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Damen laid with his head in Laurent’s lap, hair tickling the fair skin of his stomach, legs stretched nearly to the far side of the bed. His breathing was deep, near to sleep.
“Favorite story when you were a child,” he said. It might have been a proper question, were the hour not so late.
“Odysseus deceiving the Cyclops,” Laurent replied. He held one of Damen’s hands in both of his own, running his thumbs over the lines of his palm, pressing a bit harder to discover the mechanisms of tendon and bone.
“That’s one of ours,” Damen said, seemingly unconcerned by this treatment. His skin was warm, the calluses thick around the base of his thumb.
“Yes,” said Laurent. “It’s a good story.”
“Very clever story, huh?”
“Oh, very.”
Damen huffed a laugh into Laurent’s hip. That, too, was warm. All of him was warm. It defied belief.
Laurent could have trouble sleeping for any number of reasons, but tonight’s culprit was likely the simplest of the lot: it was summer, and Ios was hot. He stuck to the sheets, the sheets stuck to him, and when Damen had finally awoken sometime during the deep midnight dark, he’d decided to keep Laurent company in his insomnia. It was a very noble, very doomed effort.
“Your turn,” Laurent said. Damen yawned, jaw creaking audibly in the grand, silent caverns of their rooms. “Favorite kind of flower.”
“Uh,” Damen began, after a moment, and Laurent laughed.
“Fine, then, o warrior king. Favorite cavalry movement? Best pike length?”
“No, that’s not fair,” Damen whined, the ‘s’ sound tipping near to slurred. One of Laurent’s hands had found its way into his hair, dragging aimlessly through the curls. The other still held his hand. “You didn’t give me a chance. Apple blossoms. They say my mother loved them when she was alive, and I remember my father filling the palace with them when I was a child. They smell like spring.”
“They do,” Laurent agreed. It wasn’t a statement that had required agreement. Damen’s fingers curled reflexively around his own.
“Now you.” Damen wasn’t going to last much longer. His cheek rested heavy on Laurent’s thigh. “The flowers. Your favorite.”
“Roses, of course. The pale and thorny and allegorical kind.”
Damen snorted. “Try again.”
Laurent smiled again, a slow stretch of muscles still accustoming themselves to the use. “Lilies. There’s a rainbow of them in the gardens at Acquitart. I’ve always enjoyed the yellow ones.”
“Yellow lilies. Good. Now I know what to put in all the rooms when you get yourself killed jumping across a roof.”
Damen grinned like a dog as Laurent gave his hair a quick, sharp tug. “Like you won’t precede me to that sad fate,” he said, trying hard to be snappish. Damen’s grin grew, though his eyes had drifted shut.
“Another question,” he said, resettling himself slightly in Laurent’s lap. Moonlight picked out the strands of his curls and the curve of his jaw. “Keep me awake.”
“I’ll be fine, you know. You can just go back to sleep.”
“Never,” he yawned. Yawned further. “Come on, do your worst.”
“Fine,” Laurent said, tipping his head back against the pillows. He still wasn’t sleepy, not in a room near solid with midsummer humidity and Damen’s head like a furnace in his lap, but the hour, and the soft back and forth of simple conversation, seemed to have drained him of most of his faculties. He racked his brain for something of Damen he didn’t already know. “What is your… what is your biggest regret from childhood? Under the age of ten, please.”
Damen exhaled, shifted one thick-muscled leg across the expanse of their sheets. “Don’t have any. What’s your favorite season.”
Laurent’s lips quirked. “I— winter, but— you don’t have any? Not a single regret from your childhood.”
“Nope.”
“Not a single girl- or boychild whose hair you would un-pull.”
“That’s right.”
“How?”
“Well,” Damen said, nearly a sigh, seemingly incognizant of Laurent’s tone. “I’m happy now, aren’t I?”
Laurent considered this conversational leap as a man considers the far side of a very busy, very swiftly-moving river.
“So, because you are experiencing happiness now…” Laurent began, attempting to make the jump. A heavy drift of air came in through the window, too warm to do more than nudge the sweat across their skin. He failed to make the jump. "Explain this to me, husband of mine. Small words are preferred.”
Damen laughed again, softly. He tended to, when reminded of his own marriage. Laurent’s own damning blush was hidden by the night and the heat of the air. “I don’t know if I can,” he said, voice drifting again. He nuzzled into the curve of Laurent’s stomach. “It’s just a thing.”
“No, no, you don’t get to fall asleep now,” Laurent said, an unconvincing schoolmarm. He tugged on Damen’s hair again, which had very little effect. “Not when we’re the cusp of a tantalizing philosophical discovery here.”
“It’s not a discovery.” Damen protested, groaned. His body curled an inch closer to Laurent’s. “It's—” he sighed. “I’ve never had to put this into words before.”
“Try,” said Laurent. “Now is the hour.”
“News to me,” he said, eyes still closed. Another sigh. “It’s like— I’m happy now, right? As happy as possible.” His hand shifted in Laurent’s, two blunt fingers brushing against the skin of Laurent’s jaw. Laurent exhaled shakily, a silent assent. “Happy in the present. And the present is a product of the past. So if I’m happy with the present, then I’m happy with the past. Or at least, I know the past was necessary for me to be happy now.”
It took Laurent a moment to consider this, too distracted by the weight of Damen’s body and hands and gifts less tangible. When he did, the conclusion he came to hardly signified.
“…So you’re telling me you don’t have any regrets?” Laurent said. The words sounded strange even to his own ears, like Damen had begun speaking old Artesian and Laurent were only copying the shapes of his mouth. “At all?”
“No,” said Damen, and then, suddenly, “Yes.” His eyes were open, the film of exhaustion obvious but his face intent, his gaze hooking Laurent’s. “One. I— if I could go back and change Marlas I would.” Laurent’s heart found its seat in his throat, as it always would. He didn't break from Damen’s gaze. “I would in an instant. That’s something that happened to you, not to me, and if it were in my power…”
He trailed off. His hand linked in Laurent’s and pulled it down. He shifted his head up. His lips met Laurent’s flushed knuckles. “If it were in my power, your life—” Damen’s mouth opened, closed. His breathing was the loudest sound in the room, the loudest sound of which Laurent could conceive. “Your whole life would have been full of yellow lilies. But for everything else, for me, in my life, there is not a thing I would change at the risk of losing this.”
It was like Laurent imagined that if he held still enough, the words wouldn’t find him. He could live further moments without facing the impossibly patient animal of Damen’s love.
“Your father?” he tried, after a long, humming moment. He couldn’t tell if his fingers and toes had truly gone numb, or if his perception had just narrowed all to Damen, and the solemn curve of Damen’s mouth. “Kastor?”
Their gaze finally broke. Damen sighed, broad chest deflating, and shifted until he lay on his back. His head still rested in Laurent’s lap, and when Laurent made to remove his hand from his hair, there was a small noise of protest.
“I wish every day that it hadn’t happened like it did,” he said. “Kastor was my brother. And my father gone is like… It’s something massive, something I can’t even see the edges of, but—I wouldn’t change it. I can’t, so I wouldn’t. It’s the same thing.” His free hand, the one not holding Laurent’s tight to his chest, waved tiredly, his fingers half-spread in the dark. “I can’t have my life now without having every part that came before it.”
Laurent couldn’t truly say the air of their bedroom was still as a tomb, if only because it was too warm, too wet with moonlight. Damen’s voice had been low, as certain as a man describing the color of his own skin. Laurent couldn’t seem to focus on any one thought among the thousands spattering like rain in his head.
“And—” he swallowed. The loudest thought, the most persistent. “Enslavement? The whip?”
Damen relaxed, suddenly and with a great, easy exhale. “Of course,” he said. His grin was back, like they were discussing flowers again, or the exploits of heroes. “That’s included, too.”
Laurent dreamed of the day he might finally know what to do with the bottomless well of easy forgiveness near to snoring in his lap. He felt hot, hotter than he’d been when he’d awoken in the first place, his hair flat and lank along the sides of his face.
“…I don’t understand you,” he managed, after a moment that in his mind was too long and in Damen’s was surely not.
Because of course, Damen was still smiling. “You understand me fine,” he said. He blinked slowly again, sleep tugging like a child at his hand.
“Yes, but I—” really, he was never so speechless so often before Damen came properly into his life, “I don’t understand that.”
“Well, I suppose you don’t have to. This is just how I do it.”
“How you live,” said Laurent.
“Yes,” said Damen.
Laurent moved, finally and suddenly. He leaned over, back curving, the hand in Damen’s hair prompting his husband up. Their mouths met seamlessly, Laurent bending forward, Damen propped on his shins, his lips soft and still.
Their foreheads pressed together and then Laurent pulled back, breathing stubbornly. “We’ll take lilies from Acquitart,” he said. “When we next ride north.”
“Yes,” said Damen. He sounded drunk, addled by far more than the sleep he hadn’t gotten. “We’ll plant them in Arles, and here, too.”
“Grow them in hothouses,” said Laurent. “Whole storerooms of lilies.”
“Yes.” Damen reached up again, neck craning, moon shining in the dip of his shoulder.
“Lilies in the summer,” said Laurent. Damen’s exhale warmed his chin. “Blossoms in the spring.”
“Yes,” Damen said with Laurent’s breath in his mouth. “Yellow as the sun.” His lips a promise against Laurent’s. “Yellow as your hair.”