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“Arthur! Wake up!”
Arthur struggles back up through the fug of sleep to find Kai – hair wild, forehead damp with sweat – sitting on the edge of the bed, shaking him.
He reaches for the hilt of his short sword, but, seeing Kai unarmed, lets go again. They’re not under attack – so what ..?
“What is it Kai?”
“Talk to me, Arthur.”
Arthur rubs his eyes. “At this time of night? Talk about what?”
Kai heaves in a breath. “What am I to you? What are we, to each other?”
“We’re friends ... brothers.” Arthur props himself on his elbows. “And you’re the annoying one, waking me up, when I’ve just gone to sleep.”
Kai’s face falls. “I’m annoying …” His hands drop from Arthur’s shoulders.
“Kai. What is the matter?” Arthur strokes Kai’s cheek with his knuckles. “Tell me what’s wrong, My Love.”
Kai closes his eyes, and breathes a sigh. “Thank the gods.” He presses his forehead to Arthur’s.
“Kai?” Arthur squeezes Kai’s arm.
After a moment … “Then it was a dream.”
“What was? What dream?”
Kai shakes his head as if to shake the memory out of his ears. “I dreamed that you and I never …” He looks away a moment, then he sniffs, and says, “Do you remember the night I first offered myself to you?”
Arthur’s heart clenches. “How could I forget?”
“In my dream – the dream I just had – you rejected me. You were kind, but you … you didn’t want me. And in the moment of awakening, I felt the despair of living long years by your side, without the touch of your hand. Watching you live alone. Wanting you but …” Kai lies down beside him, and looks into his eyes, searching. “It felt so real – I feared …”
“Just a dream.” Arthur takes Kai’s face – the face he loves beyond all reason – between his hands. “You want to know what you are to me? You’re my heart, Kai. Without you beside me, I’d be nothing but a cold shell.”
“I’ll always be beside you.” Kai’s brown eyes shine with flickers of firelight. “But this – you want this too, don’t you?”
Kai rocks his hips; his cock nudges against Arthur’s thigh. His hair smells of wood-smoke, and the sweetness of the mead is upon his breath.
“I want you.” Arthur puts a hand on Kai. “I want everything you can give me. Never doubt it.”
“And you love me.”
Arthur hears the doubt in Kai’s voice. “I love you, Kai.”
Then Kai is on top of him, his hands all over him; Kai’s mouth on his, clumsy and urgent.
Arthur tries to gentle him, but – though he has never told of them – Arthur, too, has had such dreams; Kai’s fear and desperation work their way under his skin. He pushes Kai’s breeches down and wraps Kai’s length in possessive fingers, working him with more haste than finesse.
Kai gasps and rides his hand. His eyes fall closed.
“I love you,” Arthur says again.
A sob shakes Kai’s broad shoulders.
“I love you, Kai.”
Kai jerks once, twice, then comes with a groan; he rests his head on Arthur’s neck.
Arthur strokes his hair and says, “And if, by chance, this is the dream, then let us never wake.”
~~