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Ferdinand had somehow made a habit of being second best. It wasn’t a freely chosen path, but he couldn’t shake it off. It had stuck. He’d been no more than an afterthought for his father. He hadn’t been the best student at the academy. He hadn’t become the noblest of men. He didn’t even take precedence in Hubert’s heart. And wasn’t that what lovers were for?
He was being unfair, but, when it came to himself, that’s what he was best at. Ferdinand had always set high expectations for himself. What he asked of others, he demanded of himself tenfold. It led to punishing self-evaluations where he always found himself lacking. He could always be better. A better soldier. A better noble. A better person.
He was never good enough at anything. Never the best. Never worthy of giving your all to...
The harsh Faerghus weather wasn’t exactly helping Ferdinand’s self-deprecating mood. Edelgard had ordered an invasion of the Tailtean Plains, an attempt to disrupt trade routes and agricultural production. A daring and risky strategy, to be sure, but one that would offer high rewards if successful. But things had gone sour. They’d reached a stalemate. One that left the Imperial forces camping just outside the Tailtean Plains in the now bitter cold.
The cold wasn’t just piecing Ferdinand’s flesh; it had worked its way into his very psyche. He couldn’t stop thinking. His thoughts were frozen in a loop.
Hubert. It always came down to Hubert. He couldn’t stop thinking about him. About his place in Hubert’s life. About the way he was always second to someone. Second. Second. Second. He couldn’t even choose a lover who would love him best. Love him more than anyone else.
Ferdinand knew it wasn’t the same. He knew Hubert didn’t love Edelgard that way. He couldn’t and didn’t want to. Hubert’s desire was all Ferdinand’s. But everything else belonged to Edelgard. His time. His loyalty. His devotion. Of these, Ferdinand got what was left at the end of the day. And he hated it sometimes. How he had to compete for the scraps of Hubert’s heart he held in his hands. Pitiful, really, how he demanded more when he’d known from the start he could not be first. Edelgard had been there from the beginning. Hubert had chosen her long before he’d chosen Ferdinand.
Ferdinand was working himself up, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He was cold and knew he should change into warmer clothes, drape the furs well within reach over his shoulders, and settle down his rapidly beating heart. But it seemed an impossible task. He could feel the tension building in his body. A sting behind his eyes. A scratch in his throat. He hated it. Hated his traitorous thoughts. Hated his hands for shaking for want of something to do.
He briefly considered screaming but swallowed the sound. He didn’t want anyone coming into the tent asking questions he didn’t want to offer answers to. But he had to do something. He had to cut off the thoughts, somehow, before they seeped into everything.
He scanned the objects inside the tent for anything of use, but all he saw were reminders of what he wanted to believe in but couldn’t. A heap of rumpled furs. Clean underclothes neatly folded and stacked together. A table littered with his scattered hairbrushes and whatever poisons Hubert had seen fit to leave behind.
When had that happened? When had they started acting like this was something real and not a catastrophe waiting to happen? When had he fooled himself into thinking this wasn’t a whisper away from falling apart?
He couldn’t keep this. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t his. Not really. He was on borrowed time. He was a slip-up Hubert was bound to correct sooner or later.
Ferdinand shivered, but his response was born more from the losing battle against his tears than the cold.
It was like this that Hubert found him: trembling and eyes shining with unshed tears.
Ferdinand didn’t want to look at him. He shouldn’t look at him. He couldn’t help himself.
His eyes found green. Green. Green. Green. Ferdinand wanted...
He wanted. So much it scared him. So much it threatened to tear him apart.
Goddess help him. He wanted it all. Not just Hubert’s body, sweat-slick and willing and pliable and ready. Not just Hubert’s voice, broken and pleading his name. More. He wanted to falter and feel Hubert there to steady him. He wanted to scream and have it echo in Hubert’s voice: his rage and his joy and his fear. He wanted Hubert to think and find him lurking in his every thought, hiding behind every choice he made. He wanted Hubert to dream and see him in every whim and scheme. He wanted to be Hubert’s star, fixed in his future like the blood on his hands.
Ferdinand tore his gaze away. His eyes found what was left of a small campfire. Really, it was no more than small, shriveled twigs and ashes. The remains of another bad decision. Kindling that was only ever lit when Hubert was there.
As he watched, Hubert crouched opposite to him before what was once a fire. Without a word, he meticulously arranged the new kindling he’d brought with him. His movements careful and precise.
When he set it ablaze, only then did Hubert ask, “What troubles you?”
“Why are you here, Hubert?” Ferdinand gestured at the tent around them, at a space that even in its sparseness spoke of them both. Tried to breathe them to life. “Why are we here? What’s there to gain? It’s not like we’re doing each other any favors by pretending we both feel the same.”
The fire sparked, embers scattering. Ferdinand could feel the heat of it.
Hubert’s posture was rigid, his eyes alight. “Pretending? What could you possibly mean by that?”
Ferdinand’s reply came without hesitation, easy as a lance in his grip in the thick of battle. “What is this between us if not the shadow of a relationship? Empty of substance for lack of equal investment.”
Hubert launched to his feet, reaching across the fire for the front of Ferdinand’s uniform, bunching the material in his hands, heedless of the flames. “Do you mean to imply that I’m not committed to you? Nothing I do is halfway. I’m either with you or against you. I made my choice long ago.”
Ferdinand shook his head, pushing Hubert away from him. “And what am I to make of Edelgard? How is this not halfway when your first thought is of her and not of me? When it’s time to make a decision, do you not think first of what benefits her? Of what it might cost her? Am I to believe you said yes to this without thinking first of how it would affect her? How your single-minded devotion to her vision might stray?”
“It’s not a competition, Ferdinand! There is no first or second. Every choice I make is with all of us in mind. You. Her. Me.”
Hubert was only proving Ferdinand’s point. There wasn’t a thing Hubert knew to do that didn’t come with a thought spared for Edelgard. She was embedded in everything. It was unbearable. He wanted to be loved for the sake of being loved and to hell with the repercussions. To hell with what it might mean for Edelgard! “But it is a competition! If you had to choose between your love for her and your love for me, which do you think would bend first? Would you dare lie to my face and say your love for her isn’t steady as steel and your love for me brittle as firewood?”
“You cannot ask me to choose! How dare you ask me to choose?” Finally! Finally, Hubert was getting angry. He should be angry. Ferdinand wanted him angry. It was better than a placating Hubert. Closer to the truth.
“This is war! There are always choices to be made—”
“No!” Hubert’s voice broke on the word, but he didn’t stop. His eyes shone with an emotion Ferdinand didn’t want to recognize. Refused to name. “This is love! You cannot pit it against itself. There’s nowhere for it to give!”
“But there is give! It does break for one side or another. Have we not allies who fight their own people? Allies who choose us over that which they also love?” Couldn’t Hubert see? See how it killed him to always come second? To know, if it came to it, Ferdinand would be left with nothing of Hubert? Pushed to the side as not useful enough. Not valuable enough. Not worth the expense.
“We are not them! We don’t have to make that choice.”
Hubert tried to take a step toward him, but Ferdinand scrambled away, the thought of being touched excruciating. He’d rather feel the bite of the cold air. “But you already have.”
There it was again, that emotion in Hubert’s eyes. Jagged and ready to cut into Ferdinand. It wasn’t real. Ferdinand couldn’t believe in it. If he did, he’d bleed out. “The moment I decided to be with you, I refused to put either of you over the other. I thought I wouldn’t have to. In the most crucial moment, you chose to stand by Edelgard. To stand by me. Painstakingly, I opened my heart to you because I thought you wouldn’t turn it against me. I thought you understood there was enough room for you both.”
“I don’t want to share! I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to settle. I want all of you, Hubert von Vestra! I want everything or nothing at all.” Why did his traitorous body have to do this now? Why did his tears have to come now and taint his words with petulance? He knew what he must look like: a spoiled brat. A noble who couldn’t handle being refused his every wish.
“You already have it all! Can you not see that?”
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. His brain refused to accept Hubert’s words. His mouth continued with its wounding words. “All I see is you choosing her over me. Time and time again. If we both need you, you answer her call before mine. If she asked you to throw me aside, you would.”
Hubert moved so quickly Ferdinand hardly caught the movement. He grabbed fistfuls of Ferdinand’s hair, wrapping it around his fist without an ounce of tenderness. He wanted it to hurt, and it did. Ferdinand could hardly breathe through the sting. His eyes met green, and his heartbeat stuttered. Beautiful. So beautiful. “Edelgard has no control over this.”
Ferdinand forgot about the pain, about the green of Hubert’s eyes, about the erratic beat of his heart. He barked out a laugh, a derisive sound borrowed from Hubert. Just another way he’d entangled himself in the web that was Hubert von Vestra without realizing he would be forgotten there.
Hubert’s expression darkened, his grip tightening on Ferdinand’s hair. “She could not forbid me from having you.”
“And if I stood against her? Would you choose me then?”
As if he’d been struck, Hubert instinctively let go of him. “But you don’t. You wouldn’t.”
Ferdinand pushed on. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for Hubert to break. “But what if I did? What if I refused to shed more blood in the name of a zealot who doesn’t know when to stop?”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Answer the question, Hubert! Would you choose her or me?” Words turned to venom in his mouth. In his mind, the only one they could poison was Ferdinand himself. “Or would you just stand there beside her and watch me leave? Bury your tears so deep you forgot they were there?”
Hubert forced his gaze away from him like he could not stand to look upon Ferdinand any longer. His hands were clenched into fists. “Why are you intent on hurting me?”
Look at me, Ferdinand wanted to say. Look me straight on and tell me we’ll last. But the words didn’t make it out. “Why can’t you just love me as you do her?”
“You’re asking me to compare unlike things, Ferdinand! The way I feel about you is nothing like what I feel for Edelgard.”
The tears were coming back. Oh, how he loathed them. “Because it pales in comparison, doesn’t it? She’s a bonfire, and I’m a candle flame.”
“How am I to compare the air I breathe to the water I drink? It cannot be done! They both keep me alive.”
“Unequally,” Ferdinand spat out.
“Stop this. Now.”
“I won’t. I can’t. Don’t you see?” He could taste the salt of tears on his tongue. He wanted to scrub it out.
It was barely a whisper, “Ferdinand.”
“I just want you to love me enough to fight for me. Enough to break for me!”
“I would beg on my hands and knees to keep you by my side!”
“But you wouldn’t leave with me.”
“I would never stand against you.”
Ferdinand let out a sound that was near hysterical. When had he fallen to this point? He was breaking so easily under the words of one man. Hubert stood there fighting, resisting, matching his every word with a stroke of his own, and it was Ferdinand who kept bending under the pressure. “How can you—”
“Shut up! I would never raise a hand against you. You could leave Edelgard’s side—my side, and you would never be my enemy. You could join the other’s ranks, you could strategize and do whatever you wanted: kill our soldiers, burn our crops, invade the Imperial Palace itself! And I would still destroy whoever dared to hurt you. I would tear them limb from limb if they took you away from me forever. You could come for me, set to kill me, and I’d let you. I’d stand before you, and I wouldn’t cast a single spell. Wouldn’t lift a finger. I’d look into your eyes one last time and ask you to stand by me. You want me to choose you? How about you choose me?” Hubert’s voice broke on the last word.
Ferdinand’s heart shattered, sewed itself back into shape, broke again. He ran toward Hubert, throwing his arms around the other man. He opened his mouth, and all that came out was a rambling stream, “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry.”
It wasn’t nearly enough. He knew it wasn’t. But all other words stuck to his throat, fear lodging them into place. How could Ferdinand put to words how Hubert was what he thought of when in the thick of battle, when winning was uncertain? How could he say that the mere memory of the taste of Hubert on his tongue, the heat of him, was enough to keep him strong?
There was no world in which Ferdinand von Aegir could live without Hubert von Vestra, but words did not exist to encapsulate the entirety of what he felt.
“I chose you so long ago, I can hardly remember a time I imagined my life without you in it...” Selfish. Selfish. Selfish. When would he learn to give? “But I can see you living your life without me.”
Hubert finally returned Ferdinand’s embrace, wrapping his arms around Ferdinand’s waist so tightly Ferdinand could hardly breathe. He didn’t want to.
“I don’t want to live in a world without you in it. I’m thankful for each day I get to look upon your face, get to hear you say my name, get to feel your touch... It is a gift; one I struggle to believe is mine to keep. I fear the day you decide you no longer return my affections. It lives in the back of my head: the thought that one day you’ll refuse to soil your hands with me.”
“You are not spoiled goods, Hubert von Vestra!” The words were fierce. An automatic reflex, just as the hand he buried in Hubert’s dark tresses, holding on tight. If he had to, Ferdinand would use his last, dying breath to reassure Hubert he was a good man. There wasn’t a hand between them that hadn’t tasted blood, and Ferdinand would not have it any differently.
Ferdinand loved him. Loved him so much it hurt sometimes. It scraped him hollow. It sung in his veins. It followed the beat of his heart. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Hubert pulled against Ferdinand’s grip on his hair, seeking eye contact. Ferdinand relented, his grip slackening, but just barely. “You gorgeous and insufferable man, how I adore you.”
Ferdinand threaded his next words with as much certainty as he could amass. “If it is a future with me you want, I know of a way to guarantee it.”
He did not hesitate. He did not wait for a response. He crouched in one smooth motion, hand searching for the knife he knew Hubert kept hidden in the lining of his left boot. He smiled at its familiar weight in his hand.
Before Hubert could ask any questions, he cut off a lock of his fiery hair. In almost the same breath, he reached for Hubert’s hair, the temptation to cut from the fringe that covered his face intense, but he convinced himself to grasp the hair at the back of his head, cutting in one smooth motion.
“Ferdinand, how do you...?” His train of thought veered paths. “Are you certain?”
He ignored the question. Instead, he slipped the blade into his mouth and bit down.
Hubert made an incredibly distracting sound Ferdinand very much wanted to respond to—something between a moan and a groan of longing—but he maintained his focus.
With his now freed hands, Ferdinand painstakingly began to braid their strands of hair together. Their twining was a precise art; it had to match the description he’d read in a tome he probably shouldn’t have read in the first place. This was a secret: one to share only with Hubert.
When he managed it, their hair perfectly interlocked, Ferdinand drew the blade from his mouth and met Hubert’s eyes. Steady. Unafraid. “This is what I want, but I will not force your hand, Hubert. We finish this only if you wish to.”
“It’s magic, Ferdinand. The irreversible kind.”
“Yes. Magic neither of us can refute.”
Ferdinand’s gaze was unwavering, and Hubert gave a small nod. He reached for the knife in Ferdinand’s grasp and pricked his finger with it, blood welling easily where blade met skin.
Hubert touched the blood to their locks of hair.
Ferdinand could hear his heartbeat in his ears. It was wild, desperate. Hopeful.
He didn’t bother taking the knife from Hubert. He simply moved his finger close enough for the blade to pierce his skin.
He let a drop seep into their joined hair.
Hubert took hold of their locks of hair and walked toward the fire. Only in his absence did Ferdinand suddenly remember the cold. It slipped into the places Hubert had filled just moments before.
Ferdinand shivered and followed the other man, searching for his warmth. He kneeled before the fire and stared into the flames. When Hubert did not immediately join his side, Ferdinand looked up at him. He caught the tremble in his lover’s frame as he took a deep breath.
With stiff movements, Hubert knelt beside him. He sought Ferdinand’s gaze. “Are you absolutely certain you want to do this?”
Ferdinand ran his fingers through Hubert’s hair. The other man shuddered, his eyes closing as he took another sharp intake of breath. “I have no doubts. This is what I want. You and this magic. Us, entwined.”
Hubert opened his eyes, and their green was so bright Ferdinand thought he could feel it on his skin. How could anyone call that gaze cold? It was luminous. Unmistakable. His. His. His.
“How will we word it? A vow to each other...”
“And our future together,” Ferdinand answered simply. He knew the magic did not ask for much, not in the matter of words.
Ferdinand cupped his hand over Hubert’s, trapping their hair together.
Without having to say another word, the pair moved in unison. Their joined hands hovered over the fire and drew away at the same moment. The locks fell into the flames.
Their words came out more prayer than promise, “A vow to each other and our future together.”
Ferdinand felt it immediately. He gasped as the magic seized his heart, squeezing before letting go. He looked to his lover and found him shaking, his hand hovering over his heart.
He grabbed Hubert’s hand, bringing it to his mouth and kissing his fingertips. Hubert visibly relaxed, the tension in his shoulders suddenly leaving.
Ferdinand smiled, the expression curling his lips before he could stop it. He let all his want, his need, his satisfaction, finally drip all over him. It settled over his bones. It slid into his words. “You’re mine now.”
Hubert’s voice shook with an unspoken emotion, “As are you.”
Ferdinand’s eyes flashed.
“You’ve been remarkably patient with me,” he purred, slipping one of Hubert’s fingers into his mouth. He curled his tongue around the digit, sucking it in deeper.
He had Hubert’s undivided attention.
He laughed, an easy sound. Familiar.
“What does my Hubert want?”
“You. Always you.”
The end