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“Are you all right?”
"I told you I was.” Lorenz eyes him from across the table, a rickety thing hastily erected to make room for the campaign map they carry with them wherever they go. Claude thinks it’s been burned into his brain by now—hardly has to even look at the little painted pieces that clutter the lines and squiggles that make up central Fódlan—but he trails his hand along the waxed surface anyway, turning aside from that piercing purple gaze.
“Just checking.”
“I would tell you if I was in distress,” Lorenz says gently. Too gently. It raises the hairs on the nape of Claude’s neck, stroking like fingers against his skin. He resists the urge to rub his neck and braces his hands on the table.
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
It’s late. The oil lamps burn low in their sconces around the tent, casting long, grim shadows along the canvas. The flaps hang loosely shut, untied. He’d released his other generals some time ago, but Lorenz remains, and Claude has yet to summon the courage to ask him to stay. So he waits in silence. Waits for Lorenz to tire, to make his farewells, and slip out into the smoke-singed night, leaving Claude alone with his circuitous thoughts.
A horse and rider clop by as the silence stretches out, hoofbeats muffled by the muddy slop the rain has made of their camp. Across the table, Lorenz brushes his hair out of his face and contemplates the map. “You’re still upset with me.”
“Upset? Of course not.”
“Worried, then. Irate.”
Claude gives up on the little golden pieces he’d been carefully arranging in his mind and leans back, hands on hips, to regard Lorenz from across the table. “I am not irate. I am concerned for your wellbeing.”
“And I for yours, as I believe I made clear yesterday.”
“Quite clear. Painfully, mortally clear.”
“Claude.” Lorenz, too, gives up the pretense of professionalism, stripping his gloves from his hands and tucking them haphazardly into his belt. “You really must accustom yourself to your subordinates putting themselves in danger for your sake. This was not the first time, and I assure you it will not be the last.”
They’ve already argued about this at length. Mostly in the medical tent once Lorenz was permitted visitors, with Marianne hovering nervously in the background making worried noises. Lorenz had put himself in harm’s way, out of the circle of protection of his battalion, to spare Claude a blast of bolganone. It had nearly been fatal—would have been, had it struck Claude’s wyvern midair—and Lorenz’s armor will bear the scars of its spidery grasp until they can return to Garreg Mach and have it looked at by a specialist. Til then, it serves as a grim reminder. A reminder that none of them are immortal, that they could each of them fall to mage or swordsman or cavalry at any time. And Claude can do nothing to prevent it.
“I’m not fighting with you about this,” Claude says manfully, and Lorenz snorts.
“I would almost rather a fight than this dark cloud hanging over us, polluting our interactions in public and in private. If you’re going to throw a tantrum, I wish you’d have it already. Then we may get back to work.”
A tantrum—the nerve. The audacity. The hypocrisy of such an accusation from Lorenz Hellman Gloucester—
“Well?” Lorenz arches an eyebrow. “You’re glaring at me fit to set fire to my hair.”
“You’re goading me,” Claude snaps. “I won’t fall prey to your wiles, Gloucester.”
“My wiles?” He looks—and sounds—on the verge of laughter. “Goodness. Am I a fair maiden, then, trying to tempt you into sin? How dreadfully impertinent of you to suggest such a thing.”
Claude stares at him. He’s never seen this sort of playfulness from Lorenz, these coy glances and teasing remarks. That’s his own territory, usually; masking his powers of observation with flirting and distraction. Aha. “You’re trying to distract me from being upset with you,” he accuses.
“Is it working?”
“It most certainly is not!”
Claude draws himself up to his full height—which still puts him nearly half a head shorter than Lorenz, but there’s nothing to be done about that—and stalks around to his side of the table. Lorenz watches him come, expression forcibly placid. He’s gotten better at hiding the heart on his sleeve over the years, but Claude can still read him better than anyone. The mischief in his eyes is clear to him, even as it softens to fondness. The pucker of his rosebud mouth is somewhere between amusement and regret. Claude takes a deep breath and marshals his thoughts.
“I’m not going to fight with you about this.”
“Are you not?” Lorenz queries. “You look as though you’re gearing up for it.”
“I’m not. I’m—I’m gearing up to tell you—” He chokes on it, garbled in his mouth like the vines of some clambering shrub. A rose bush, thorny and impossible to tame. How appropriate.
Lorenz is entirely unsmiling now. “Claude…”
“This is difficult, all right? You’re important to me, not just as my right-hand general.”
“Surely I’m left-hand at best, the Professor—”
“I can’t lose you!” Claude blurts out before he can lose his nerve.
Lorenz blinks at him, thoroughly shocked into silence for a grand total of three seconds; but he rallies himself admirably to exclaim, “And I feel the same! Perhaps now you understand why I did it, hm?”
Claude grits his teeth, practically a snarl, and turns away to thump his fist harmlessly against the table’s worn surface. “Damn you for making sense.”
“I know you hate that this war is necessary,” Lorenz says gently. After a brief pause, as if he’s waiting to see whether Claude will be making any more outbursts, he places a hand on Claude’s shoulder. The heat of it burns through the roughspun fabric of his shirt in an instant, setting fire to his skin. Claude prays the tent’s dark interior and his own warm complexion will hide the blush that rises to his cheeks in answer. “We would all of us throw our lives away, if it meant your survival.”
“I hate that most of all,” Claude mutters. He flicks a blue battalion marker across the table spitefully. “Not a one of us is more important to this cause than any other.”
“I know that you believe that with all your heart,” Lorenz says. “It makes you a better man—the best I’ve ever known. But practically speaking it isn’t true, and it is our job to see you safely through this conflict. At whatever cost.”
Claude shuts his eyes. “If I survive this, but lose everyone I hold dear, then what is left for me to live for?”
Lorenz is silent, but his hand remains. After a moment of thoughtful quiet, he says, staunch as ever: “We fight because we must. To preserve our people’s lands, and give them a better life. I know you know that, I know that you’re devoted to it, but you are right. I cannot discount the need for bonds of fellowship as well as bonds of fealty.” His hand tightens briefly, reassuring, and drops away. “I will do my best to see the sun set on this war. I swear it.”
“At my side,” Claude presses, heart in his throat.
“At your side,” Lorenz echoes obediently. “As always.”
Claude turns to him. Tall and stately, Lorenz stands before him, magnanimous even with his head bowed, unshaken by his near-death experience—at least outwardly. Within there is a tremor, a shadow of some greater truth, just barely concealed behind the moon’s darker half. It draws Claude’s hand like a moth to flame. He grips Lorenz’s shoulder and meets his eyes.
“Thank you. For saving my life, and for…”
Lorenz’s mouth quirks up on one side. “That was the easy part. Sometimes… sometimes the difficulty is surviving.”
“Forgive me my impertinence,” Claude whispers, “but surviving without you would be unbearable.”
Lorenz’s chin draws up. “Then I shall see to it that such a thing never comes to pass.”
Claude can’t remember when they moved so close. Their bodies are barely a handspan apart, faces turned toward each other like flowers to the sun. A long, silky strand of violet hair unspools from where it was tucked haphazardly behind Lorenz’s ear, brushing the back of Claude’s hand. His violet eyes are shadowed from the lamplight, lashes long and mesmerizing against his pale, aristocratic cheek. It’s easy for Claude to lift his hand and brush his thumb across that silken skin. Almost too easy. But he is saved from an awkward apology when Lorenz leans into that tender touch, coaxing the palm of Claude’s hand to cradle his face.
“Lorenz,” he says, rather steadily if he does say so himself, “may I have your permission to continue being impertinent?”
“You have it,” Lorenz murmurs. “In fact I’d be quite put out with you if you stopped now.”
Oh. Well then.
Claude kisses him. Somehow he’d never imagined it would be so easy. Surely Lorenz would protest, or turn aside, a shy and virginal pinnacle of Fódlan nobility; or else he would decline to lower himself to such base desires, too committed to his work to spare the time for a mere dalliance. But Lorenz is none of those things. His lips are thin but warm, expressive—they mold to Claude’s without hesitation, soft and genteel but unmistakably hungry. His body sways to Claude’s like metal filings to a magnet, or ducks to a trail of bread crumbs: tentative at first, then gaining confidence as Claude licks at his lower lip in inquiry.
Lorenz smells like springwater and willow leaf from the medical tent, underlaid with a subtle rose perfume that even a few days on the campaign trail can’t quite erase. Claude captures his jaw between the palms of his hands, opens him up to his tongue. Lorenz makes a low, raw sound in the back of his throat and allows himself to be devoured.
There’s a slight clatter as Claude backs him into the table, but neither of them notice. Battalion markers go scattering, beating a hasty retreat under the threat of being sat on, and the rickety wooden frame creaks slightly under Lorenz’s weight as he leans up against the table. His ungloved hands prune and pry at the buttons of Claude’s shirt, peeling him open like an orange so he can stuff his hands inside. Callouses scrape his bare skin, catching on his nipples, the hair on his belly. Claude growls and drops his hands to Lorenz’s thighs. Gets two meaty handfuls, fingers under his hamstrings, digging into the soft, sturdy flesh. For all Lorenz is a lean, lanky man, he’s a man accustomed to hard work and to battle, and he fills Claude’s hands wherever they roam, solid and strong.
“Claude.” Lorenz’s voice cracks like a splinter of wood snapped open under flame. His earlier bravado has melted away—he is weak-kneed, boneless, slumping into Claude’s embrace as though he’s forgotten how to stand. “We—we shouldn’t—”
“Tell me to stop,” Claude rasps. His beard scrapes a livid red mark at the base of Lorenz’s throat, marble-white stained rose. “And I will. Tell me.”
“If we are discovered—”
“We won’t be.” He feels desperate suddenly, nearly frantic. As if some pure and precious thing is just within reach, and yet on the verge of fleeing him entirely. His thumbs bite bruises into the angles of Lorenz’s hipbones to hold him still as he pulls his mouth off his graceful swan’s neck. Lorenz whines. “It’s late,” Claude whispers, breathing hard. He scarcely recognizes the sound of his own voice. “No one is going to come looking.”
Lorenz doesn’t tell him to stop. Lorenz stuffs his glove into his mouth and whimpers softly into it as Claude drops to his knees on the tamped-down earth and tears his trousers open with hands that shake. Lorenz is only half-hard in his hand, but he leaps to fullness as Claude sucks him down, stretching the inside of his cheek with his girth. He tastes salty and musky and tangy, a bit like herbal salve beneath the sweat and labor of the last few days. Lorenz chokes on the glove in his mouth and Claude chokes on his manhood, fingers palpating the delicate skin of his bollocks beneath.
“Claude,” Lorenz whispers, eyes squeezed tightly shut as Claude sucks him. “Oh, goddess…”
I’ve wanted you for so long, Claude doesn’t say. I’ve pined for your sweetness, your fierceness, your light. Instead of saying such foolish things out loud, he jerks Lorenz’s trousers down to mid-thigh and uses the bunched-up fabric for a handhold to spin him around, guiding him face-down onto the table.
“Claude—!”
“All right?”
“Yes,” Lorenz rasps, and buries his face into the crook of his arm. “Just… I haven’t, erm, bathed thoroughly in…”
“It’s all right.” To ease his worries, Claude gets back on his feet, smoothing his hand over Lorenz’s pale rump. There’s more softness here than he anticipated. Just what have you been hiding under those coat tails, Lorenz…? “Try not to scratch the map, all right?”
Lorenz scoffs at him, then chokes on air as Claude aims a gob of spit at his hole. “Claude!”
“Archer’s eye, baby.” Claude laughs at Lorenz’s half-hearted sputter and rubs his own saliva up and down the crease of his ass. “Give me a moment and I’ll have something better.”
“Mmm.” Lorenz doesn’t seem overly concerned with the something better; he simply moans softly into his sleeve, back arching and his thighs a-tremble, straining against the confines of his trousers.
Claude isn’t particularly in a hurry to undress him further. He likes the look of him like this, still mostly dressed, the rear of his gambeson flipped up to expose his pretty backside. He’s hairless everywhere, even here; the tender skin between his cheeks is smooth and unblemished, pinking nicely as Claude rubs over his twitching hole with two fingers. Claude spreads him wide and leans closer to spit again. The little floral furl of his asshole twitches at the impact, and he grins.
“Must you tease me so?” Lorenz grumbles, just lucid enough to be impertinent.
“Well.” Claude licks his lips. “Since you asked so nicely.”
It’s still a bit dry, but he works a finger inside, shaking a bit at the shocking reality of bending his most loyal general over the war table like this. Lorenz clenches around him tightly. He’s a bit stiff, but Claude rubs his lower back and crooks his finger curiously, and he feels him relax right up until the moment Claude finds his prostate.
“Fuck,” Lorenz wheezes, and tightens around him like a vise. Claude can barely bend his finger joint, but he makes a valiant effort, pressing up against that spot while Lorenz sobs for breath as quietly as he can. When Claude leans back a little and looks at the floor, he can see an unmistakable wet spot forming in the dirt where Lorenz’s prick is dribbling copiously.
“Good boy,” Claude murmurs experimentally. Lorenz shudders and clenches around him. Claude takes a shaky breath. Gods he’s so hard it hurts—he stuffs his left hand down his trousers and gives himself a squeeze, easing the ache. “Stand just like that for me, sweetheart. Don’t move.”
He withdraws his finger, admiring for a moment the way Lorenz’s hole is slow to close. Then he gathers himself and his far-flung wits, and strides across the room to his hip satchel. Inside is a rudimentary medical kit, a flask of rye for battlefield surgery, and a few other essential odds and ends. He fetches the little tin of almond grease he uses to keep his lips from chapping and returns to find Lorenz exactly as he left him. For a reward, he pinches his bum, and snickers to watch him squirm.
“Easy, easy. I’ll take care of you.”
The grease is cool to the touch, but it warms quickly between Lorenz’s cheeks as Claude spreads it liberally over his hole. When he deems him ready, he presses back in, the same finger as before, this time seeking his prostate unerringly. Lorenz clenches around him, rocking back against his hand. Impatient. That just won’t do.
Testing the waters, Claude keeps his finger where it is and uses his left hand to smack a sharp pink mark onto Lorenz’s ass. Lorenz goes perfectly still.
Claude is suddenly keenly aware of how quiet it is. Not even the flickering lanterns make a sound in their ramekins of oil. Outside their little oasis, a drizzling rain begins to fall, spattering the muddy lane and the damp canvas of their tent. Claude clears his throat, cheeks burning. “Er. Should I not have done that?”
Beneath him, Lorenz starts to quake, and before Claude can panic he turns his cheek against the table to reveal the silent laughter creasing his face. “Please don’t tease me, Claude. Give me everything, or nothing at all.”
Permission granted, then. Claude cocks his head, and, hearing no hoofbeats or footsteps outside their tenuous haven, brings his hand down again. Hard. With his finger where it is, he can feel the ripple of tension moving through Lorenz like waves in a still pool. And again, until his pale asscheek is blooming red, like a dried rose whose color has just begun to leech away.
Claude tests the stretch and eases a second finger inside with the first. Lorenz quivers and moans, muffled by his own sleeve as Claude fingerfucks him, gently at first, then gathering speed and force until his knuckles bruise his ass with every thrust. Lorenz rocks shallowly to meet him, and when Claude reaches around to his front, he finds him achingly hard and dribbling precum everywhere: the floor, his own trousers, his fiddly purple boots that are entirely out of place in a war camp. Claude works his foreskin back with his thumb and Lorenz jerks under him like a marionette.
“Claude,” he croaks, “please, I can’t—I won’t last—”
“It’s all right.” Claude gives his dick one last squeeze and lets him go, fumbling with the ties of his own clothes one-handed. “Want another finger?”
Lorenz shakes his head against the table. “A little more slick, that’s all. I’m ready.”
Claude smears more grease against his hole obediently, then wipes the remainder over his cock. In his excitement he’s left a bit of a damp patch in his smallclothes, and the musky heat of their bodies seems to fill the tent as he rubs the head between Lorenz’s cheeks, down against his taint and up to press at his tight hole.
“Are you sure?” he murmurs.
“You are not—the first I’ve had,” Lorenz gasps. “I know when I’m ready.” He reaches back, pulling his own asscheek to one side as if to open himself for Claude’s perusal.
Despite his assurances, his entrance is slippery and coy, refusing Claude’s prick the first few times he brushes nervously against it. After a third failed attempt Lorenz huffs and reaches further back, grasping his shaft. Claude chokes and jerks forward instinctively, following the pressure of those slim, calloused fingers, and suddenly the head of his cock is inside.
“Fuck,” Claude groans, bending until he can rest his forehead between Lorenz’s shoulder blades. The pressure is too good, hot and sweet and tight, drawing him in deeper. And once he’s started he can’t stop—his hips move of their own accord, fucking Lorenz shallowly through the burn of the initial intrusion. “All right?”
“Brilliant. Nnngh, Claude…” Lorenz’s hand falls away to grasp at the edge of the table, and his cheek smears against the map, hair fanning out over mountains and rivers inked into parchment. “Harder.”
He still feels so tight, but Claude knows better than to question him again. Instead he grabs Lorenz’s hips for leverage and fucks into him properly, hard enough that his bollocks make a filthy slapping sound on every upstroke. Lorenz feels so good, so wet and snug around him, alive and hot-blooded as he moans quietly and rides it out. It’s like he was made to take Claude’s cock. Made to squirm in his grip and heave beneath his weight, sobbing for breath as Claude pounds into him hard enough to shake the table.
Not the first I’ve had. The stinging flare of jealousy rears its head and Claude slows, easing back into a hypnotic rhythm that leaves Lorenz cursing softly into his sleeve. “Claude…”
“Beg me for it,” Claude breathes against his ear. “I want to hear you.”
“Mmh… Claude, please…”
“Please what, sweetness?”
Lorenz’s mouth gapes as Claude grinds deeply into him, slow, precise, angling for that sweet spot that will make him cry. “Ha… haaa… fuck me, Claude, please, I… nnh, goddess, fuck, your cock is so good, it feels so good—” His voice strangles and dries up with a yelp as Claude slams into him abruptly, sending the table skidding an inch or two across the dirt floor.
“How good?” Claude whispers. He nuzzles the sweaty nape of Lorenz’s neck, though he has to stretch up on tiptoes to reach, forcing his dick in just that much deeper by sheer happenstance. “Tell me. It is the best you’ve ever had?”
He half-expects Lorenz to scoff at him, but the spell remains unbroken: Lorenz whimpers and nods, hair rasping like silk against the map’s waxed surface. “Claude… more, please…”
Claude rocks back on his heels and forward again on tiptoe with a deep, satisfied sigh. Even with his legs minimally spread, fighting against the constraints of his clothing, Lorenz is the taller of the two, requiring a little extra momentum from Claude to hilt himself completely. And it’s well worth the effort.
“You feel so good,” Claude breathes. He leans back just to watch the stretch of Lorenz’s hole around him, pink from attention and gleaming in the lantern light. He teases his thumb around that rim, back and forth. Already well-stretched, Lorenz muffles a garbled shout into his fist as Claude presses the digit in alongside his cock. “Gods, Lorenz, look at you. Gorgeous.”
He can feel Lorenz flexing around his girth at the praise, and Claude takes the bait, slamming into him with purpose. There’s no more patience left in him—he needs it, he needs Lorenz’s gasps of pleasure, the slick sounds of his snug little hole taking his cock, the way his slim fingers scrabble helplessly for purchase against the unfeeling parchment. Claude moans and whispers earnest, nonsensical things, just enjoying the view. And what a view it is: even as he admires his own handprint, blood lifts to the surface of Lorenz’s skin in shades of blush-rose and peach at the mere slap of Claude’s thighs against his rump.
And the noises. Gasps turn to grunts turn to high-pitched whines, desperate and half-stifled in the crook of his elbow. Each smack of Claude’s hips is echoed by a little cry, growing higher and closer together as the pace unravels like a stone bounding recklessly downhill—then suddenly they coalesce into a rasping wail, and Lorenz tightens around him as he spills untouched all over the floor and his pretty patent-leather boots.
“Oh darling,” Claude croons, stilling briefly as Lorenz shakes and shudders to pieces over the inky sprawl of Fódlan’s fertile heartland. “Beautiful. So good for me.” He rubs a hand over the bruises forming readily on Lorenz’s pale skin and tries a shallow thrust. “All right?”
Though his face is buried deep against his own arm, Lorenz nods; then unearths himself just enough to rasp, “Please. Take your fill. I want you to.”
Just those words are nearly enough. Claude shudders and finds his rhythm again: quick, sharp thrusts that burn in his calf muscles and ache somewhere strange in his chest. You aren’t allowed to die, he thinks even as he brands himself in Lorenz’s skin, even as he takes his pound of flesh. Not for me, not for Fódlan, not for anyone.
When he comes he leans forward, bowing over Lorenz’s body, stifling soft cries between his shoulder blades. It rocks him to his core—for a moment he can hardly breathe. Heat prickles behind his eyes and he clings to Lorenz like a limpet, unsure of which way is up or down.
There’s a soft touch to his hair, suddenly: Lorenz’s hand, reaching awkwardly back over his shoulder. Claude grips his fingers and kisses them, his knuckles, the sweaty palm of his hand.
Outside, a passing patrol slops through the mud, armor clanking as they march. The flicker of their torchlight gleams through the slightest crack in the tent flap; a warning and a reminder. Claude groans and pushes upright, one hand to the edge of the table. “Pulling out now, sweetheart.”
Lorenz nods, though he still makes a little moue of discomfort as Claude eases out of him. His hole is slack and reddened, and as Claude watches, a trickle of spend wells up and trickles down his perineum. Claude leaves it untouched, hot with prickly pride and satisfaction, and gently tugs his clothing back up into place.
When he’s decent, Lorenz stands upright on shaky legs, brushing his hair into some semblance of order. His face is very red, especially on the left side where his cheek was pressed into the table. Claude half-expects to find his front decorated with the hills and valleys and roads of Fódlan—but of course the ink is long dry, and aside from a bit of wrinkling, his clothes are clean and reasonably tidy.
He isn’t meeting Claude’s eyes.
“Are you—” Claude begins, wrong-footed.
“Do you need,” Lorenz says at the same time, and stops, eyes averted. “Erm. Your breeches…”
Oh. Claude startles into action, burning with embarrassment as he stuffs himself back into his smallclothes and does up the laces of his breeches. It’s a bit sticky, but better than leaving his cock out like an idiot for the world to see.
“Sorry,” he stammers, “I, um.”
Lorenz laughs a little, a soft exhale that brushes Claude’s cheek. “You were so confident a moment ago,” he teases, softening the tension that had been building under Claude’s skin. He reaches out and does up the buttons of Claude’s shirt that he’d opened so hastily before.
He moves without artifice or uncertainty, as though he’s performed such quiet, intimate little duties for Claude every day of their lives. When his fingers brush skin, the heated crackle of attraction is soothed to a gentle hum, a background noise Claude has already grown accustomed to.
“I don’t know where that came from,” Claude admits, tipping his chin back so that Lorenz can retie his cravat. Lorenz lifts his eyes, and Claude drops his. “I’m sorry if I overstepped—”
“Claude.” Lorenz’s tone is soft but firm, brooking no argument. “At what point during the proceedings did I communicate my displeasure?”
Claude swallows against his fingers. “You didn’t.”
“Correct. I enjoyed every second of it, though I will admit I am not accustomed to such… spontaneous assignations.” His cheeks grow even pinker, if possible, and though he’s finished tying Claude’s cravat, he’s slow to pull away. Instead he straightens Claude’s collar and tentatively brushes a stray curl back behind his ear. Claude softens a little more. “I hope… you do not think ill of me…”
“How could I possibly?” Claude breathes. He feels as though there is a knot in his throat as well as around it. Instinctively he captures Lorenz’s hand before it can move away and kisses the back of it as elegantly as he knows how. “Lorenz…”
He’s just bent the man over a table and buggered him stupid—so why does he feel as though he can hardly breathe when Lorenz looks at him? One glance and he is struck dumb. Lorenz smiles just a little, and Claude aches to kiss him. “I hold great regard for you,” Lorenz whispers when Claude makes no move to speak. “Surely you know that.”
“Is that all?”
“Is it not enough?” Lorenz parries with a tilt of his head.
Claude swallows. Thinks of Lorenz’s body, outlined in electric light, seizing in mid-air before collapsing to the ground in a smoking heap. Thinks of his hair, blackened by rain and mud, sprawled across the infirmary pillow; his skin bone-white, bruises beneath his eyes and blood trickling from his nose as the healers fought to keep his heart beating.
“I have already asked too much, I fear,” he says, voice cracking. “I dare not ask for more.”
Lorenz huffs a little disgruntled sigh. “I have made my allegiance plain, von Riegan. You will forgive me if my heart is more difficult to expose.” Then, before Claude can react, he tightens his fist in Claude’s necktie and drags him into a kiss.
Claude kisses back willingly, eagerly; his hungry hands grasp at Lorenz’s hips as if to pin an erstwhile butterfly into place. In his mouth Lorenz tastes like skin and copper, and when Claude licks the inside of his lip he finds a small sore where he’d bitten through skin. “I’m sorry,” he says nonsensically. One more injury to add to the tally.
“For what?” Lorenz asks, breathless. His lips are shiny and swollen, now, and Claude can’t help brushing one last kiss to their plump softness.
“For so many things, not least of all the difficulty you will have riding tomorrow.” He winces internally even as he says it. Of all times to fall back on humor! But Lorenz only laughs, a hearty deep-chested laugh that rattles the storm shutters in Claude’s heart.
“I forgive you in advance, though I cannot promise I won’t complain about it at length. In private,” he adds, perhaps seeing some flare of worry in Claude’s eyes.
“There are things,” Claude says, fumbling his way back toward candor, “things I haven’t told you yet, that I should, before…” Before. He sighs and shuts his eyes. “Forgive me. You deserve better than this lukewarm confession.”
“I have heard you confess nothing yet,” Lorenz says archly, a playful gleam still swimming in his eyes. “But perhaps now is not the time. We march early tomorrow, and it is late. And an entire battle still ahead.”
He makes as if to pull away, but Claude does not release his hand. Cannot. “When this war is over,” he says, speaking quickly, sensing the unfeeling hands of time ticking on, “I hope you will remain. The things we could accomplish together—”
“I have lost my stomach for warfare,” Lorenz interrupts.
“As have I, I assure you. I intend to wage peace instead, once this is over. To break down barriers between people, and forge new bonds of fellowship.”
Lorenz bows his head, strangely pensive. “I will follow where you lead, of course. It seems to have worked out well so far. Goddess willing, it will remain so.”
There is more he should say. More that weighs on his tongue, on his heart, aching to be spoken aloud. But he knows not how. Tomorrow they march against Adrestia, though he hopes to forge some fragile allyship he can use to his advantage. If they survive it, there are larger enemies still to be faced, and the dark cloud of failure looms just over his head, threatening to surge back blacker than before after the brief respite in Lorenz’s arms.
“We will have much to speak of, once this is over,” Claude says at last. Lorenz nods, quiet but not unhappy, following Claude’s lead—as ever. It’s a funny thing, to be obeyed without question. Perhaps he doesn’t mind so much when it’s Lorenz, if only because he knows Lorenz would push back if it were truly necessary.
“I will look forward to it.” Lorenz steps back, straightening his clothing and hair one more time. “Good eve, Your Grace. Until tomorrow.”
Claude inclines his head, feeling strangely regal. Lorenz doesn’t often call him by his title. Soon that title will be yours, he thinks with a little frisson of anticipation. Lorenz steps to the tent flaps and Claude leaps forward suddenly, taking his wrist.
“Claude, what—”
Claude kisses him. The cool night air flits through the tent flap, teasing it open a little wider. Anyone passing by could see them: Claude’s arms around Lorenz’s neck, Lorenz bent to meet him halfway. “Forgive me,” he breathes when they part, dropping back onto his heels. “Goodnight, Lorenz.”
Lorenz clears his throat, a bit unbalanced, and gives a jerky bow before departing.
The night swirls around Claude’s ankles like a snowmelt stream, its current threatening to drag him out on Lorenz’s tail—but he holds fast, fists clenched to his hips, and the impulse passes. With his mind quiet and his heart at ease, he turns and begins the laborious process of returning all the scattered pieces to their proper places on the map.