. “If I had told you I was distressed because every city in Vere had become victim to a month-long fire overnight, would you have found a way to resolve that?”
It was an imprudent rebuke. “First I’d discern the quickest method to extinguish the fire,” Damen said. “Evacuate all the men into places the fire wouldn’t reach, order the inhabitants of villages near forests to take shelter elsewhere, gather all those who are uninjured to redirect our aqueducts. But what use is there in considering unlikely hypotheticals?”
He had a solution for everything. Laurent could as well have told him he’d licked fatal poison from a knife and Damen would still find an unerring cure to revive him. “It wasn’t a question I wanted you to answer.”
Damen’s brows knitted together. “I can comprehend a rhetorical question. But if you are unwilling to address your true concerns at the moment, you could just tell me that.” He tugged at his hair. “There was no need to bring the matter out of proportion.”
“Fine,” Laurent said. “Then don’t pry.”
Damen’s face slammed shut, frustration leaking out at the seams. “I won’t. But you do understand that nothing you say to me could perturb my opinion of you.”
The irony of that stung. “You have no idea.” Laurent dug his nails into his palms. “I told you to shut up. This hall produces enough echoes as it is; it wouldn’t be very pleasant if I had to repeat myself twice.”
Damen flicked him a severe look, but returned to his missives on the table. With steady fingers, he sifted through the pile to retrieve a clean sheet of parchment and scribbled away. Too unnerved to feign insouciance, Laurent adhered his attention to Damen’s hand. He wrote like he spoke, firmly and with large, graceful strokes, like he owned the page simply by filling each sliver of space.
Laurent sighed. There was a comfort in knowing he could fall back on the route he’d repeatedly charted; even if it were laden with spikes. At least he’d know exactly where they’d sink into his body.
He supposed he should be grateful Damen still retired with him to their chambers that night. Laurent drew a bath and cleaned himself with medical precision, the punishing sting of the water granting him a reprieve from his nebulous senses. Then he padded back into the room, sat on the edge of the bed and cast a furtive glance at Damen. He was already washed, sun-drunk skin left bare to the cool air.
Damen had not yet tucked himself into the blankets for sleep as he normally would have. He sat on his side of the mattress, brown eyes curious, palms up in open invitation. Laurent peered at the indents of exhaustion sewn into his face. Damen had been forced to negotiate with men who displayed posthumous allegiance to his brother earlier in the day; before that, he’d been pestered by Laurent’s councillors for a gruelling week as they didn’t agree with his ideals for their pet contract reforms.
And here Laurent was, parading in his careless tresseses of childhood, like a solipsistic fool who’d complained to a stranger for hurting him in a dream. He could’ve just bathed in sunlight next to Damen’s pantheon of duty.
On the side of the room, someone had replaced the orchids in the jar on their shared desk.
Laurent’s throat clogged up. It was like Damen had built in his fingertips a map of Laurent’s prickly idiosyncrasies. He shelved their conversations away whenever Laurent lost governance of himself, but returned to them without flinching when Laurent was peaceful enough not to fortify every admission with an insult. He didn’t treat Laurent like a child begging for sympathy, nor did he lacquer his words in icing. But he always seemed happy to sift through the goading remarks in Laurent’s handloom of faux confidence—kept for himself every thread he found whimsical, and reformed those he believed to be lies.
Laurent didn’t want to misuse Damen’s virtues. It felt like he was infringing on something irreproachable, a glory that was gentle even when aware of its authority. Laurent would rather trample on his dignity than trample on that.
“Earlier,” he blurted, after a long moment of deliberation, settling in to sit on the covers next to Damen. “My predicament was not one you would have enjoyed fixing.”
Damen lifted his head, peered at Laurent with a waiting gaze.
“What I mean is.” Laurent shifted his hands on his lap. “You wouldn’t have liked what I have to say about it.”
“How would you know that,” Damen responded, “if I don’t even know what any of this is about?”
“Because—you don’t—”
Damen took Laurent’s hand in his own and rubbed soothing circles into his palm. That eased the shaking—made him realize he had been shaking. “Laurent.”
Laurent debated letting it go—he didn’t think he’d ever spent so much effort trying to be worth the trouble since he was sixteen—but Damen had turned that which used to be a chore into something compelling.
“When we lay together the other day,” he said, unsure how to breach the subject, “when I accidentally told you to stop, you stopped immediately.”
He looked away. His relief when Damen squeezed his hand was only short-lived, because Damen looked at him with bewilderment. “Why would I do otherwise?”
“Because—” Laurent winced. “Don’t tell me you haven’t at least thought about it.”
“No,” Damen said, as if reciting the most obvious law in the world.
Laurent tugged at the hem of his cotton nightclothes. “Let’s not lie to ourselves or deny that I can be very quick to induce resentment wherever it pleases me. Don’t you want to—”
“Does it?” Damen interjected. “Please you?”
“Yes,” Laurent said, sharp as paper. He swallowed thickly. “At least—yes until after the fact.”
But they both knew belated despair did not burn the skin enough to remove the gristle of displeasure.
Damen stiffened. “Where do you expect to lead me with this?”
“I am only asking.” Laurent’s shoulders tensed. He wondered why he was still pushing—as if augmenting his mistakes could provide him adequate punishment for introducing them. “If you would like to take me against my will, the way a lord might have chastised their pet.”
“No,” Damen repeated, sounding disturbed. “This was brought on by the events of the previous night, was it not? If I have discomfited you in some way, to make you believe I would share the intentions of your—”
His voice tapered off, like the question was so transgressive he couldn’t bear to finish it. It took a second for Laurent to realize he was the one who had slapped a hand over Damen’s mouth, breath coming short.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Knowing he was responsible for perturbing Damen’s self-belief made him feel lost, like he’d ruined the boots that had protected his bare feet from skewering themselves on sharp pebbles. He hadn’t meant to exude the impression that Damen was the problem—hadn’t even meant to contrive imaginary scenarios where Damen would deviate from integrity.
“No.” Shame blistered; it cost Laurent all his concentration to sheathe his glass-hands. “No. You are—fine.” More than fine. So incomprehensibly kind, at times, that I am afraid I will wake up from you, he thought, but that seemed too convoluted to say. He pinched his arm like a child checking for dreams. “I do not feel my safety is threatened by you. But.”
“But?”
Damen’s refusal to budge meant Laurent had to switch to a more vulnerable tactic. “Imagine,” he said, bracing for impact, “if I had asked you to fuck me as though I didn’t want you.”
“What?” Damen’s brow knitted together.
His hand tightened around Laurent’s wrist. Whether it was designed for comfort or penalty, Laurent wasn’t sure. “Can you pretend I am not contradicting myself for one moment and give me an answer?”
Damen frowned. “Can I give you an answer if you’re waltzing around every point you try to make?”
“Shut up.” Laurent inhaled sharply. He grit his teeth, and said in one breath, “A few days ago, when I halted you, I wondered what would have been if you had kept going.” He squeezed his eyes shut. The words rang familiar in his ears, incriminating him, and he felt as if he’d memorized them from somewhere distant, letting the eidolon of another man borrow his body and bleed through his mouth, a murder by proxy. “However you liked. Even as I protested.”
“You wanted that?” Damen’s tone was inscrutable. “Or is this another attempt at goading me? Are you trying to make me say something you could use as a weapon against us?”
“I—” Laurent glared up. This slow descent into rejection was worse than the harsh plunge he had been expecting. “It must mean something, at least, that I cannot stop thinking about it.”
Damen said, “That is hardly a valid criterion to measure your wishes against when you can’t stop thinking about anything.”
Laurent sighed. He revisited his thoughts, but they still lingered; he wanted this. The ill-witted part of him desired desperately to know where the nightmares terminated and where the fantasies began. Much of him was a gambling child who had yet to sanitize the instinct to cleave its belly open like a box to see where the playthings were. It was flattered by the thrill of impaling itself on toy knives it couldn’t fathom would hurt, and swelled with pride at the thought it could turn its mouth into an experimental puzzle.
“Well, I wanted it,” he said, biting down on each consonant like teeth detached from their gums, “And you aren't novel, if you believe I am sick for that—”
“Don’t use that word.”
“—but I don’t want you to stop unless I try to strangle myself in our own bed, or anything of a similar vein, which I won’t, because I’m not stupid, so you don’t need to inconvenience yourself with excessive concern—what?”
Damen stared at him. Laurent must be asking for too much. He felt selfish, flaying himself open like limpid fish hanging feebly from branches, forcing Damen to weather the landscape of his unsavoury desires. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes.
Then, Damen enunciated carefully, “What you are saying is that you want to be contrary when I make love to you.”
Laurent peeked out from behind his hands. His request was disconcerting to hear when it had been filtered by Damen’s mouth, distilled into clarity, and for a brief moment Laurent felt naked, as if he could finally see the ludicrosity of the offence he had asked for, unfurled for dissection. “If all you are endeavouring to do in this conversation is insult me—”
“I'm not.”
“It’s quite all right,” Laurent scoffed, “I know you find it very irritating when I say things I don’t mean.”
“I should schedule you for an ear cleaning with Paschal, considering I never said that.”
Petulantly: “But you were thinking about it.”
“I am not you,” said Damen, seriously. “I do not share your penchant for considering the unnecessary, nor do I find it fruitful.”
From anyone else, that should have sounded sardonic. But Damen seemed content to make exacting observations without derision, which was both a blade and a cure. “I—”
“What I do think,” Damen continued, “is that perhaps you believe it would be easier to allow yourself to want if you put up a fight beforehand. Because you think it is an offence to let go of yourself willingly. Is that right?”
Laurent went still.
Was that where this had stemmed from? Laurent’s deference to the idea that revealing his weaknesses meant they’d be militarized against him? Damen was too deft at seeing past his erratic mannerisms—at turning Laurent inside out, inverting his logic like laundry baked on a rack.
“Why ask?”
“Because I like to know the exact form of your pleasure,” said Damen. “And I like to watch you trade control for it.”
That was awfully searing. Laurent didn’t suppose Damen would grant him the secret to commanding with veracity. Undressing the truth meant unhooking your ribs and relinquishing your right to roam the board of the game; he didn’t know how Damen crowded space with admission instead of shrinking with it.
“I,” he said, momentarily losing coherence. He peeked out from behind his hands. “If you wanted to watch a show, you can find plenty of it among the Veretian courtiers.”
“Is it so scary to admit to yourself that I specifically said you?”
“Well—” Laurent started. “It doesn’t matter. Forget it. I shouldn’t have told you. I only thought—”
But he couldn’t take it back. An apology was condensing on his tongue, which his ego didn’t concur with, but Damen spoke before Laurent could humiliate himself further. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”
A long stretch of silence. “Don’t I?”
“No,” Damen said resolutely. He took Laurent’s hand. “I like that you told me.”
Laurent felt his ribs crumple. A throb of appreciation suffused him, one he didn’t know how to voice. Sharply: “But you are not… Is it so difficult to just tell the truth and say I should not be having thoughts that diminish you in disgraceful ways? You don’t need to—If you think I am—”
Damen pushed a strand of hair out of Laurent’s forehead. “I didn’t do anything to indicate that this would change what I think of you.”
“And you said I was the one completing your sentences.”
“Yes.” Effortlessly. Then, as if from underwater: “You said anything I like. Are there exceptions?”
It would have been easy if Laurent had been slapped instead. But he should have known—that even when he would rather sprint off the edge of reason than voice what he needed, Damen was always persistent enough to pursue him, as long as he knew Laurent could endure the hunt for answers. Then, instead of broiling whatever he caught for stew, he’d stoop to tend its wounds with his own genre of courtesy.
“Why aren’t you saying no?” said Laurent, shrilly. He didn’t want to think about the sudden tremor in his stomach. Didn’t want to get his twisted hopes up. “I thought you would consider this beneath you.”
Damen clamped a casual hand over Laurent’s mouth, making his breath wilt, and then released it. “Stop thinking.”
Indignation flared. “I am only saying that you don’t have to acquiesce only to appease me. In fact, you don’t have to do anything at all.”
“I am not one to simply do things to appease you,” Damen said. “If I were, I’d be dead.”
It was when Laurent knew he had lost. He sucked in a breath. “Then am I hearing that you want what I am offering you? That you aren’t as honourable as you paint yourself to be?”
For a frenetic moment, the shivering animal inside his unhooked ribcage was offended by what Damen’s willingness implied; it wondered if its desire to be crushed, and not spared, was what it cost to scrape the bottom of Damen’s deceptively unending pail of kindness. But the greater part of him—the part that trusted Damen to relish his vulnerabilities without exploiting them, as corroborated by history—felt guilty for granting the former any weight.
Damen appeared unfazed by his jab. “I asked for exceptions.”
“I didn’t mean—” Laurent’s skin was warm. “Not that I can conceive of,” before he could drive Damen’s question away. “Well. Don’t make me suck your cock when I’m—Or, if you want to, at least don’t pull my hair, or—”
“I wasn’t going to.” Damen’s voice was impermeable. “Don’t invent loopholes.”
For someone who had the charisma to make a man shiver like a leaf on reprimand, he was so gracious when it came to Laurent’s capricious dislikes. Few were willing to sculpt their power to fill the shape of the container that would willingly break for it; amenable to changing form but never once diminishing in size. Laurent looked away.
“You keep doing that. The unexpected.” That wasn’t the right word.
“Is that a complaint or a compliment?”
Laurent found the dichotomous choice somewhat comforting. “The latter.”
“Fine,” said Damen. “And when were you expecting this to take place?”
“What?”
“You are not likely to suggest something new without constructing at least three plans for it. Did you have a specific time in mind? Or any preferences?”
“I didn’t—” Damen thought Laurent had schemed. “Not for this.”
But the thought was now present: Laurent envisioned marking a date on their calendar, orchestrating every swell of the act, as if it were a performance. Then he wondered if it’d be easier if he were simply told what to do, or if the long-simmered anger in the backstage of his mind would violently object to the idea before his softer instincts were coaxed out to trade narratives with it. He wondered if Damen preferred silent tears, or the pride of hammering sawtooth sobs out of another man’s chest. If Damen would make Laurent feel like he was kneeling on salt only to melt like butter under his tongue afterward, as his uncle did, and—
“No,” he said again, abruptly terrified of how quickly his mind had begun to spin out in webs. “If I knew when it were—or what you did—the point is, if you give me too many avenues of choice, we would never get anywhere at all.”
“And so?”
“Letting me plan rather defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
“And how do you expect me to remedy that?”
“I think you know.” Laurent glared at him. “Are you going to make me say it?”
Damen brushed his knuckles across Laurent’s cheek. “I like it when you don’t inhibit yourself from the frankness that makes you as much as your genius does.”
“This is funny to you.”
“It isn’t.”
“I,” Laurent took a shuddering breath. “Fine. I’d—prefer it if you would deign to surprise me. And—” He debated the next sentence. “I saw,” he tried, “the way you treated your army. The way you treated my guard, even. How you made it look easy for them to be at your behest—”
Damen fixed him with a long, deliberative look. “You want me to speak to you like you were an insolent soldier?”
Laurent’s flush deepened. “Not in the literal sense. Just—the sentiment of it. I don’t mean I want you to start thinking me beneath you, or—”
“I think of you highly,” said Damen easily.
Laurent didn’t grant him a response. He shuffled into the blankets, helpless to the swell of effervescent warmth in his chest as he drifted off into sleep.
*
Damen didn’t grant Laurent a sign of adhering to his words for the next few days, treating him as he always did as if their conversation hadn’t transpired at all. Either he was truly committed to the pledge of surprise—or he’d been toying with Laurent.
Laurent didn't think it was fair to consider the latter, but he also hadn’t expected the indefinite anticipation to be so agonizing. He felt like an animal cleaving off its own paw and throwing it into a hearth, waiting to see if the fire would run out of coal to burn before it ran out of flesh. Which was, of course, ridiculous—but he couldn’t help the anxiety.
He appropriately gathered himself. He attended his duties with scrupulous care. Restructuring a court was gritty work, and he couldn’t afford to let his guard slip despite his unease. He was no longer the prince he was a year ago. He could not lose his temper as readily as he had done when it pertained to matters of the kingdom, unless he wanted to invite more criticism towards his juvenility. Some days, the reminder of how he’d lain Aimeric bare before his retinue—and torn them both asunder—still haunted him in dreams.
It didn’t mean that he wasn’t still sharp and precise. He couldn’t purge that from his veins, so he altered its form. There was a learned satisfaction in eviscerating someone calmly, deliberately, with diatribes proportional to the misdeed that had sought them. He used his cruelty as one would currency, leveraged the logical amount to appease his court and reserved the right to the rest for himself—and at times, with remorse, for Damen.
He extricated himself from that thought. This week, he carried on his sequence of discussions to drive the court towards a shift from his uncle’s old traditions, such as the immoderate use of the kingdom’s wealth to host daily banquets. The older nobilities had a penchant for holding large-scale revelries to celebrate mundane victories—as if shooting down a decent-sized eagle for morning leisure meant they would drop dead in a coffin if they didn’t also demand lavish platters of cheeses, exotic fruits native to Patras, carriages of wine sold at exorbitant prices.
This still occurred daily. Laurent couldn’t refrain from remembering a time when his uncle had demanded a palace-wide ball for capturing a deer of the most tender flesh. The court had believed him, revered him for displaying a beautiful flair for inventing snares, but Laurent knew his uncle hadn’t gone hunting, because all he had done was chain Laurent to the bed in their private chambers for the first time.
A month later, his uncle had served a feast to commemorate a new garment he’d sewn. That was after he’d emptied himself into Laurent thrice in one night.
So perhaps it was selfish for Laurent to prioritize the dismantling of this practice, but he deemed it necessary. At times he wondered if Auguste, had he been observing, would take pride in the pelt of the king Laurent had sewn himself into. If Auguste would still recognize the sweet, diffident boy who’d tugged at his sleeve and traced his footsteps. Maybe he’d despair to watch Laurent play artfully on the stage of a matured ruler when he, sometimes, still felt indebted to the shame on his diamondized membrane of childhood.
But thinking about Auguste meant Laurent’s mind would circle back towards Damen—and though it was without the resentment that used to accompany his wake, Laurent would, at this moment, prefer to remove himself from thoughts about Damen. He hated not knowing when Damen would act. He hated that he’d told Damen to do whatever he wished. He should regret that he’d spoken to Damen before hatching a plan—but the counter-option was just as daunting.
It was only a small mercy that Damen was preoccupied this week, regathering the remnants by his brother’s treachery. It meant Laurent had a chance to breathe between their private moments—which were still present, albeit subdued.
They made love twice in the usual fashion, shared dinner and dances, rode out to the meadows and wreathed each other in flowers. On one bright morning in the palace baths—as they tackled their way into the shallow waters—Laurent stumbled, losing his balance. For a thin moment, he thrashed inside Damen’s arms, clinging onto any ridge he could find for fear he’d collide into the bath’s marbled floor—only to find it was the back of a hand, and not Laurent’s skull, that shattered against the sleek snowy tiles.
Damen was smiling. Tendrils of hot steam rose around them, summer-sweet on their skins. Suddenly Laurent felt as if he would burst—as if he’d overflow into hollow flutes of his veins and splash out into song. As their lips connected for a tender kiss, Laurent clutched onto Damen’s arms, his back, his ridiculous charm—and, if nothing else, the bundle of feathers in his chest that made Laurent want, silently, to have full faith in him.
*
By the end of the week, Laurent must have recounted their conversation more times than the grains of salt he’d eaten in the past month. He debated whether he could have achieved the same effect without giving so much away, and was still conscious he had twisted himself into a frightening presence, despite Damen’s reassurance. His memory was near perfect, so why didn’t he think he could trust it?
He wondered if he should have told Damen at all.
Laurent was pacing in the hallway outside his chambers. Night had descended in the windows beyond; rolling hills and snaking streets and cold, plummeting mist. The buttercream clouds were scattered in wisps to decorate the ripening night, the hour hanging like a heavy fruit from his mind, a sprinkle of stars shining coquettishly against the tabletop of the sky. Laurent grasped for the last branches of reality to latch on, though breathing in the scenery did nothing to soothe the brimming frustration in his chest.
It was not a fruitful day. He’d spent it contending with nobles who found it funny to contradict even his most simple orders, and it was increasingly distasteful that a significant proportion of his court, combined with the Akielon advisors, still failed to regard him in full seriousness. The fabric on his skin felt at once constricting, clinging to his body and making it more palpable. Around him the amber lamps on the walls drenched the floor in a liquid haze, like puddles for his feet to buckle and slip on.
It must make for a humorous sight. There was a sickening poeticism to the seamless echo of it all—like if he glimpsed at his reflection in the window for one moment too long he’d find himself tugged into the figure of an adolescent in Arles, traipsing the halls with the caution of a hare in a hunting ground, knowing his own men spoke of him as a substitute prince who needed nothing more than a collar to tame him. The only difference between now and then was that he didn’t have to expect an immediate threat.
In theory.
He’d stopped before the farmost window for what must’ve been the hundredth time when a strong voice accosted him.
“Where are you going?”
Laurent pivoted on his feet, breath catching in his throat. Before him stood a figure fashioned from the sort of hubris described by myths, light streaming to meet the demanding angle of his jaw and the peremptory arch of his nose. His shoulders were selfishly wide, spanning much much of Laurent’s vision as if he owned it, as if he was born to take up space unrehearsed. He ate into every morsel of warmth around him, and the curls of his hair rested grievously like a trophy on his skull, exhilarating his height as if that wasn’t misfortunately greedy enough on its own.
Laurent couldn’t have forgotten how Damen’s countenance appeared when he was determined to infuse a man with respect. He saw the way Damen presented himself every day, sitting at his throne with his feet planted wide on the dais, one hand wrapped around the hilt of his claymore with pellucid ease, as if whoever breathed him into life had revered him so much they’d kissed every knuckle to sculpt him for that purpose.
Laurent couldn’t have forgotten. But it did feel like he was witnessing Damen’s full prowess for the first time, which didn’t seem sensical.
“The kitchens,” said Laurent, then appended, unconvincingly, “for water.”
It was a stupid response. Damen’s arms were crossed over the fabric of his chiton. “I could hear you retracing your steps in this corridor for an hour. Are you lost?”
He didn’t sound like his private self. Each consonant was calcified by gravitas, the way it was when he interrogated a traitor to coax a confession, voice low and burnished, thundering along with the air in Laurent’s ears.
“I’m not five,” Laurent said. Suddenly, he became acutely aware of his disheveled state, the top laces at his throat uncharacteristically undone. “Surely you don’t think me stupid enough to forget my way in my own quarters.”
“Would you like to prove it?” Damen’s eyes were sharp. He was a few long strides away from bumping noses with Laurent, but it felt as if Laurent was being compressed intrusively into his skin. “Come here.”
This annoyed Laurent. “Why? I think I am very comfortable where I am.”
“Are you,” said Damen. “Then maybe what I’d like is for you to be less so.”
“Didn’t you know?” Laurent said flatly. “We don’t always get what we want.”
“Yes. But I’m good at turning the odds,” Damen said. “Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. All you have to do is know your objectives and search for them.”
That was grotesquely obnoxious, but not unwarranted. Even the woman who betrayed him knew he walked with a sure steadfastness that ran like blood in his palm and gave the seizing of opportunity an illusion of ease. That was partly why it was so dangerous to watch him fight on your side—it wasn’t wise to grow used to the abundance of victories.
Laurent said, “I wasn’t aware I was the prize for a treasure hunt.”
“No.” Damen took one of Laurent’s wrists in a hand, the grip crushing. “You are a gift.”
Laurent’s breath skipped; there was a satisfaction to the knowledge that you were, at all, considered by that cedar-dark gaze of perusal. But Damen didn’t sound reverent; he sounded like he was staking a claim on a prisoner of war. Laurent curled his toes inside his boots, a poor attempt to grant him stability when Damen dragged him towards the door of their chambers.
He tried to wring his hands free, glaring up. “I said—the water,” said Laurent, hating how petulant he sounded when he’d aimed for severe.
“We both know that was a lie. It doesn’t take an hour of traversing the same hallway to reach the kitchens.”
Laurent stared at him indignantly. “Perhaps I have attracted the misfortune of a limp that hinders my ability to walk quickly—No. What are you—” Damen had lifted Laurent up into his arms like he weighed nothing. He wrapped Laurent’s legs around his waist and held him in an inescapable grip. Laurent shoved his shoulders. “That is barbaric.”
“Should have thought of that before you denied yourself the wherewithal required for something as simple as walking.”
“Even if I hadn’t done so, this is not necessary.”
“Isn’t it? The alternative is to crawl.”
Laurent shut his mouth. He hadn’t meant to flush at the remark, but he knew he’d made himself apparent as soon as he could detect the weight of Damen’s curious gaze as it traced the saturated skin of his cheeks to the tips of his ears.
This wasn’t supposed to be enticing. Already he’d revealed a throbbing link in his belly on which one could secure a long chain and tug, and he tasted dryness on his tongue when he could tell Damen was archiving the memory for personal pleasure. He felt like an insect devoured by a jar, wings torn apart by scalpels to satisfy a man’s curiosity.
Damen didn’t say another word, only examined Laurent with a calculating stare until they reached the door, where he set Laurent down to his feet without warning.
“I agree,” said Damen. “It wouldn’t have been necessary—if not for your insistence on being difficult.” He pushed open the door to their chambers, shoved Laurent into the room and locked the door shut behind them with a loud clatter of metal and latch.
“If I am so difficult, why even bother?” Laurent stared wide-eyed at the lock. The role of denial was easy to assimilate into when he’d rehearsed it for years. “You like efficiency. All this effort is not. You’d save both of us time if you let me go.”
“Is that what you think?” Damen grasped Laurent’s shoulder, pushing him into the wall so that his nose collided into the canvas of the painting before him. “Then you understand how priceless it is to watch you concede to yourself.”
“Is that the only reason?” Laurent tried not to let his voice shake. A heavy hand landed on his back to pin him in place.“If you are simply exalted by obedience, you could find someone willing to entertain this weakness of yours. There’s a queue of soldiers waiting to spread their legs for you.”
“If you think I’d give just anyone my attention, then you’ve miscalculated my level of self-respect,” Damen replied, without embellishment. It felt like he meant those words beyond the twisted masquerade Laurent had dragged them into, which was funny; they weren’t a requirement. “Though I don’t think you’d particularly like to hear a speech on how much worth you hold over those men at this moment.”
Damen was right. The issue wasn’t that Laurent disliked praises—it was that he loved them, which meant he might be convinced into enjoying this charade too much if he were soaked further in them.
Before Laurent could reply, Damen’s hands went to undo the laces at the back of his jacket. Laurent struggled in his grasp, to no avail. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure you don’t venture out to injure your leg again.” Damen chucked the fabric to the ground.
“You are being too audacious,” Laurent said, thin as glaze. He’d only worn one outer layer today—now he was in his white cotton shirt. “Unhand me and unlock the door.”
“I think not.” Damen flipped Laurent around so they faced each other once more, eyes flicking solicitously down his form. Laurent’s spine hurtled into the wall, the flimsy fabric of his shirt sticking sweaty to his skin. “Though I may be persuaded if you agree to leave this room on your knees. But I don’t think that is what you are amenable to.”
“No, I—” Laurent fought a shiver. Why was his body reacting so fervently? “You do realize I am not amenable to any of this. How is that small sliver of mercy better than the indignity you are already subjecting me to?”
“Is it indignity?”
“How else would you define it?” Laurent breathed, “I don’t want you.”
“I think you’re scared that you do.” Damen cradled Laurent’s cheek in the scythe-curve of his hand.
He was good at this. That was dangerous. Wasn’t this his first time? “What business would I have in developing a liking towards a man twice the size of me? I’m not so inept at self-preservation that I’d expose myself to that sort of danger.”
“It is less than twice. Don’t be dramatic,” Damen said, in a tone that declared his appreciation. “Your rebuttals are painfully contradictory for someone who’s so good at tempting me to touch you.”
Laurent wavered at the latter comments, unsure if he liked them, realizing he probably should have paid this more care. Damen likely thought his hesitation was part of his fib—Laurent was a good actor. But to be bitter about that was to flinch from clothespins when measuring oneself for a cloak. The sting only annexed an exacting realism to it all, inspired in him the reminder that a game wasn’t a game without a little danger. Verisimilitude. Had he forgotten?
“Stop that,” Damen said suddenly.
“I didn’t do anything.” Laurent’s lip trembled. He looked down and realized he’d been clutching onto Damen’s linen chiton in a clammy hand. He let go, searching his head for a riposte. “Were you expecting me to apologize for breathing? For allocating some of your air to myself?”
“Sweetheart.” Damen brushed his feathery knuckles against the curve of Laurent’s cheek. “When you try to overexert your cleverness—”
“That is not as flattering as you believe it is—”
“—it becomes apparent that you are thinking too much.”
Laurent exhaled. He didn't think he could be granted gauze by the same sentence that cut. “Since you are so tempted,” he said, altering the subject, “Shall I expect to be treated like one of your past conquests, or a trophy of war? I don’t suppose you’d allow me the charity of a choice before you throw me over your covers.”
Only after the statement did he realize how much he’d unveiled about himself in that single taunt. Of course Damen caught on. “Those were your ideas. Not mine.”
“Sorry for expecting the worst,” Laurent scrunched his nose. “But you can’t blame me for thinking that when some of your armies have a penchant for taking pretty dolls into their tents.”
He folded his arms over his chest in a desperate grasp for defence; Damen caught his hands before he could let them settle and pinned them back to his sides. “Had I met you as a trophy of war,” said Damen, unfazed, “there would’ve been no opportunity for you to be sent into my soldiers’ tents.”
“Because you’d send me away?” A little hurt.
“Because you’d be staying in mine,” Damen said, without hesitation. And then, one moment later, he flushed.
Laurent supposed Damen liked the idea after all. “Well,” he blurted, neck burning. “Not if your people defiled me first. You’re worth more than a used goblet at a tavern with rouge smeared over it—”
Damen hauled him away from the wall, yanking him towards the bed. Laurent stumbled, back falling into the covers as his eyes went wide. His heart leapt into his mouth, hot with the temperature of blood, tasting like arousal and a little like fear. The distinction had never been that obvious.
“Stop that, too,” Damen said, looking down from where he towered over Laurent, “or I’m using your riding crop on every inch of skin that thinks itself sullied.” He hesitated, as if he was waiting for Laurent to confirm he didn’t hate the intimation. Laurent didn’t, even though he wanted to. A soft gasp escaped him. “If you think debasing yourself can deter me from having you however I wanted tonight, you’re not being as smart as you could be.”
“So you’re allowed the authority to debase me, and I’m not?” Laurent lifted an eyebrow, craning his neck up. “Is this another privilege that comes with being the first heir to the throne?”
“I was second born, like you,” Damen said. It was almost funny how he, despite claiming to hate craft and artifice, was the only one who knew how to meet Laurent’s snaking wordplay at every peak and nadir. “And I’ve hardly insulted you.”
Laurent had nothing to say. Damen climbed onto the bed, trapping Laurent’s body beneath the cage made by his legs, one knee planted on either side of Laurent’s hips. His cheekbones were dusted in a luxuriant colour, betraying his earnest demeanor. Laurent stamped down the compulsion to latch onto Damen’s war-hardened shoulders, run his hands down those sun-drunk arms in approbation. He tried for a shove.
Damen intertwined his fingers with Laurent’s and pressed his hands into the covers, next to his ears. “Still ambivalent about wanting this, aren’t you?”
“I’m still contemplating ways to make you throw me out,” Laurent said, though the ache between his legs was steadily growing, rendering his statement pathetic. “Does it take me spitting in your face?”
Damen leaned in and kissed the open angle of Laurent’s neck, teeth rough on his skin. “If you were truly contemplating you wouldn’t have informed the enemy of your plans. Isn’t that your philosophy?”
Laurent skipped a breath. “Don’t expect me to stop fighting you just because your ego is greedy.”
“It would be considerably less troubling for you in the long run to learn how to do so.” As if proving a point, he knocked Laurent’s legs apart, pressing his knee into Laurent’s groin. Laurent took an urgent inhale. “Since I don’t think it is me you are fighting.”
Laurent already knew that. It wasn’t as if he necessarily wanted surrender to be burdensome. Some nights, he wished he had the naivete to slip out of his skin and tumble into the sea—without fearing it’d be stolen from the shore as he swam in that lazy white. But he didn’t want to face the risk of having nothing with which to cover his shaking ribs in the aftermath.
“You aren’t normally this complicated,” Laurent said. He pressed his cheek into the mattress. “You speak too much.”
Damen chased his movements, lifted a hand to right Laurent’s chin back to centre, cajoled his lips into opening with a thumb. “You don’t speak enough.”
“What am I doing, then? Innovating a new type of noise with my mouth?” Laurent bit down on Damen’s finger—delighting when Damen winced. “I’m speaking.”
“Not a single word of truth.”
Laurent supposed he deserved the retribution of the teeth that sank into the side of his throat, the air in his lungs stuttering. He stymied a whine as Damen seized the opening of his shirt; the problem with Veretian garments was that the more beautiful they were, the more delicate they were, and the more likely they could be torn. But there was still no reason for Damen to make ripping threads apart look as facile as lifting a sleeve, when he divested Laurent of his last layer from hem to collar.
“Don’t,” said Laurent, quietly.
“Don’t what?”
Laurent glared at him. “What is your issue?”
“My issue,” said Damen, “is that you aren’t desperate enough yet.”
He dived in and continued to kiss Laurent’s throat, his collarbones, the faint outline of his ribs. Laurent’s eyes fluttered shut, and for a dismembered moment he could only feel an encroaching warmth on his chest, slowly meandering towards one of his nipples. Only then did he dare to open his eyes, which was a mistake; it cost him all his concentration not to tug at Damen’s curls, the way a child would cling hopelessly onto a balcony’s railing for comfort. There was nothing sweet about it; his tongue moved like an imperative, wet and ineluctable.
Laurent bit his lip. He was powerless against the frisson of heat in his spine, fighting to swallow the chain of noises that threatened to spill from his mouth and tether his wanting to the scene splattering apart before him. He arched into every touch, even though he’d once practiced how to reduce his pleasure to light trembles, whimpering when Damen bit down. Maybe it was the pain that made Laurent so easy.
“Damen,” he blurted. “I—”
“Not so stubborn now, are you.” Damen lifted his head, voice deep with approval. Laurent fixed him with a gaze askance, lips parting in slight incredulity as he saw Damen palm himself once. He didn’t expect that. He focused on his breathing, racking his mind for memories to compare this to, so as to remember how to compose himself.
It was difficult. “If you are adamant on ignoring my complaints,” Laurent snapped, “the least you could do is attempt not to make your enjoyment of dishonor so obvious.”
Damen arched an eyebrow, said nothing.
The silence that followed was unreasonably invasive. To remedy the mood, Laurent tugged at Damen’s wrist, hips shifting upwards. Interest flooded back into Damen’s face as he turned his attention to Laurent’s trousers, having the generosity not to ruin them the way he did the shirt, instead yanking them under Laurent’s hips after undoing their front laces.
A brief, icy rush of air greeted Laurent’s newly exposed skin, like a serrated knife scraping a path down a plate to accumulate sauce on its edge. Strong hands gripped his flank and pressed their bruising nails into his skin. Laurent felt inebriated, warmth rolling through his body and enveloping every root of sensation.
It would have been wonderful if he wasn’t struggling to demarcate the boundary between liking the shame of being seen and liking that of being forced to be seen. A destructive ripple lanced through his stomach, not entirely pleasant—he felt impossibly open, as if he was venturing into a field looking exactly as he did now, naked but for his boots, inviting the sun to beat down on his back and pour ladles of sweat in his limbs, watching people snicker as they passed.
A distant voice rang in his ears.
“Laurent,” Damen said suddenly, gentler. The touch on Laurent’s body morphed into a soft glide of fingers, pushing curtains apart into a moment of convalescence, and then subsided entirely. The lamp on the nightstand suffused the room in a meringue-soft glow. Under its dreamlike illusion, Damen looked almost apologetic, light wreathing his hair. “If you want to end this—”
Was Laurent so bad at stringing himself together? “While I have been told I share the frigidity of glass, I don’t think I inherited its fragility.”
Damen paused, eyes narrowing, though Laurent could glimpse the dilemma behind them. “If you want to end this,” Damen said eventually, “you may either use the word ‘cease’, or pinch my arm twice.” His voice had returned to its imperious cadence. “Your preference?”
Laurent went still. A small part inside him was insulted to be given a choice this late into the game, and he questioned why Damen hadn’t raised his idea earlier—but then he remembered it wasn’t Damen’s nature to introduce disgrace into bedsport, that Laurent was likely the first to demand this from him. It was already Laurent’s fortune that Damen was generous enough to indulge his bristling desires, which were often a butchery of hidden rules that, once broken, ruptured with excess damage. Not even Laurent knew all of those laws and punishments himself, so shouldn’t he know better than to cavil at minor blunders?
But—
“I hate you,” he said, tiredly, and regretted it.
Damen should know he hadn’t meant that. Like how he hadn’t meant half the remarks he’d uttered since he’d been heaved into the room; how he hadn’t meant to fulminate like a dysregulated child last week; nor did he mean the desultory insults he’d said a month ago; nor the verbal flagellation he’d delivered in his tent back when their alliance was first formed. But his mouth had always lacked a sieve to filter the sourness out of his words, and—
Damen said, softly again, “Preference?”
“I’ll use the word,” Laurent relented. He didn’t trust himself not to end up pinching Damen accidentally if he were to lose control.
“Good,” said Damen. Laurent breathed a sigh of relief. “Would you like to use it now?”
Was he mentoring a toddler? “No,” said Laurent. “You may continue.”
Damen gave him a long, unreadable stare. “Turn over.”
Laurent stared at the front of Damen’s chiton, the way his erection seemed to have softened a little, and felt his throat convulse with a small pang of guilt. He hadn’t intended to ruin the moment. He swallowed. “Make me.”
Damen did, flipped him onto his stomach without a word, knees bracketing his hips. His hands lingered on Laurent’s backside. An embarrassing warmth unfurled under Laurent’s skin and, for one dazzling second, he wondered if Damen would fulfil his promise right there and then, breaching him dry. Or if he’d run his mouth down Laurent’s back until he was aching, charred through to the gristle. He could linger long enough to invert Laurent’s senses—leave him suspended like a cat that couldn’t get down from a tree without forcing itself to cry out for help.
Worse still, he could leave. If Damen were less generous, all this abjection could wind up fruitless.
Maybe he deserved it.
He pushed the thought away.
“A piece of advice,” Damen said, as Laurent made a show of struggling, “This would feel better if you stopped trying to scheme for all three versions of the next second in your head.” When Laurent didn’t reply: “Were there more than three?”
“I think you are only trying to strip me of my wit,” said Laurent, collecting his earlier courage, “because it’s easier to make a fool comply with you.”
“So there were more.”
“I,” said Laurent. “I’d be less likely to scheme if you told me what you were scheming.”
“I was scheming,” Damen said, “to make you pass me the oil.”
Laurent hid the frisson in his voice. “What gave you the impression I’d know where it is?”
“Perhaps you are losing your wits.” Damen bit Laurent’s shoulder, eliciting a yelp. “Should I marvel at what would happen once I finally touch you?”
Laurent’s heart tripped on a frantic beat. He thought of it, but said, “I still haven’t said I’d allow you to.”
“I don’t think you need to.” Strong hands spread his backside, a dry thumb circling his rim. “One of these days you’ll discover that you’re pretty when you’re honest.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be pretty,” said Laurent, flushed.
A light sting bloomed in his thighs, a crisp sound echoing through the chambers. It was barely a slap, but Laurent whimpered.
“You know exactly where the oil is. Or shall I ask again?”
“I—”
Another sting. Laurent was still certain this wasn’t Damen’s full strength. Ignominy should be painful—and it was—but it had no right to also magnetize Laurent’s hunger, small fevers erupting like fractures in his skin.
“Haven’t I made myself clear?”
“I—Yes.”
Laurent could hear Damen shift behind him, sinking backwards to sit on his heels. It sounded like a wordless, go on. The sudden gust of air on Laurent’s back made him freeze.
He swallowed, feeling delirious, as though Damen could dangle anything before his face and he’d still open his mouth to nip it from his fingers. To reach the nightstand, he had to shift his weight onto his elbows and crawl in the direction of the headboard. He swung the drawer open in trembling hands—the crystalline bottle was easy enough to spot even through his hazy vision. He scooped it up in his fingers, reared his head around to toss it backwards. Damen caught it with immaculate precision.
As gracefully as he could, Laurent shuffled back into the place Damen had originally maneuvered him into.
He pressed his face demurely into the covers, knowing he’d slipped past the vanishing horizon of defiance; once he’d fallen off that ledge, there was no chance to turn back. Damen made an appreciative sound behind him, which startled Laurent at first—but he’d been told he had a talent for temptation, a beauty worthy of acclaim. And maybe it was what he was good for, as he’d been told even when he was thrashing, devastated by touch—
The clink of a bottle opening. “Are you done thinking?”
“Yes.” The warmth of Damen’s hand lingered on Laurent’s skin. The imitation of touch was too much to bear; he craved it.
“Good.”
Laurent said nothing. Damen wasn’t the first man to offer praise, nor was he the first to make Laurent hungry for it—but he was the first to make Laurent covet the replenishment just as much as he coveted the hunger. He would be pleading for more, had he possessed any less tight of a rein on himself. He would squeeze himself into bottlenecks, cram his mind into compulsory boxes, limit his own escape just so he could utter the word—and hope his sincerity was enough to exchange for deliverance.
He would do anything. He would make himself terrible for it.
The first breach to his entrance was firm, but gentler than the painful strain Laurent had awaited. Damen didn’t give him much time to adjust, but it wasn’t none; after a few prods he was pumping his finger into Laurent’s hole at a brisk—but steady—pace.
“You’re tense,” Damen said.
“It’s not,” Laurent took a shaky breath, “as if it’s your first day knowing me.”
Damen pressed a kiss to Laurent’s spine. “Relax.”
A second finger. Laurent tried to do as ordered, found it manageable. Soon he was chasing the reverberating waves of pain-pleasure, feeling like a bottle whose neck conducted thirst once opened to sunlight, frothing with need.
He loved it. He’d loved it too, the first time, and was smouldered by shame from the inside. He’d emerged from it not knowing if he should ever trust his wanting at all. He’d been granted liberation from that exhaustion when Damen had held him without crushing; kissed his fragile surrender. Even now, Damen had given Laurent an exit, even though Laurent was never going to take it, so he couldn’t decipher why he felt as if he’d traversed back into the skin of the blubbering child who had eaten something terrible for him, thrown up from it, and licked his plate dry anyway.
Laurent had been trying to—to see if a wound on a scar would hurt as much as it did on fresh skin. Every law in his mind had ordained that it would. He should hate the exact thing his uncle said he adored, he should be proving his uncle wrong, and yet here Damen was, ruining his plans, the way he’d ruined everything Laurent had ever known, first by saving Laurent’s life and then dismantling his control, becoming the addiction he’d spend a lifetime trying to scrub clean from his skin—
Laurent felt tears in his eyes like a cradle of pushpins. He clambered for the words he needed.
What were they? “Stop,” he tried. He felt stupid, inventing the noose for his own undoing. His mind was floating from a detached ceiling. He could almost produce a picture of himself from afar, pink-skinned and lips bitten red, but he couldn’t seem to grasp onto the threads in his body. “Stop.” He couldn’t tell if the hands on him were retreating. There was waterlogged cloth in his ears, but the choked-out sob escaping his throat remained audible behind that. What was the word? “Please stop, cease—”
He fought to roll onto his back, and saw Damen had sunk backward to sit on his heels, looking lost. So he had been withdrawing—for how long? Since the first sob, or only after Laurent remembered? Laurent sat up frantically and drew his knees to his chest, scooting back towards the headboard.
He had definitely shattered the moment. His hands were trembling; his whole body was trembling. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, but was failing to keep them up.
Damen remained where he did, no hints of pursuing Laurent. His eyes were wide and alarmed, and his arousal had thoroughly dissolved. Softly: “Laurent?”
The uncertainty in his voice was offensive. “Don’t touch me,” Laurent snapped.
“I’m sorry. Are you—”
“I cannot believe—”
A shaky exhale tumbled out of Laurent’s mouth. He levered off the bed, grateful that he still had the sense to grab what remained of his shirt, grateful that he was still able to recover some semblance of dignity with it. Damen was saying something, but Laurent couldn’t make sense of it; the only perceptible thought in his mind being that he wanted to pummel Damen’s chest with his fists. Then, dazedly, he realized the idea of another man’s body heat on his skin also made him want to curl in on himself, like a fragile leaf.
He shuddered. The next few moments were a blur. His senses splintered into pieces: the flickering light of the room; the ferocious drumming in his ears; the vase of flowers on the desk that he now desperately wanted to send crashing to the floor. It cost him all his strength to flee to the bathroom that was joined to their chambers, and slammed the door shut.
He sank onto the tiles, choking on incomplete breaths, the cool rush of air in his lungs doing little to ameliorate the throttling sensation in his throat. He didn’t know how long it had taken for him to feel the world fall back into him, like swathes of chalkdust sinking into sediment—but only then did he realize he’d been gripping the door handle so tightly his knuckles were bone-white.
Lips wet and trembling, like the scales of a caught fish, Laurent turned towards the washing basin—thankfully full—and splashed his face with water. The mirror seemed to taunt him; he looked up.
His face was pale, as though he’d seen a ghost.
After a long while, he unlocked the door and padded back into the room.
Damen hadn’t moved from where he’d been sitting. He looked paradoxically small for his stature, as though his skin were a bag too large for his bones—slumped shoulders and fear-bitten lips and loose, disheveled hair.
Laurent glared at him. He traipsed towards the bed and hid his body under the blankets, the fringe of his vision seeming to ignite when Damen moved off to stand. Laurent said, “What?”
“Should I—” Through his blurry vision Laurent couldn’t discern if Damen’s hands, too, were shaking. “Do you want me to.” Damen yanked at his own hair, and muttered a few words Laurent didn’t have the sense to decipher, “You lost water,” he said eventually, the only clear thing. “Sorry. I’ll—”
“You lost water,” Laurent mimicked. His cheeks burned, hot and wet. “Is that the best remedy you can come up with?”
“Then tell me what you need.” The ringing in Laurent’s ears had given Damen’s voice the phantom of a tremble. “Should I leave, or…’
“It’s unthinkable,” Laurent said, clenching his fists, “that you are still trying to make me beg for your help.” His nails felt like knives in the flesh of his palms.
“That is not… What do you want from me, Laurent?”
“I thought it was abundantly clear that it does not matter what I want.” Laurent clutched at the threads of hurt in his mind; they soothed him, the only weapons he knew. “I wish,” he said, “that you would stop trying to pretend it does.”
“I am not pretending.” Damen frowned. His hands were shaking, Laurent could see that now, which unnerved him further. “I wouldn’t do anything”—he dithered, as if he knew what he’d been aiming to say would’ve sounded nonsensical—“you didn’t truly want.”
It was so comical. An easy catch.
Laurent latched onto it, demurring, “I don’t think you mean that.”
“I,” said Damen. His feet seemed unsteady, like he was standing on a crumbling bridge. He turned to their desk, stumbled, eyes scanning the room as if searching for—for—Laurent screwed his eyes shut. That didn’t quell the sound of the irregular footsteps in his ears.
When the footsteps halted, Laurent’s eyes squinted open. Damen had returned, he was cradling a tub of salve in his hands. As if the wounds on Laurent were physical. Laurent bridled, jerked under the blankets—and felt a soft ache in his backside.
Right. He had sustained bruises. He had forgotten.
Damen still didn’t make a move to sit on the mattress. He held out the tub and planted it delicately at Laurent’s side. “Do you need me to leave?”
This, somehow, made Laurent hysterical. “When have I given you the impression that I was finished?”
“Laurent.”
“I said I didn’t want this,” Laurent gripped the blankets in his fingers and allowed something in himself to slam shut, like a falling curtain, turning his voice sharp and cold. “Allow me a moment to recollect what it was that you said in response.”
Damen’s face pinched up.
“You said, ‘I think you’re scared that you do.’”
Damen lifted a palm to his face, covering one of his cheeks, fingers hiding the eye on the same side. “That was—”
“I’m sure it was lovely.” It was becoming easier to push the words out with surgical precision, now, “What else? ‘If I had met you as a war prisoner—’”
“—part of what I thought we’d agreed on—”
“I should purchase a mirror. I want you to study yourself exactly as you are now,” said Laurent. “Is it repentance, or is it your fractured esteem? The reason why you cannot look me in the eye.”
The words escaped his mouth before he could process them fully. Briefly he thought he was being unjust—he was the one who’d brought this on both of them—but he’d never been very good at making damage look elegant. What good could come out of arranging his hurt into a bouquet, attempting to allure comfort?
Damen lowered his hand. He curled it into a fist, then released it. “I would have stopped earlier had I realized you hated it. I was mistaken. I thought—”
“You thought I was having fun, did you not? But I’ve been told that I always look like I’m having fun. So if you were aiming for unique, you’d need an excuse that isn’t of the same value as a common coin in a wench’s pocket.”
Damen’s stare hardened. “Is it impossible to permit me one complete sentence? If you didn’t like what we did, we don’t have to do it again.”
“Oh, no, I loved it,” Laurent said, because it was easier to stick to his plans than to relinquish them, even though he wasn’t shaking as violently anymore, and he should know better than to sound like a petulant child. His breath was coming short again. “But in case the fact continues to elude your skull, it is one thing for me to revel in being forced to take you—”
“Slow down.”
“—because I already know that is the sort of person I am, so it hardly makes a difference for me to turn myself into a gracelessly shivering thing at your feet, even if I hated the loving. It’s only that there’s a great deal to be said about the fact you loved it too.”
Laurent didn’t know what he hated more—that the words had been so rewarding to say—or that Damen hadn’t left after Laurent had used them to cut his skin open.
“Is that it?” Laurent continued. “You aren’t denying it. You derive joy from making me obey you, and you like making me give in.”
“I like watching you allow yourself to,” Damen snapped, a transient edge lancing through his stare, cold and vicious. Then he bit his inner cheek. “I wouldn’t have done any of it if I had known we weren’t both enjoying it. But it doesn’t diminish you in any way, if you did.”
“Doesn’t it,” Laurent allowed for a frosty snort. “You like to watch me fall apart. My uncle did, too. But at least he had the bravery to consider the implications behind it. Wouldn’t it be easier if you just admitted all this was contrived to make me your lesser concubine?”
Damen’s eyes were fixed on Laurent, teeth grit. “I don’t want that.”
“Please. If I told you I wanted you to fuck me until I cried, right now, you’d do it without hesitation.” Laurent flinched internally at his own words. He gathered the ice in his breath, tempered the unease in his spine. “You said you cared about what I wanted, didn’t you? So prove it.”
“No.”
Laurent swallowed the urge to bury his face in his hands.
“Fine,” he enunciated, slowly, switching strategies, “I know it was I who had ordered you to take me apart earlier. Then would you have skinned yourself alive if I had told you I’d enjoy that too?”
“I don’t think,” said Damen, latently seething, “you’d enjoy that.”
“Say whatever you like.” Laurent tried not to flinch. Damen’s stare burned like a frostbite. “I could tell you I wanted you to kiss my boot, too. You would follow me around like a dog on a leash for the fact I ordered you to do something?”
It wasn’t true. It was the last card he had. He knew Damen hated it, and he could retrace the tension in Damen’s clenched jaw when Laurent had been desperate to collide him into obeisance. He could even carve statues to immortalize the disgust on Damen’s face when he’d first found himself with that very leash at his neck.
Which was why that did the trick.
“No.” A hiss seized Damen’s exhale, his breath short. He recoiled, as if cauterized, and for a flickering moment Laurent thought he could see white bone in marred skin, red velvet carpets and bejeweled gold, the clash of chains reverberating through his ears. Damen’s face was dark. “I can’t do that.”
Laurent deflated. He bit down the urge to scamper away. “Why not?”
Damen took a deep breath, pausing. He turned away, back facing Laurent like a tall shield.
The room shimmered, watching them splinter apart under its dim amber lights.
“It’s not who I am,” Damen said eventually. His voice was still firm—but it’d simmered, implausibly, down into something less ruthless. “And it hurt us both, the last time you tried. It’s not—Stop contorting all of my statements.”
Guilt bled into Laurent’s throat, white-hot discharge soaking through gauze. He waved a useless hand.
“I didn’t mean to recreate history,” said Laurent. “In either sense.”
Damen frowned. When he turned back around, his gaze was oozing with hurt, so sincere that not even Laurent’s delusion could choose to catalogue it as a farce. “I know.”
“You know everything, don’t you?”
“Nobody knows everything, Laurent.”
Laurent frowned. It felt like all of that wrestling had leached the energy out of him, like a wind-up doll losing its tension—and when his hands had finally stopped rattling, he was a hollow husk of himself. “I’m—I really didn’t.” His eyes throbbed. “I didn’t mean to—”
Damen said, “You don’t have to repeat yourself.”
Laurent’s chest ached. He twisted his body and shuffled to the side, making room next to him on the bed. But Damen seemed hesitant to assume the offering was for him. “But you should know—What I said earlier wasn’t…”
Damen threw him a serious look. “Wasn’t true?”
Laurent heaved out a sigh, a blister of relief swelling through him, thankful that Damen had caught on and finished the confession he was failing to voice. He pushed out the words, “I don’t think you are like him.” Then, after a pause, “I’m sorry.”
Damen said nothing.
Laurent looked down at his hands. He shifted, folding his calves under him to sit on his heels, failing to be inconspicuous with the movement. Damen lifted an eyebrow as Laurent moved further to the side. “Will you sit?” He gestured awkwardly next to him. He curled his hands into trembling birds on his knees. “If you like.”
Damen blinked. “All right,” he said, and arrayed himself beside Laurent.
“I’m sorry,” Laurent said again. Damen’s body was large next to him, warm and enveloping.
“I understand. Can I touch you?”
Laurent nodded. He pressed his hands together, one on top of the other on his lap. Damen brushed Laurent’s hair out of his face.
Laurent felt like he’d abused something gentle. It wouldn’t have been the first time. In Ravenel he had charged into Damen’s single imperfection, burning Damen’s naivete alive if it meant he could purchase for himself the fantasy of being cherished, even when he’d thought it’d shatter like lullabies the next day. He hadn’t thought Damen would refuse to discard him after the siege against his uncle and still adhere to his choice a whole year later. But that meant Laurent should have learned better than to toy with Damen again—and yet.
“I did like it,” said Laurent. “What we did. I didn’t want to like it. I stopped you, because that”—he winced, wondering when speaking the truth would stop feeling like spitting out glass—“scared me. And you should be angrier at me for it.”
“I wouldn’t be angry because of that,” said Damen.
“I don’t think you understand.” Laurent stamped down the edge that was, again, beginning to enter his voice. “I told you I thought it would be easier for me to have you like this, but… A greater part of me was expecting to hate it. I was testing the hypothesis, hoping you’d make me hate it. The fact I decided to ask you for it in the first place means I saw you as a trial subject.”
“It means,” said Damen, calmly, “that you saw me as someone you could trust.”
It felt like Laurent could admit to all of his crimes and Damen would discover ways to make them sound like dreams. “Is that all you do? Turn me into a miracle?”
“No,” Damen said, like sediment sinking. “You are you.” A pause, then: “I’m sorry I didn’t think of a method for us to stop the act earlier.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Laurent. “You couldn’t have known.”
Damen frowned. “But it does.”
Laurent’s shoulders fell.
“It can’t be pleasant,” he said, switching subjects. “Watching me fight you while you try to make love to me. Hearing me tell you I don’t want you.”
“I already watch you fight yourself in your head regardless. The only real difference is that you are now giving yourself a chance to vocalize it.”
Laurent hadn’t thought of it that way before.
Damen continued, “I meant it when I said what you like doesn’t alter your worth, either. It’s no more transgressive than—liking books, or horses, or—” He looked away sheepishly. “Whether or not you still want to test what you like, I would never think you are beneath me because of it.”
“I.” Laurent didn’t know what he’d done to deserve this mercy. “I do,” he said, a little too quickly. “Just—not now. And it might take time for me to remember what you just said.”
“I’m patient.” Damen laced their fingers together. “But you know this already.”
Laurent did. “Thank you.”
“Was there anything I did that you wouldn’t like a repeat of?”
Laurent paused. Then, he remembered. “Don’t imply it is my fault for tempting you, or anything of that sentiment. I—” He debated the next part. “I liked it when you said I was good,” he said, then flushed. “Don’t—I didn’t intend for that to be funny.”
“I didn’t laugh.”
Laurent blinked. “Was there anything I did?”
“Not that I can think of. But I’d tell you, if that changes.”
Laurent pondered for a moment. “When I want you to stop—or when you want to stop…” He chided himself for forgetting to consider that Damen would need the exit as much as he did. “We should consider a different method.”
“Pinching?”
“That is too easy to do accidentally,” Laurent said. “It should be a word neither of us would normally say. Cloth merchant?”
Damen scrunched his nose. “I’m not sure either of us would like to think about Charls when we’re—”
Laurent couldn’t help his laughter, small and quiet. “Do you have a more adequate suggestion?”
“Starburst?”
“Then I will think about my brother. I propose ‘crimson.’”
It was his uncle’s colour. Damen looked at him. “Are you certain?”
“Do I look like I’m not?”
“Fine. Promise me you will use that if you need to. No exceptions.”
Laurent chewed on his lip. He wanted to try. He wanted to be good, and that was still terrifying, but not as much as it’d been. “I promise.”
“Would you like to select a new date, or would you still prefer me to surprise you?”
Laurent considered this. He still didn’t want the agony of an exact time—but he didn’t want to wait for long, or he’d slip into cowardice again. “Sometime in the next five days?”
Damen gazed at the discarded salve. Laurent had forgotten about that too. “All right,” Damen said. “I should draw you a bath.”