Chapter Text
It has been three weeks.
Three long, arduous weeks, and two days more atop that. It’s the longest they’ve been separated since their wedding. They’ve tried, as best they could, to manage the distance with their letters. Pages and pages of heartfelt declarations, letters that have filled them both with hope and despair in equal measure. Poor recreations of the beating heart of their mutual affection.
Laurent was still mired in tedious council meetings. Damen had just that day completed the appointments of his own council, now set to meet with Vere and discuss the workings of the newly-joined Akielon-Veretian Kingdom. The Akielon Council was set to ride the following morning. Damen couldn’t wait.
And so, in the thick of a stormy night, Damen rides.The rain has come late this season, and with it the murk and mud that is currently being kicked up about his heels and up his calves. It plasters his hair to his face, sluices across the path of his vision. He squints, teeth gritted. The faster he rides, the more the drops prick at his face like sharp-teethed needles.
He clicks his tongue and rides faster. It is well past midnight, barely into the first strokes of morning, still dark when he arrives.
Jord is there to greet him, clearly instructed to stay at his post despite the lateness of the hour. He looks haggard and grey-faced. He gives Damen a wan smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes and takes the reins of his horse.
“He insisted on staying up until you arrived. I told him he has a bloody kingdom to run. Only wore him down a half hour ago. He might still be awake.”
Damen takes off at a run down the dim-lit halls.
“Try not to track mud through the castle!” Jord yells after him.
It’s only after he’s taken two wrong lefts that Damen realizes he’s not entirely sure where Laurent’s quarters even are.
“Laurent!”
He stands still a moment, listening to the echo of his undignified bellowing.
“Laurent! Your husband calls!”
“Damen?!”
He turns his head sharply towards the source of the sound - obviously in the wrong direction he’d been heading, but close.
Again, he runs. He calls Laurent’s name again, listens to his husband respond with equal fervour. He hooks another sharp right and comes to the bottom of a stairwell. Footsteps are ringing from above. Two, three more, and then he is there, standing before him.
“ Laurent .”
Laurent stands in pause, one toe perched on the edge of a step, the other just touching with the ball of his foot. He is entirely still, enthralled. He looks as though he was carved from marble.
Damen sighs. He is a vision. Hair mussed in beautiful disarray, bottom lip caught between his teeth, palm planted to the stone with curled fingers. And, slipping from the slope of his shoulder, is a nightshirt that is clearly too big for him.
No, not a night shirt. It is Veretian cloth and style, yes, but the only man to have worn it before was an Akielon. Damen’s mind is cast back to bodies pressed tight together, stifled giggles on a balcony, a madcap dash across rooftops.
Damen knows that shirt very well. Laurent sees the recognition light up in his eyes, and he ducks his head shyly.
“You’re,” Damen’s voice is low and rough, “you’re wearing my shirt.”
Laurent nods. “It smells like you,” he says softly.
He tugs at the lopsided shoulder until it’s even. The gesture winds fingers around Damen’s heart and squeezes. Damen is a head taller and significantly broader, and thusly Laurent is almost swimming in the garment. The material pools around his neck, revealing a spill of soft milky skin. Damen is mesmerized.
Laurent warms under the attention of Damen’s gaze and begins to color with a delighted blush.“You like it?” Laurent asks, just a hint of teasing in his tone.
Damen, eyes wide, just nods. “You look beautiful,” he says, then his voice breaks in his honesty. “Laurent, I missed you so much.”
The tableau unfreezes and Damen is leaping up the stairs two at a time, Laurent descending. They meet halfway in a fierce embrace, Laurent pressing desperate kisses to Damen’s hair. Damen just holds as tight as he can and breathes. It feels like the first breath he’s taken in weeks.
“You’re cold,” Laurent whispers against his cheek. He rubs his palms over the sodden jacket that clings to Damen’s back. “Freezing.”
Damen mumbles an agreement, nuzzles into Laurent’s neck. “Warm me.”
The heat between them rises, and Laurent’s fingers begin to peel the coat from his shoulders. It’s a bit of a struggle, between the waterlogged fabric and Laurent’s insistence on kissing every bared inch of Damen’s skin, but eventually he pulls it off and tosses it to the stone with a wet splat.
“We’ll get that later,” Laurent huffs against Damen’s temple.
He steps back and they both shiver from the separation. Laurent takes one step, then another, reaches his hand back behind him, pale fingers extended. The shirt slips back off his shoulder.
“Come,” he says, “I have missed you.”Damen smiles, takes his hand, and ascends.