Work Text:
One:
( He loves you like a precious treasure he's buried deep underground. )
You always meet in the middle of the night and not before. After the ink has long dried on his official parchment papers, the wax seals have hardened, and the candle stick on the holder on the wall by his desk has been blown out.
You wait until your sleeping children are tucked in and guarded, a capital away by a loyal man who can cut through buildings with his sword aura and a mighty ancient dragon who cares for them like a gruff but doting grandfather. Perfect babysitters, as far as you're concerned.
You're off. Traveling within a circle of blinding light through a stone tunnel, you rest your heels into rich soil and glide over healthy green grass with the wind at your ankles. Then, your vivid, shining hair is just a bloody streak like a crimson snake traveling along a secret pathway in his garden that he can see from his bedroom window.
You tell yourself you're avoiding the vibrant sea of sprawling red roses everywhere the eye can see because you don't want to be pricked by the thorns. That's a lie. Deep down in your subconscious, you know it's because of the conclusion you came to. One recent night when you asked him out of both curiosity and an absurd nagging suspicion you thought egotistical but couldn't cast out of the realm of possibility:
"Why did you have a new garden of red roses grown in the middle of wartime?"
You sit in his private pavilion crafted of solid gold and ionic-styled pillars. That is fashioned with one-way glass on its round surrounding walls. So the roses in full bloom are visible, but no one can see you, and the intimate lack of distance between your figure mirrored with his.
To minds that believe power like his to be a double-edged prison, this structure may feel like a gilded birdcage meant to trap someone in. A reminder to anyone inside of their lack of freedom to freely spread their wings and fly around wherever their whims take them, but what it really is — is a sanctuary.
You know this because you are mindful that this is one of only four available places in the territory of his colossal palace where he has an ounce of privacy. The escape tunnels are different from the striking scenery you enjoy around you now.
You don't know that the first person he's ever shared it with is you.
"Maybe because looking at them brings me peace." He answers in a soft tone that reminds you of his clean breath against the nape of your neck when he turns over on the bed that has become yours just as much as his. When he traces your bicep and whispers good morning like he's greeting his personal sunrise. It reminds you that his kiss behind your ear is warmer than the shards of sunlight that slip through his curtains.
You thought of that as he reached over, like it's second nature now, his arctic-blue eyes unwavering and firmly cradling yours beneath the dancing shadow of his thick lashes while he caresses your bangs like they are spun in the finest silk. Sweeping them away from your chill-flushed face where there must have been splotchy red patches on your porcelain cheeks with one long, tingling stroke of his frighteningly gentle fingers. "Beautiful, aren't they?"
His touch feels like a spell that won't break, and you don't say another word about the flowers. His smile doesn't falter, only widens because your tongue has gone numb and won't cooperate enough to form speech, but you're far from unfeeling.
With a surge of heat in the organ swelling three sizes behind your ribs, you lean your warm brow into his palm, squeezing your eyes shut tightly because you're in agony. You wonder why he does this to you. Makes you so full your capacity to hold what he has to give keeps growing like you're getting taller and broader, and the safety blanket you once had protecting you from your fear of loss is too small to cover you now.
Two:
( He loves you like you're his miracle, and you'll never be anything less. )
One day you'll realize he knows exactly how you were feeling, and you should have been cognizant of that early on when he curved the tips of his powerful fingers lightly as feathers along your head that night. You should have confirmed that when you didn't think of how he could melt through your brain with his magic or crush your skull like an eggshell in his palm if he wished. You should have because you instinctively sensed he isn't capable of that.
Not with you.
You have wondered in the corner of your brain what this beautiful elven man would do if you were a threat to his Kingdom -- if his King father ordered your execution.
What would he do?
The answer you'll gradually come to understand is that this person will first punch a hole in his chest and pull out his own heart by the valves and chords before he considers making you bleed. And you'll acknowledge that, for some time, you have already been bleeding like a broken faucet. You're bathed in all this endlessly overflowing and boiling scarlet passion. That, again and again, proves you're alive.
You'll think back to that sanctuary. How, as you do, he figures the conversation is over. How, like he often does, he changes the subject for you. He holds his tongue when he wants to drown you in words that will gut you open further, but you still can't imagine how it was for him when he grew this Eden, this garden of paradise for you out of pure adoration.
You're just sure he intends to bury you in it.
Instead, he begins whispering about the constellations of this world, teaching you about a foreign sky you secretly weren't born under. You find yourself fully relaxing as you peer up at the vast midnight blanket settled above your heads, the stars twinkling with laughter, and you adjust yourself to lean your side against him, marveling.
Because he stops talking in just one heartbeat, his body wavers slightly towards yours like a trembling flame. His smooth, clean-shaven jaw brushes your temple as he tries to see your face, falling back into fascination just from this small gesture of requited affection. You bury your skull in the crook of his neck so he can't see your lips curving upward over your teeth like the world's greatest enamored fool.
His thigh brushes yours, and his hand only leaves your hair to rest on your slender throat and fluctuating pulse. His fingertips flirt with your faintly contracting shoulder blades, and his palm is big, heavy, and hot against your lower back.
Soon, he's gently writing pictures of each star into your spine, like engraving this moment into the memory of your bones. He doesn't know you've been recording the highlights of this night and your visits before it as much as you can from the beginning.
It doesn't take long for you to overheat, despite the night's chill. And you won't admit your proximity is undoubtedly a majority of the cause. He doesn't know why you get these minor fevers and sometimes nosebleeds, but he's seen it happen enough now that, with his free hand, he unbuttons your collar without a second thought when he notices.
One by one, the buttons snap from their loops, and you're aware he's exposing your collarbone out of thoughtfulness, but he also does it selfishly. Your heart takes off dancing. Your breath, a sharp hitch in your chest when his rough, calloused thumb grazes a sweet spot on the most delicate area of your neck.
You're suspended and tethered to one thought - more - but just as he hooked you, he releases you. He always releases you unless you grab on before he can let go.
What you don't know is that one day, with his gentle hands, he'll dig you up, forgetting his shovel in his haste, dirt caught in blood-crusted fingernails no matter how painful it gets, and pull you out under the sun with him. And declare to the courts, the nobles, the Kingdom, the world,
"He brings me peace."
And you'd believe it's only peace you bring him if he breathed easier around you. If for just one second, his lungs don't rise and collapse with air caught in them, trapped in his throat, stolen away from his pretty mouth, whenever you come close enough for him to touch. His eyes so bright when he hears your voice behind him, and he pivots around to face you no matter where you are. When your lips, eyes, your face, your soul, smile and laugh for him just before he joins in. And he wouldn't look at you with that ever-wanting gaze.
As if he craves you like madness craves sanity whenever you say his real name.
Three:
( He loves you like if you say yes, he'll burn the whole world down. )
Then, to anyone who dares to blind their eyes to worthless things that reap division, with a bright smile and happy eyes, and you right by his side, he'll peer into every soul and dare them to see the unbreakable truth that has always existed to him. He'll fight for you like he uprooted and cut away the last flowers in his previous garden and donated them to make room for growing your roses. He'll have faith that you will fight for him and what he calls 'us,' as he asks:
"Beautiful, isn't he?"
But what he's really saying is,
'Take one long, honest look, and you'll know he belongs with me.'
And, no, you'll think. It's alright.
Why avoid it?
When roses only live for a moment.
And you're the rarest treasure he'd live and die for.
(With.)
Four:
( He will set it on fire just to grow another Eden out of the ashes for you. )
He never intended for you to be a secret any more than that peaceful and beautiful garden is.
( Because he's hopeless. )