Chapter Text
It was somewhen in the hours between what people would call night and other would call morning that Alastair woke up. The sun would not for a few hours breach the horizon to grace the world with her radiant beams, illuminating every drop of water that remained after the rain of the late evening like a crystal, millions of them across the roofs of London.
Through the slightly opened window, the knight commander could feel a light breeze carrying the smell of wet cobblestone and the sounds of a city not quite asleep, but peaceful enough for him to keep his head rested on the pillow, not bothering with even the thought of getting up.
The room was dark, only letting him make out silhouettes and vague shades of gray, but a thing he could clearly make out was the soft breathing of Grayson still asleep next to him. Undisturbed and peaceful, as strands of his hair floated on the pillow around his head like a fine mist.
As he observed Grayson from where he was laying, he vaguely recalled how he got here, but neither the nightmares, or the frenzied walk through the empty hallways to Grayson’s door mattered now. It had been already forgotten when the others arms had been around him. Gray hadn’t asked what was wrong, what the other had dreamt to have him so disturbed, he had long leaned that his friend wouldn’t reply.
Falling asleep in Grayson’s arms was the greatest peace Alastair had ever known and it was a comfort he wasn’t quite sure he deserved.
It hadn’t been a nightmare that had woken him up, perhaps it had just been a fluke, but he felt inclined to consider it a gift, as he watched the other chest gently rise and fall. Such a rare sight it was, to see Grayson like this, that a part of him considered wishing to freeze the picture, while another one argued that there was no picture taken that could capture the sight in front of him and that was part of the magic. He resisted the urge to stroke a stray hair out of Grayson’s face as to not stir him, when the other knight mumbled something incomprehensible as he turned around and wrapped an arm around Alastair, drawing them both closer.
Carefully resting his forehead against Grayson’s now, Alastair began to dread the sunrise, as he remembered he would have to leave with the first sunlight. Duty called him, as it so often did and while he had never minded it, in nights like this he felt himself silently wishing for a simpler fate than his. In nights like this he found himself wondering why he ever felt compelled to do any of the things he had done in the past, what he had done it for, when right as he was laying here now, he held the whole world in his arms. It felt unreal and far away, like a mere illusion, the things that troubled him at day and some other nights. Hastings, half-breeds, his own nature all seemed like more of a badly written scene from a tragedy he wasn’t more than an actor in, but must play it regardless.
A cruel man, certainly, to write his fate as such a play. Or was it perhaps just another dream he had dreamt? Wasn’t all that mattered in this room? That would be a much fonder tale to tell, a much softer story with a more fortunate ending. So fond it could only exist in poetry and the musings of playwrights, that lived their lives far away from the status of knight commander and just as far away from cursed blood, but said knight commander felt himself slipping into such imagination far too easy in nights like this, which seemed like a dream themselves.
Any yet, as he gazed up at Grayson beside him, asleep and blissfully unaware of any of the others musings, he knew the morning was just a few hours away.