Archive of Our Own ^beta

Well, at least Count Vorfolse had stopped shouting, though Gregor didn't think whining was much better.

"This is theft, and nothing less. Sire, you will not allow this, will you?"

"It seems to me," Gregor said, "that neither of you has a particularly compelling claim to the land." Vorfolse and Vorberg had both completely ignored the village straddling their historically fuzzy district border, except to occasionally scrape up a pittance in tax revenue. At least until geologists had found a deep vein of porphyry copper that was so rich in molybdenum that it was worth actual mining because it was cheaper than importing the manufactured substitute.

Armsman Rastolitz slipped in and came around to Gregor's shoulder. Gregor lifted a thankful hand to pause proceedings and took the note offered him.

I'm upstairs. Call me if it turns into a brawl – I want to watch. M.

He checked his chrono. He'd apparently been wildly optimistic about this meeting when he'd asked Miles to come see him tonight. Then again, he hadn't seen Miles in a long five days, as he'd gone down to his district with his parents, so Gregor couldn't blame himself for over-eagerness. He wrote quickly on the same page.

I'll be another fifteen minutes. Make yourself at home.

Rastolitz trotted back out and Gregor returned his attention to the problem at hand. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "Now, where were we?"

"My colleague was demonstrating his case of . . . sour grapes," Count Vorberg drawled, deliberately provoking. It would have been bad enough with Vorfolse's struggling winery about to close. But this year, his heir had been contracted to wed Vorberg's youngest daughter, and her generous dowry, before Vorberg had instead matched her to a wealthy commercial scion. He just had to go there, didn't he?

They went on for half an hour, despite Gregor's best efforts. By the end he was disinclined to rule in either of their favor. But at last he escaped, scheduled to see them both again tomorrow, and made it upstairs.

He swung into the apartment, eager as a boy half his age, but pulled up in the empty sitting room. The dining room was dark, too. Surely Miles would have sent down another note if he'd needed to leave?

Gregor turned up the hall, peeking into doors. Miles wasn't hitched up on the corner of the kitchen counter exploring the newly-installed wine rack, or poking through the library, or working in the study. He was curled at the head of the bed in a warm pool of lamplight, jacket and boots abandoned, with his cheek resting on his curled hands and Gregor's pillow shoved under his shoulder. Gregor paused in the bedroom doorway, thrilled at this new intimacy. Miles had him, with effortless possession. That had been true for a long time, and it had been wonderful and terrible. It was only joy now, to watch Miles coming to believe it and take what he was offered.

Gregor crossed the room silently, left his boots on the closet floor and his dinner jacket for the laundry. Miles hadn't stirred when he came back out, and Gregor could see his eyes moving behind their fragile lids. He hoped it was a good dream.

He went around to the far side of the bed and climbed up carefully. Miles was tired, clearly. They could catch up later, and it wasn't like it would be a disappointment to hold him for a few hours, or however long Miles's and Allegre's mutually reinforcing paranoias would let him stay tonight.

Gregor slid up behind him, trying to figure out if he could get an arm under Miles's head without waking him. That did not look comfortable, with his neck to one side and his shoulders curled in, but then again Miles's slept in some very strange positions when he was hurting, which seemed to be far more often than Gregor had realized before he had a guarded sort of permission to ask about these things.

He set a hand on Miles hip. And in the same instant Miles was moving like a striking snake, coming up and around with his eyes barely open but his teeth set in a snarl, and Gregor was on his back with all his breath gone and a hard forearm across his throat. His body spasmed in a reflexive scramble at defense, but he controlled it and went limp, unthreatening.

"Miles," he croaked.

Miles was already sitting up, wide awake and horrified. "Oh, God, did I hurt you?"

"No, no," Gregor said, resisting the urge to rub his throat. Miles did it for him, exaggeratedly gentle with nerves. "I'm fine, really," Gregor said. Miles's fingers came to rest over his racing pulse, and Gregor swallowed, dry-mouthed.

"Sorry," Miles said, patently miserable. "I really didn't . . . sorry."

Gregor deliberately set his hand back at Miles's waist, thumb riding his bony hip. Miles shied under his touch – residual adrenaline, clearly – and Gregor gave him a moment of silence to settle into it.

"It's fine," Gregor said softly. "And I apologize. I should have known better than to surprise you like that." Thoughtless of him, and not the first time, or surely the last. Having Miles here drove much of his sense and methodical calm right out; he'd proven that clearly enough when he'd sent Miles running to Sergyar. And he really did know better. Miles had managed to evade several of the mandatory psychological evaluations Illyan had implemented by virtue of being on the other side of the nexus or unconscious in the hospital, but there were a few reports in his file.

And you didn't have to read them anyway, once you realized that Miles never sat with his back to an open door, and managed to stay three steps out of arm's reach without making it look like anything, and scoped exit routes so instinctively that he probably didn't even know it himself. They'd never talked about it, it was just one of the things that had come clear to Gregor after the long years spent in devoted study of Miles.

"Um," Miles said, and bit down on a fingertip. "Yeah, I really should have said earlier. I don't wake up well sometimes." His mouth twisted over this bland description. "I suggest poking me with a long stick and then backing away."

"I'll be more careful," Gregor said, letting the diversionary levity slide by.

"And I should mention, I have dreams sometimes," Miles added. "I'm told I can get, um, upset."

Told by Quinn, probably. She'd shared his bed more consistently and more often than anyone else, as far as Gregor could tell. "Of course," he said, and made his smile as untroubled as he could. It must have worked, because the worry line between Miles's brows eased, and his mouth softened from a self-conscious furrow. Gregor stroked his thumb up and down Miles's side until the quiet was comfortable again, then spoke. "Are you planning on letting me up?" he asked plaintively. Miles's had released the initial pin, but his knee still rested a bit alarmingly just below Gregor's solar plexus.

Miles's eyes narrowed suddenly on him. "About that," he said. "I know for a fact you've been doing self-defense drills since you were five – please tell me that wasn't the best you can do."

"I didn't want to hurt you," Gregor protested. He realized only after it was out of his mouth that it was yet another mistake. He had meant to say, I trust you, but Miles would hear only, I think you are fragile. Which was so far from the truth, it was almost funny. He had spent the past four hours handling an explosive clash of personalities with care and finesse, and now with Miles he was clumsy again and again.

"Huh," Miles said, unrevealingly. "You do still have self-defense training, yes?"

"Four times a week," Gregor said. "With Vortala now, mostly, but also Allegre. And Devon Kurtz, when he's on-planet."

"Who?" Miles asked, successfully diverted.

"He won the hand-to-hand title in the last Galactic Games," Gregor said. "Once in a while he lets me close enough to tap him, but mostly he just knocks me down a lot."

"Can I come watch?" Miles asked with alarming interest.

"Um . . ." There were a number of people who really could use a demonstration that the Imperial backside bruised as spectacularly as any other. Miles was not one of them. "I'll see what I can do," Gregor said diplomatically.

"So you really could do better," Miles said, returning doggedly to his original point.

"Well, yes," Gregor said. Of course he could, after nearly a lifetime of expert tutelage, notwithstanding that he had only average athletic gifts and no real interest beyond educated paranoia. But he was confident in his ability to defend himself one-on-one, largely untested as it was. Against Miles? The question had never even occurred to him before. Uncomfortable thought – was this something Miles really needed to know?

"Best two out of three?" Miles said with sudden cheer, and went for a chokehold.

Gregor was wide open and vulnerable with one hand at Miles's waist and the other on his knee. It took a fraught five seconds to scramble his hands out of a lover's hold and into a fighter's defense. He broke Miles's first grip, and they traded holds for a long sprint of seconds – wrists, thumbs, forearms, wrists again. Miles was fast and – no surprise – stronger than he looked.

Exasperated, Gregor rolled him off. The bout expanded; Miles's bare feet were suddenly a threat, and his knees, and damnably bony elbows. They tussled across the bed, then back. A stack of pillows went skidding distractingly onto the floor, and Miles jabbed two hooked fingers at Gregor's eyes. He pulled it at the last second, but it worked anyway. He got one of Gregor's wrists, then planted a foot for leverage and shoved with his knee. Gregor was pinned on his stomach this time, with Miles's entire weight on his back and quick breath in his ear.

There was a brief pause. Gregor breathed into the crumpled sheets. "Ah, romance," he said, muffled.

Miles laughed and thumped down beside him. His hand cupped warmly around the nape of Gregor's neck, converted back to tenderness with the flip of a switch. "All right?" he asked.

"Fine." Gregor stretched out an ache in his lower back. He would have a bruise or two, perhaps. Miles had been going for control through technique, not pain. "Do I pass?" Did you get what you needed?

"I wouldn't have tossed you out of my fleet," Miles said, and Gregor took the compliment as meant. Miles ran his small, strong fingers up and down the column of Gregor's neck, homing in on the persistent tension ache on the right, just below his hairline. Gregor turned his head sideways to look at him, just because he liked to. Miles was looking back, half-smiling. The thrum of the unexpected physicality felt good. He'd always found hand-to-hand off-puttingly intimate – the close, fast breathing, the striving of one body against another. With Miles it was just intimate, and Gregor thought he might truly understand one of his planet's unwavering obsessions for the first time.

Miles's touched a fingertip to Gregor's lower lip and reeled him in with a long, steady look. They kissed slowly, and then again with more heat. Miles bit Gregor's lip where his finger had rested, then withdrew half an inch.

"Best two out of three?" he asked, voice low and eyes crinkling. Then the alarm on his chrono shrilled, and he jerked back to slap it off. "Damn it," he said, and sat up.

"Oh," Gregor said. It was entirely inadequate to express the silent loathing he'd developed for Miles's chrono over the past few weeks. It doled out their time together in miserly little crumbs, just enough to hold off starvation.

"I should go," Miles said, like he always did. He'd stayed the night just once in the month since the mess with the Cetagandans and the Athosians, and then he'd slipped out to creep home hours before dawn. Gregor could respect his reasons even as he silently hated them. Of all the times for you to discover the meaning of caution . . .

If he asked just right, would Miles stay for a few more hours, paranoia and all? Better not to ask, because it was probably better not to know.

"When can I see you again?" he asked instead.

"I'm staying in the city for a while," Miles said, slipping off the bed and retrieving his boots. "And I think my parents are finally going back to Sergyar soon." He pulled a martyred face over his shoulder, but neither of them smiled. It might have been funny, the way the Countess had been gleefully hovering. It might have been funny, that is, if only the Count had spoken more than five words to Gregor in the past month. "I'll look at your schedule, figure something out," Miles said.

Gregor considered the next week, already blocked out in five-minute increments, and winced. He wondered wistfully what would happen if he gave Miles's free rein to cancel and reshuffle at will in order to fit himself in. How marvelous to let him rearrange Gregor's stifled life to suit him, the way he punched up his pillow before going to sleep. Then again, he might just as easily exercise that maddening caution.

"Good night," Miles said, and came back to the bed to kiss him. He liked to run his thumb along Gregor's jaw, and then touch his mouth when he pulled back. Gregor kissed his fingertip, eyes closed, and let him go.

He slept badly, and by the time he'd tossed and turned long enough to realize it was going to be one of those nights, it was too late for any of the eight-hour sleep timers. He bobbed in and out of unremembered dreams, and slammed straight into wakefulness when the alarm went off.

He didn't linger on the balcony for breakfast in the weak winter sun, so Allegre came to brief him in his office, coffee in hand. He paused the briefing unasked halfway through to go fetch Gregor a second cup. Unfocussed energy was already shivering just beneath Gregor's skin, but he drank it anyway, if only to have something to do with his hands. Odd – he'd eliminated his tendency to fidget nearly a decade ago, after multiple diplomats read it as distraction or carelessness.

Allegre left after an uneventful half hour, crossing paths with Staveley. The comconsole chimed, and Gregor forestalled the recitation of his schedule to look at the message, as not many people had his direct comconsole code. It was a note from Racozy, terse and obviously irritated, letting him know that the fragile one-vote majority on the educational reforms had just vanished overnight. Gregor stared at it, quietly exasperated. Count Vorbataille appeared to be the problem. Well, him and 29 other tight-fisted members of Barrayar's illustrious elite, but Vorbataille had been with them just yesterday. And Gregor didn't have to ask Staveley to know if he wanted to deal with this today, it would have to be late tonight in the window of unscheduled personal time. He really shouldn't get too involved, in any case: it seemed to him that educational standards requiring literacy as a minimum were a human rights issue, not a partisan one, but apparently he was in the minority on that.

All right, who could shore up Racozy? Ah, of course. He forwarded the note to Miles. He'd been off-planet scuttling his military career during the initial drafting, but Gregor had a feeling Miles would take up this cause willingly.

"All right," he said to Staveley, sitting back. "Hit me."

The day was grueling and exasperating. His first appointment ran just late enough to domino everything else off-track, and a tightly-scheduled morning turned into a sprinted series of meetings – planning for the military recruitment push on Komarr, shipbuilding budgets, the Vorline succession dispute, import taxes again.

He ate lunch in the aircar on the way north for a whirlwind string of appearances across three districts. Ministers Van and Nimachov came with him, and Gregor moderated their escalating fiscal policy argument between bites. And then it was a solid four hours of perfect posture and appropriately imperial smiles. That was second-nature by now, but today for some reason he had to think about every detail – hands down and relaxed, not fiddling with his pockets, not twisting around each other, expression calm but not vacant.

And then it was Vorberg and Vorfolse over dinner again. Vorberg had brought his daughter, which was not promising. And indeed, they managed to lose any ground they might have gained yesterday, and then possibly some more. Gregor kept it going longer than was smart – he should have cut the whole thing short as soon as they finished eating, but he kept trying and trying to get some traction with at least one of them. He finally commanded each of them to bring a reasonable suggested compromise to their next session, anticipating a drawn out discussion of the word "reasonable" to come.

He got home an hour later than planned, and went straight upstairs to his wonderfully quiet apartment, thinking of a book and a fire and maybe a glass of wine to banish the ache radiating up his neck into the base of his skull. Or maybe not. It was far too easy to let one glass turn into three, and he'd made a number of firm personal promises about drinking alone and feeling sorry for himself nearly a decade ago. And really, there was only one person on the entire planet he wanted to share a bottle with right now, and he was decidedly not here.

His com beeped, the tiny wrist one tucked into his cuff, because Miles had alarming timing like that.

"Hi," Gregor said, already beginning to smile.

". . . and if he doesn't, he can bloody well explain why," Miles was saying in a muffled voice. "Hi," he added into the com.

"Problem?" Gregor asked.

"Yes, and thank you so much for that," Miles said. "Thanks, that's all," he added aside, and Gregor heard a door close. "Ah," Miles said, sounding relieved. There was a thump, as if he'd just thrown himself flat on his sitting room sofa, or maybe his bed.

"What did I do?" Gregor asked, then remembered. "Oh, right, did you turn Vorbataille around again?" He stepped out of the kitchen and passed the study for the bedroom.

"No, and he'd just as soon filet me as look at me right now." Miles sounded completely unconcerned. "But I got you Vorthys and Vorpatril."

"Really?" Gregor kicked off his boots and sat on the edge of the bed. "How did you manage that?"

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that," Miles said airily. "A bit more this than that, with emphasis on the back country charm with just a hint of nurtured self-interest and maybe a touch of voodoo. That's not the interesting bit."

"It's not?" Gregor said, leaning back. He loved lying there, listening to Miles talk. With the com on the pillow it was – all right, it was really nothing like having him there in person.

"The interesting bit is Vorbataille," Miles said. "He flipped because Vormuir asked him to."

Gregor blinked. Vormuir publicly opposed educational reform for a number of outspoken reasons that were pretextual but not absurd, and the unspoken reason that he could be a backwards classist sometimes. But he and Vorbataille were not exactly bosom political allies. "In exchange for what?"

"For a seat on the Budget Committee when it's shuffled over the summer. Spreadsheets voluntarily – can you imagine?"

"But Vormuir doesn't chair the committee," Gregor protested. "He isn't even a senior member."

"No, but Vorpinski is, and he apparently agreed to do them a favor."

"In exchange for what?" Gregor said again, with a sinking feeling.

"Ah, this is where it gets complicated." Miles paused, and there was the clink of a glass. "See, Countess Vorpinski has a little wool operation as a personal business. The homegrown kind that comes attached to sheep. She does the shearing, the spinning, and the dying, and sells to a bunch of snooty Vorbarr Sultana tailors. All well and good, until someone on the southern continent imported a molecular sequencing program that can actually do creditable wool. Better, I'd think, because no sheep. And naturally they undercut Countess Vorpinski's prices and she's frothing at the mouth. So her doting husband wants Dalari – the one who runs the shipping, not his brother with the Jacksonian prostitutes – to refuse to carry the artificial wool. And Vormuir is old school chums with Dalari."

"And what did he want?" Gregor asked.

"Well, he really wants his daughter to marry you," Miles said blithely. "I contemplated clawing her eyes out, but she's actually a nice enough girl, by all accounts. But failing you, Dalari'll settle for the first available Count's heir within forty years of an appropriate age match. Who is . . ."

"Frederick Vorlakail," Gregor said promptly.

"Right. Whose father is quite amenable to the girl – and her inheritance, naturally – provided that pet coastal restoration project of his that mysteriously appears to employ only his relatives gets another infusion of cash from, you guessed it, the Budget Committee."

"So you had a busy day," Gregor said, smiling up at the ceiling.

"Oh, you haven't heard the best part yet," Miles said, still in full sail. "Ask me what the best part is."

"What's the best part?" Gregor obliged. A bubble of giddiness burst in his brain, just listening to Miles rant.

"Dalari and Vorlakail brought their respective offspring to dinner – it's prudent to let the young people chat for half an hour about how many children they want and whether they hate cabbage before signing all the papers, you know. Except it didn't quite go to plan, Freddie ended up wearing the gravy boat for a hat, and there were declarations of undying loathing on both sides. I'm liking this girl better all the time, by the way – hell of an arm she's got."

"So no subsidies for the Count's relatives," Gregor said, making a mental note to put together an appropriate team of experts to go down and ask a lot of highly technical questions about coastal restoration.

"Nope." He could hear Miles's stretch. "And Dalari said he'd carry whatever he damn well wanted to, and Vorpinski told Vormuir to – well, I won't repeat it, unless you're a lot more interested in sheep than I think you are – and Vorbataille won't get his budget seat. Though by then, he hated me enough to vote against just for me. But because I flipped Vorthys and Vorpatril, it'll pass anyway."

"Well, thank you for hand – wait, hold on." Gregor rolled over, frowning suspiciously at the com. "How do you know she threw the gravy boat at him?"

"It's all over Vorbarr Sultana, obviously." There was a brief pause. "Also, I might've been at the next table over."

Gregor thought very quickly. "Do I want to know what you did?" he asked.

"Gregor." Miles sounded quite offended. "Do you really think Frittering Freddie Vorlakail needs my help to make a woman hate him?" Which was in no way an answer. "So anyway, that's that," Miles breezed on. "How was your day, dear?"

"Awful," Gregor said honestly. Miles made a noise of concerned inquiry. "Nothing terrible. It's just . . . people."

"You know, I forget that about you sometimes," Miles said. "You make it look so effortless."

"It's not," Gregor said, and laughed without humor.

"So what happened today?"

Gregor rolled his head, stretching against the tension. "Just people being selfish and greedy and petty. Most of the time I really like that work – making people meet in the middle when they're talking past each other. But other days it all just makes me tired."

"Are you tired right now?" Miles asked, and something had changed in his voice.

"No," Gregor said. "I'm really not." He was crawling out of his skin, like he had been all day.

"Can I see you?" Miles asked. "Tonight? Right now?"

Gregor's body responded to that tone; he breathed in quickly, pulse jumping in his throat. "Yes," he said. He should be asleep in the next hour in order to get a full night's rest, but it wasn't like that was going to happen anyway. And oh God, he'd chained up all the wanting for ten years – no surprise now it was greedy and ungovernable.

"Are you in bed?" He heard Miles moving, a thump and a rustle.

Gregor looked down at himself, still dressed. "Um sort of," he said, and swallowed. "Should I – do you want me to be?"

Miles laughed, warm and breathless. "Yes, that's nice," he said. "Just stay there, all right? I'll let myself in."

"Yes," Gregor said, because Miles had managed to say what Gregor hadn't known he wanted until just that moment.

"Twenty minutes," Miles said, a military commander's reflexive scheduling but delivered like the most intimate of promises.

The com beeped when Miles disconnected. Gregor stared at it a minute, feeling faintly whiplashed. Then he rolled off the bed. He should undress, surely? When Miles had said – yes, yes he should definitely undress. Wait, no. First he sent a quick note downstairs to clear Miles's way, then went back through the apartment to dim the lights. He paused in the kitchen to open a bottle of wine after all and left it out to breathe. Which wasn't bad advice for himself, right about now.

He started down the hall, reversed course, and stuck his head into the study, then the library. Ah. The cat was sleeping across the book he'd left open on the sofa. Gregor firmly closed the door.

Then he went back into the bedroom and slipped out of his clothes. All of them, even though it made him nervily conscious of every inch of skin. He left one lamp on low; the sheets were cool when he slipped between them.

He lay still and straight for a little while, thinking too fast and trying not to look at the clock. I used to be so good at waiting.

It was all still so new and nerve-wracking, even after a half dozen nights spent together, as truncated as they were. At least there were those nights now, instead of the vast, theoretical unknown, with only a few largely uninspiring experiences with women for a guide. And Miles, of course, who'd never been with a man but who'd thrown himself enthusiastically into the breach. And he just knew more – about himself, and how to ask the right questions, and how to make Gregor laugh and relax. Gregor knew he had Miles's previous partners to thank for that, and he was grateful, considering he hadn't much earned wisdom of his own to bring to bed with them.

But they'd never done something like this. Something spontaneous, without the window dressing of dinner and wine and a few hours of lingering looks. This was different.

Miles appeared on silent feet, pausing in the doorway long enough to know he wouldn't startle Gregor. Then he crossed the room in quick strides and popped onto the edge of the bed. "Hi," he said, and they kissed for a long dizzy minute. "That's better," he murmured, easing back. His hands had both slid beneath the covers, and his smile widened as he began to draw them down. Gregor felt himself flush, but he let Miles do what he wanted. He didn't think about his body much. It was just biology that walked and ate and slept; he gave it baseline maintenance and lived in his mind, with books and modern stage drama and problems to solve. But here, with Miles kissing him and Miles's hands sliding down his stomach, he felt like nothing but a web of wildly firing nerve endings.

Miles was in a hurry, which was exactly right, and Gregor felt himself swept along. He pulled at Miles's jacket, then the shirt beneath. Miles made an encouraging noise, then, after a minute of cross-purpose rearranging and fumbling, he rolled away and right off the bed to do it himself. Miles always stripped fast, head up, every line of him saying, I am not body conscious. It was strange how endearing that was. And then he hopped back up onto the bed, grinned, and pounced.

It was like being in bed with an avalanche. Miles was fierce and intense and laughingly competitive. Gregor flung himself into matching him, and was never so glad to be swept away right out of his head.

He lay on his back, after, with Miles dropped crookedly across him. "Ooh," Miles said on a long exhale. "I love endorphins so much." He stretched hugely, then contorted his head to the side and made his shoulder pop, before thumping back down onto Gregor. "And I knew it, by the way," he said.

Gregor licked his lips. "Knew what?"

"You," Miles said, propping his chin in his cupped hands. "You were noisy. I knew it was in there somewhere."

"Oh." Gregor flushed hotly. Yes, it was true, he did recall being somewhat . . . vocal. He also recalled being cruelly provoked, thank you. But mostly he just remembered one quiet moment in all that noisy passion, Miles's eyes open wide as he leaned close, the enveloping fold of his arm around Gregor's neck, the taste of his skin as Gregor kissed the scars on his fingertips, the rasp in his voice when he said, "oh, sweetheart." The memory was incandescent.

Miles was watching him. Gregor had only let his new cat into the gardens once. Negri had come back after two days with a spray of feathers stuck to the corner of his mouth and exactly that expression on his face. Uncanny. Gregor was sure it would be prudent to do something about that. Maybe when he caught his breath and his hands stopped shaking.

Miles tucked a hand behind Gregor's neck. "Better?" he asked.

"Yes. Much." His headache was gone, for one, and he could feel sleep gently tugging.

"Good," Miles said. Then, thoughtfully, "you could have called me, you know."

Gregor frowned, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Tonight. You could have called me. Told me you wanted company."

Gregor shifted, a bit uneasy under that steady look. "I didn't have to, you called me."

"Yeah," Miles agreed easily. "But what's interesting to me is that if I hadn't, you wouldn't have either."

"I don't . . ." Was this a 'relationship talk?'

"Hey now," Miles said. "None of that. I just got you all unknotted." Gregor breathed out deliberately. Miles waited, watching. "You don't ask me for things anymore," Miles said. "Not since the really big question." He smiled, and Gregor returned it helplessly, remembering Miles's hands closing around his. "It's not a criticism, you understand," Miles said. "Just, I might not always be able to figure out what you want if you don't tell me." He waited through Gregor's tongue-tied silence. "Are you worried I won't say no to you?" Miles asked, eyebrows snapping together. "Are you worried that I can't? Because I've got to tell you—"

Gregor found his voice to answer this absurdity. "No," he said, "I don't think that." An obedient man was terrifying; a loyal man could be trusted to disobey.

"So then," Miles said slowly. "You're afraid I'll say no?" He considered Gregor's expression. "Really?"

"I just don't know what I'm doing," Gregor said. He had never wished for eloquence so much in his life.

Miles squeezed the back of his neck. "I'm trying to think of something you would want from me that I wouldn't want to give you," he said. "And there's nothing. Nothing you would ever want for just yourself. Not now."

"When we fought," Gregor said carefully, "when I asked you to move to the Residence—"

"Actually," Miles said calmly, "you didn't ask. And you know what I meant, anyway." He shook Gregor gently. "If you want something from me, when it's just us and you're not all snarled up in your head, if I can do it, it's yours. The answer is yes. It's always going to be yes."

What if I'm always all snarled up in my head? "Okay," Gregor said.

Miles eyed him for a long moment. "Make a list," he said lightly, and dropped his head back to Gregor's shoulder.

He stayed for another hour. It would have been less, but the first time he tried to leave he ended up sitting on the edge of the bed sniggering madly and asking where the staff stored the sheets. They had completely wrecked the bed, and Miles only looked increasingly smug as he stayed to help Gregor remake it and crack a series of terrible jokes about wanton destruction that Gregor tried to pretend weren't funny.

He manhandled Gregor back into bed when they were done, then sat on the edge once he was redressed. "You'll sleep?" he asked.

Gregor nodded, sure that he would.

"Okay," Miles said, and kissed him lingeringly good night. "I would stay, if I could," he said, and left.

The man in the fresher mirror kept smiling, even when Gregor quite firmly tried to stop. He was going to a funeral in less than an hour – his mother's uncle by marriage whom Gregor had met once twenty years ago – and this just wouldn't do. Gregor leaned against the counter and flattened out the inappropriate expression to something somber. All well and good, until his eyes spontaneously crinkled up into laugh lines Gregor would have sworn he didn't actually have. Good God.

Still, it was a beautiful day. He hadn't been out to the balcony yet, but he could already tell.

Allegre came up and briefed him over breakfast, then accompanied him to the funeral. Gregor schooled himself to sober attentiveness, and was almost sure he never looked like he was thinking dreamily of why he'd gotten so little sleep and how soon he could do it again.

He was scheduled to stay for a polite half hour after the ceremony, but his mother's sisters descended in a black-gowned mass and maneuvered him into the receiving line at the reception for a man he'd never actually known. They called him "dear" and patted his cheek familiarly and made him feel like a nice imperial cut of meat, but he could deal with that because it was what they always did. He pled prior engagements after an hour, and was nearly free and clear when his Aunt Lady Belle got to him at the door.

"Before you go, dear," she said brightly.

"Yes?" Gregor said, as if he didn't know perfectly well. Some day soon she was going to present to him some "exquisite young lady" who was the daughter of someone she'd hurled at him when he was seventeen, which was just too appalling to think about.

But she didn't have the familiar look of a dog breeder bringing out a particularly well-pedigreed specimen. "Is there anything you'd like to tell me?" she prompted.

"No, I don't think so," Gregor said slowly.

She frowned at him, playfully severe. "Now now. None of that. You didn't escort anyone to the Vorbretten's ball three nights ago," she said. "Or to the theater last week, or the symphony the week before. People are beginning to talk, you know."

"Are they?" Gregor said. "Well, there's nothing I've ever been able to do or say to stop that."

"Hmm." Lady Belle was of the firm opinion that there was nothing in the world she couldn't put a stop to, if she wanted. "Well, that as it may be," she said, "it's being suggested that you've formed an attachment, but that she's perhaps a bit shy." Incorrect pronoun, and very incorrect adjective. "Or perhaps she needs a little . . . tutoring?" she suggested, misinterpreting his smile. "I'm happy to help, of course."

"Ah, no thank you," Gregor said. This one-sided rivalry with Lady Alys just would never go away. "There is no young lady in need of your assistance."

Lady Belle stopped smiling. "I see," she said. "Well then, I shall find you a suitable escort for your next function."

"Again, no thank you," Gregor said. "That will not be required." It was unnecessary and a bit silly, he knew that. Miles wouldn't mind a few giggling girls, because it wasn't as if Gregor would ever be unfaithful with any of them, in body or spirit. It wasn't like he could be. But it had always been a lie, ever since he'd acknowledged to himself that he looked at women sometimes, when he looked at all, but he didn't always dream of them. And when he had fallen for Miles, it had been doubly a lie. And he just didn't want to do it anymore.

Lady Belle put a firm hand on his arm. "Now dear," she said, and the ratio of playful to severe had shifted quite a bit. "I hope you aren't intending to carry on as you have. Because if you do, there is bound to be . . . speculation."

Speculation being what 'talk' escalated to, apparently. And speculate they would, all of them, which was exactly what he wanted. Yes, share it around at every party, titter behind your hands. Make crude jokes and wonder about extremely private things, until the tawdry gossip is just . . . true. And then one day . . . The sudden cessation of escort duties was an enormous personal relief, and it was also very useful.

"I appreciate your input," Gregor said. "Thank you for your concern. Have a good afternoon." Once he'd figured out that not even Lady Belle would grab his arm and drag him back, getting out of conversations with her was a lot easier.

He got back to his office and squeezed a half hour meeting into twenty minutes, until Staveley came in to tell him that his lunch appointment was waiting. This was handy, because he was entertaining Count Vorkeres' petition for tax relief purely for form's sake.

He excused himself and went down the hall to the dining room, walking slowly so he could refresh his memory with his notes from last month's session.

"Good afternoon," he said, clearing his comp pad to a fresh screen as he came in. "It seems like we have—" he looked up, and blinked. "You're not Minister Diminov," he said.

"Astute, as always," the Countess said, and came over to kiss his cheek. "The good Minister agreed that I needed your time more urgently than he did today, and your secretary was very obliging."

Presumably the secretary who had previously filled the same post for the Lord Regent, and whom the Countess had ensorcelled for the purposes of rearranging people's schedules over twenty-five years ago. "And what's so important?" Gregor asked, mildly concerned.

"Aral and I are leaving for Sergyar day after tomorrow, and I wanted to see you before we go." Miles didn't mention his father to Gregor these days; the Countess spoke of him as regularly as she always had. Neither was particularly comfortable. The Countess tucked her arm into his and tugged him to the table. "Come on, then. It'll be months before we get a chance to chat again."

She was right. Gregor dropped his comp pad and stylus and stack of notes on an end table and hurried to pull out her chair. She thanked him, beaming, then launched straight into the old gentle nagging about his caffeine intake. Gregor nodded in all the right places, made appropriately penitent noises, and bypassed the coffee for the tea. He'd seen her apply the same treatment to Miles, who took it about as well as Negri had his first bath. Gregor just didn't understand that, as he'd always found the little inquisitions about how much he was sleeping and when his last vacation was quite soothing: she might as well have been smoothing his hair and telling him she loved him. And no one else ever did that – no one else cared like that without a flavor of distance or awe or self-interest.

Except Miles, who had listened to him talk over a com for less than two minutes and who'd known what he wanted, and then come and given it to him. Though to be fair, he could practically hear Miles telling him there had been plenty of self-interest going on there, thank you.

"Are you all right?" the Countess asked. "You've just gone the most interesting color."

Gregor coughed. "I'm fine," he said hastily. "You were talking about your plans for the next year?"

"Actually, that was two topics ago," she said sweetly.

He winced. "Sorry. I keep doing that. I don't know where my head is these days." She gave him an incredulous look. "All right, all right, I know exactly where it is."

"That's better," she said. "Shall we dispense with the niceties and just talk about Miles?"

"Can we?" he asked, eager. Who else could he talk to, after all? Lady Alys knew, but that was just unthinkable, and Ivan would probably commit ritual suicide at the very suggestion.

"Why not?" she asked.

"I thought you might not want to get too . . . involved," he said carefully. He knew a lot about neutrality – he'd learned most of it from her. And he was almost sure that if he made an unrecoverable mistake, if Miles got fed up or just came to his senses and broke – their engagement, damn it, it was -- he was almost sure that if Miles left him, he wouldn't also lose the Countess. But still . . .

"Oh good God," she said, looking appalled. "Don't you start clamming up on me. If I don't get my information from you, where am I going to get it?"

"Er . . . Miles?" he offered.

"Ha." She rolled her eyes theatrically. "What a thought. If Miles has a small problem, he figures he shouldn't bother me with it. If he has an enormous problem, he figures he shouldn't worry me with it. At least he's a sweet idiot, I suppose."

"Oh," Gregor said slowly. "So when you keep calling me and asking how things are and making those encouraging mmm noises . . ."

"I'm shamelessly prying to have a hope of figuring out what's going on," she said cheerfully. "So, how are things going?"

"Good," Gregor said. "I mean great. He's . . . he's wonderful, you know?"

"Mmm?" she said.

"He makes me laugh, and he'll talk to me about completely inconsequential things, and he always seems to know what to say." So maybe it was better he couldn't talk to anyone about Miles, because apparently he would just prattle. He took a slow breath. "He's not the problem. I think I am."

"Oh?" she set down her soup spoon and watched him, calm and non-judgmental.

"I don't think being in love with someone is very good preparation for actually being with them," Gregor said.

"Not particularly, no," she said. "A solo and a duet are two entirely different endeavors."

"Yes, that," he said. "And I just think – ten years was a long time, and maybe . . ." He had lived for most of that time fed on his self-sustaining love for Miles, happy sometimes in a bittersweet way. Other times it had been awful – he had been angry and resentful and jealous. And sometimes he had wanted so much, it had hurt, until he made himself stop tracing every expression on Miles's face in a holo message, made himself stop dreaming and go back to surviving. There was so much pent up and waiting, not all of it perfectly sane, and he had already scared Miles off once. "I've wanted this for so long, and he just found out seconds ago, it feels like," he said.

"Ah, I see," said the Countess, in the tones of revelation. "You're afraid that you love him too much.

"That's not quite—"

"Yes, of course, you fiend, clearly my son cannot be subjected to such a thing. He's such a fragile soul."

Gregor scowled. "Now you're just making fun."

"You bet I am."

He sighed. "All right, it's silly. I do know that. It's just that I want so much . . ."

Her face softened. "Of course you do," she said. "And you're not comfortable with that." He shook his head. "I bet I know someone who is, though." Well, that was certainly true. Miles lived his life at a nearly operatic pitch. Gregor didn't have that sort of intensity in him, not all the time. Except for you, every second.

"There are a lot of things we can't have right now," he said. "Miles is being so careful."

She grinned. That had come out a lot more plaintive than intended. "Yes he is. And he's right to be cautious. But I don't need to tell you that you're worse than a fool if you don't take hold of everything you can have."

As usual, it was obvious, once she'd said it. "Yes Ma'am," he said.

"Good. And while you're in that frame of mind, I want letters, you hear? And not a Miles letter, either." She adopted a passable Barrayaran accent. "Dear Beloved Parents, over. Still in one piece, over. Mostly, over. See you in a year, over. Love Miles, end transmission."

"I promise," he said, laughing.

They lingered over dessert, talking of easier things. When she left at last she hugged him and called him "dear" and made him feel like he was treasured.

The afternoon was better. Two hours were blocked off for undisturbed office time to catch up on assorted reading and organize his thoughts. He liked that, though it sometimes made him think wistfully of a university degree. He had dinner with Lady Alys, who had a number of social prescriptions for him, and then went upstairs earlier than he'd managed all week.

He put on some music, tried and discarded three separate books, and removed the cat from the balcony curtains no less than seven times. He wanted to call Miles, but the Countess had said they were having a family dinner out tonight. And if he called Miles whenever he wanted to, he wouldn't really get anything done.

What else do you want?

God, so much. To wake up next to him every morning. To wear a wedding ring. To have a child. Well, children – Miles wanted his own terrifying homegrown platoon.

Miles had said yes to all that, which was going to keep being miraculous for a long time. But he had a very long time to wait, after all. What of that promised banquet could they really have now?

He abandoned books and music and prowling cat and went into the study. He sat at the desk and reached for a flimsy, then changed his mind and went for the cache of personal stationery instead. It was crested and watermarked, but in service to personal correspondence, not official declarations. He thought for a minute, and then wrote:

Dear Miles:

Forgive the format, but I didn't want to interrupt your time with your parents, and there's something I wanted to ask of you. Ask for us, I should say.

We've done this all backwards – we decided where we wanted to be in a decade without deciding where we would be next week. And we are constrained, of course, even though I am greedy and I want it all right now. But that's impossible, and you're not ready, anyway, no matter how terrifyingly fast you caught on to it all. And that's all right. I spent years coding all my locks to your fingerprints – I know better than most that it takes time.

But I've also been at a loss, and overwhelmed. I imagine you could tell. And I am inexperienced, which you also know. I appreciate your patience with my fumbling. I don't always know what to ask for, because I don't always know what to want. But there is one thing that we can do, if we are careful, and I want it very much.

Gregor woke up slowly. He was warm, and Miles was breathing quietly beside him. He opened his eyes to a bar of sunlight through the half-open shutters, and was startled to realize how late it was. Oh, right. He remembered coming reflexively awake earlier at the time of his usual alarm, and going right back to sleep because there was no reason why he should get out of bed, and one excellent, still-sleeping reason why he shouldn't.

Miles slept on his side, back turned, one arm curled up under his chin and the other flung out straight. Past him, Gregor could see out the wide windows into a lot of open sky. Just below the bedroom the Vetra cliffs dropped hundreds of feet into a narrow gorge, at the bottom of which the winter-chilled river slowly ran.

They had four days, and they were entirely alone in the house, with a comfortably wide security perimeter in deference to the fact that no one knew he owned this place and they were in the middle of nowhere. Still, they were under strict instructions to leave the house as little as possible, for fear of anyone with a powerful enough set of binoculars. Gregor had apologized for that, knowing how Miles hated being cooped up, but he had only smirked and said he thought they would manage just fine.

Miles's breathing changed, then he sighed, stretched, and yawned. The blankets slid down, and he pushed them further, body curving to catch the sun.

"You know, my cat does exactly that every morning while I eat breakfast," Gregor said.

"Mmm," Miles said, clearly too lazy to be properly affronted by this slanderous comparison. "Feels good." There was a pause, and then he added, "the heat helps. My joints don't hurt as much."

Gregor wondered how many other people he'd ever told that to. Very few, he would bet. "Ah," he said, suddenly needing to make his own offering. "Just so you know, this is where I told Flavion to bring you last month." Before he betrayed me.

"I'd wondered." Miles sounded significantly more awake.

"I just thought you should know," Gregor said. "How to find it. And that you'll be safe here."

"Your pillow talk is really extraordinary, has anyone ever told you that?"

"No," Gregor said awkwardly. Who would have? "Sorry, I just—"

Miles rolled over on his stomach to look at him. "I wasn't complaining," he said mildly. "Thanks for telling me."

They were quiet for a while. Miles basked unself-consciously, one arm crooked up over his head. He was winter-pale, but in the sun his scars nearly fluoresced. Double parallel lines went right down his back on either side of his spine, with little bevels around each vertebra, faint because they were so old. His scapulae were similarly outlined, and every rib. A jagged line stood out in all that surgical neatness, cutting down from his shoulder nearly six inches. Gregor touched it, and Miles's eyes fluttered open.

"What's this from?"

Miles cracked his neck, craning his head to look. "Vibroknife," he said, not particularly concerned. "About four years ago now. Not too deep, or really dangerous."

"And this?" Gregor touched a ragged crescent on his side, below the last rib. That howling, insatiable feeling was rising in him, here in the quiet. He wanted to put his fingerprints on every one of Miles's scars and learn all their stories.

"Shrapnel," Miles said. "Plastic fragments from a pre-fabricated shelter that got hit by a backpack missile." Gregor connected the dots around his side to another half circle, Miles rolled obligingly, willing to play along. "Same thing," he confirmed, before Gregor could ask. "And that."

The snarl three inches above his hipbone was from barbed wire, and the crease on the outside of his thigh was a projectile graze. He let Gregor push the covers off and run his hands everywhere, without making a crack about inspections or anything. And he answered all Gregor's questions, briefly but without reserve.

Gregor held his left hand and turned it in the light. Miles's bones were outlined in silvery scars, like they were everywhere. The rough patch on his third fingertip was a burn, and the triple intersecting lines on his forearm were where the fractured ends of his radius had gone through the skin when he was nine. Gregor remembered that, actually; Sergeant Bothari had kept Miles talking while he got the bleeding under control, and Gregor had stood around in the way and then gone and thrown up quietly in the bushes off the riding trail.

Miles's wrist was tiny. Gregor could wrap his fingers around it nearly twice. It was a strange moment, because he knew how small Miles was, he knew how many steps Miles took to match Gregor's, and the precise angle he had to tilt his chin at to make eye contact. But it was strange to have it borne in that Miles was actually small. It wasn't that he forgot, it was just that Miles was . . . the size of himself.

He could practically see his bones through the thin white skin of his wrist. Had the doctors molded the replacement bones to copy every contour of the damaged natural ones, or had they worked off some generic blueprint? The little outward curve where forearm met wrist struck him as elegantly perfect. Gregor bent and straightened the joint between his hands, fascinated by the moving geometry. Evolution was the most clever engineer.

"You have beautiful wrists," he said, without thinking.

Miles inhaled, blinking at him, and Gregor felt himself go red. "Good grief," Miles said, mouth twitching. "How am I supposed to have any defenses against that?"

"Do you need any?" Gregor asked.

"No," Miles said, and let the smile go.