marlowemuses | This will be happily ever after...

Alarmed, Damen felt his fears confirmed as Laurent pulled away from him, the comfortable relaxation exchanged for tension and separation. He nearly reached out to touch Laurent, and drew his hand back just in time.

Instead, he tucked the sheet around Laurent's back and left the space between them unbreached; a quiet but unmoving presence beside him. Laurent had promised him honesty, and in turn he had offered to listen, to respect his wishes and treat him as an equal.

"As much as you need," he promised, settling back to simply watch the curled line of Laurent's back, the barely visible contours of his face.

"You make me feel vulnerable," Laurent said. The words were half stifled by his arm. He felt half sick with tension, because honesty made him even more vulnerable. "You made me feel used. You said that I belonged to you, as you held me down, and then you... you came on me like you were marking me. Claiming me."

Laurent shuddered, feeling more miserable by the word. It hadn't been so bad when he hadn't had to quantify what had made him lose his temper. Laying it out made it all the more awful.

"You made me feel vulnerable, and then you made me feel like a whore," Laurent said. He shuddered again, emotions and confidence crumbling because he had nothing left to use as a defense, not if he was being honest.

That said, he got to his feet, not looking back at Damen because he didn't want to see the look on the king's face.

Vulnerable, he knew already. But used... Damen didn't know how to absorb this new information. Restraint. Mark. Claim. Whore. The images flashed in a series of increasingly disturbing visions of himself, as Laurent must see him.

He frowned, troubled by the knowledge. His first instinct was to defend himself against the allegations - but no, that wouldn't do any good, and besides it wasn't about him. Laurent's feelings and reactions to his own actions were at the forefront here. And he had a clear responsibility to try and make it right, if he could.

"I am - sorry, Laurent." The words did not come easily to his lips. But they must. Damen sat up, hands in his lap where the sheet pooled over him. "I seem to misstep at every turn when it comes to you. I thank you for your honesty. I - didn't know."

He spoke haltingly, trying to choose his words carefully. "I would like to be honest as well. To have the chance to explain my own intentions, if they might ease your hurt at all. If you will stay and listen."

Laurent seemed on the verge of fleeing; he had already fled the bed, and Damen didn't know how they were ever going to move past this if one or both of them kept running away.

Laurent returned warily, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching Damen. He wanted to trust Damen, wanted to try and deepen the trust and honesty between them.

Face guarded, he watched Damen, willing to hear what he had to say. He appreciated the effort, knowing that Damen was unused to any of this. He was also unused to any of this, and could feel his heart pounding with emotions. He'd promised Damen his honesty, but if that honesty displeased Damen, he'd be left without any defenses.

It was a good first step. Now if he could only manage not to scare Laurent away again with his clumsiness.

Damen found it easier not to look him in the eyes for this part. "I was angered that anybody should touch you against your will. I told you you did not belong to them. What I should have said - what I believe - is that you belong to yourself; your body is your own, to share with whom you will."

He found the courage to glance up, though tentatively, at the man before him. "I was honored that you chose to share it with me. I would not have continued as I did if I knew you felt used because of it. I never want to make you feel that way again."

And yet - was that possible? He could no sooner deny his own passionate nature than Laurent could deny his pointed tongue and provocative nature. There was still that small part of Damen that could not help wanting to do exactly what Laurent had said - to mark him, to claim him as his own - but he pushed it down and out of his thoughts for now, as something that would send Laurent running, never to return.

Laurent softened, pleased by the honesty and the efforts Damen was making. Sinking back down onto the bed by him, Laurent leaned over to give him a light kiss on the lips.

He didn't think that it was the kink of it that he minded, and part of him liked the idea of belonging to Damen, being possessed and claimed, but with all of his nerves and doubts it hit hard upon his insecurities.

"You're not bad at this talking thing," Laurent said, scooting to sit against the head of the bed, hugging a pillow as he watched Damen.

Damen could hardly believe that Laurent wasn't running as fast as he could. Amazed and relieved, he stayed very, very still as Laurent settled back on the bed and - oh - kissed him, lightly but deliberately.

He watched his husband's movements closely, unsure of what Laurent wanted from him now. It seemed safest to let Laurent make the first moves when it came to touching or proximity. Damen folded his legs into a more comfortable sitting position. "I'm going to get lots of practice at it, I think," he said, a wry look at Laurent. "On mornings where there is nothing scheduled early, this would be - nice." His hubsand's favorite word.

Laurent was so good at lounging. Damen arranged a pillow awkwardly behind himself and leaned against the headboard in suit. "What is your morning routine in Vere?"

Laurent smiled, pleased and comforted by Damen's efforts, and leaned his head on Damen's shoulder. "Sleeping in, stealing a few pastries and a jug of tea from the kitchen, and then sneaking off to the library or the woods and spending the day reading. Not so much stealing, either, really. Since I was twelve, there has been a conveniently placed jug of tea and bundle of pastries lying specifically unattended on a certain table in the kitchen."

A grin twitched at one side of Laurent's mouth. He knew that his servants were fond of him, and it was mutual. He missed them already.

"I was mostly left to myself, unless there was some topic that my father wanted me tutored in, or if they required me to appear at court or dinner."

Gently, with the sort of excruciatingly slow movements he'd use around a skittish wild forest thing, Damen wound an arm around Laurent's shoulders. Those mornings sounded idyllic to him, almost too good to be true for a Prince's life. He compared it with his own upbringing, his habits here, where days like today were rare treats for him. He'd given specific instructions not to be disturbed for a few hours in the mornings of his honeymoon.

Damen smiled too. "I think we can manage tea and pastries in Ios." His thumb stroked an idle path along Laurent's bicep. "I'm afraid sneaking off won't be as possible now, but as Prince-Consort, you can do almost exactly as you please. Do you already have ideas of what you'd like to work on, when our travels are over?" He already had a suspicion what it would be - something Laurent seemed very passionate about, and which he was already turning over in his head how to possibly make it work - but he was mostly trying to listen today to what Laurent had to say and understand him a little better.

Laurent nestled more comfortably against Damen, very much enjoying their morning plans of cuddling and talking. "I know I'll have to do quite a bit of work. More than I've ever done before. I have a lot of learning to do--I need to perfect my Akielon language, and quickly. I'll need to secure alliances in the court, find out who can be trusted, find out the stated motives and hidden motives of your courtiers and nobles. I'll need to understand current Akielon policies and the reasons for them, so I can understand how best to advise you and where there's opportunity to improve funding and resources to education and orphanages, and to improve the rights and protections of slaves, laborers, and the poor."

Nervous about laying all that out and hoping that Damen wouldn't dig his heels in too much, Laurent wound their fingers together, trying to act unconcerned while he watched Damen from the side of his eye.

Happy that the serenity of the night before had been restored and perhaps even deepening, Damen let himself ease at Laurent's side. His skin felt warm against the Prince's. Contentment seeped out of him, rumbling silently in the steady thump of his heartbeat. There was something quietly intimate about being chest to bare chest, sharing plans, telling secret hopes, something he wasn't sure he'd felt before in this way. It wasn't sexual, but he'd be lying if he said the thoughts weren't there, lying dormant for now.

Yes, the latter part of Laurent's plan was quite as Damen thought it might be. He dipped his head in half-nod, half-brush of lips to his husband's fair hair. "I will give you every help I can to help our people." Ours. It was a strangely comforting feeling. It made him feel as if he...wasn't quite so alone anymore.

"Who can be trusted." Damen looked at him thoughtfully. "Is this because of Kastor? He's been banished for months. But I fear there are still some loyal to him at my court." He traced the pad of his finger over the soft flesh curve of Laurent's thumb. Wondering how much to trust him. Deciding that if Laurent was planning all this to destroy him, there were easier ways.

"I am a commander of men, Laurent. I do not have the skill to find out traitors. It was not a skill I thought I needed in Akielos." And he did not even have to say it for them to both know the truth. But you do.

"I find that loyalty or disloyalty is not a black and white matter," Laurent said, by way of response. He turned his head, brushing his nose lightly against the line of Damen's jaw. "People are driven by an array of loyalties, and those loyalties often come into conflict with each other. Perhaps you have an advisor who has been loyal to you for years. And yet, this advisor has a son who has become involved with a dangerous, violent faction. Anarchists or cultists. And, imagine, your loyal advisor has to choose between having his wayward son arrested and imprisoned or even killed, or protecting him and trying to decrease the damage of his crimes. It isn't the advisor's loyalty that's the problem, you see?"

Contented with cuddling and talking as Laurent taught what he knew and tried to open Damen's eyes to a court full of more nuanced loyalties, Laurent brought Damen's hand to his lips, gently kissing the knuckles. "Imagine a noble whose mother is Vaskian, and that mother has been embittered for years with the opinion that your policies do not adequately favor Vaskian interests. When that noble, then, sees Vaskian scouts too far inland on Akielon territory, will he report them?"

Laurent shifted in Damen's arms so that he could watch Damen's face, and hooked his long legs over Damen's thighs. "It's not just about Kastor, though banishment, especially such recent banishment, means that Kastor is still a very real threat to us. Any unhappiness that your people have, any disenfranchisement of any group, will leave a weakness for Kastor to exploit. If we increase the legal protections over slaves, then the slave owners and slave traders will chafe against it, and all Kastor will have to do is promise them that if he were the king, he would bring them prosperity. It wouldn't matter if he was lying. What you need isn't the skill or assistance to simply find out traitors. You need assistance in finding out the varying motivations of those in power, and shifting those motivations so that they benefit you."

Edited 2017-02-22 00:31 (UTC)

Careful, Laurent. Damen was easily distracted by all of...that, that stuff he was going, all of it. His senses were hyperaware of Laurent's nearness, of how close to kissing range he was, of the softness of lips over his hardened knuckles. He was listening, but it took all his effort not to think about the length of limbs currently filling his lap.

As they had before, Laurent's words found a ready mark in Damen's imagination. He thought of the kyroi he had trusted, the advisors and delegates who kept him abreast of his kingdom's matters. Each of them had a story. Did he know them? Did he make their lives better or worse by his kingship?

His features rippled with this realization, and the deeper one that Laurent could help him so much mesore than he had ever dreamed. Damen had been prepared to lead in battle, but with Theomedes in the best of health before Kastor's betrayal, none had thought Damianos would ascend the throne so soon. He had not needed to know these things...but now he did, he must know them.

He let his arms settle around Laurent's waist, hands spanning his back. "You are right, of course. I am used to thinking as I might in war, where enemies are clear and loyalties are a simple matter. That's why I - need you to help me see these things as they really are."

Damen's eyes slid down to Laurent's chest, unexpectedly abashed that he had admitted as much out loud. Yet he absolutely did need all of those skills that Laurent had in abundance. His gaze lingered on the soft pink of nipples.

(Distracting.)

Laurent swatted at Damen's wandering hands, giving him a stern look for it. "If you had the first idea how to be deceptive, I might suspect that you were just flattering me to get my attention onto other topics."

Extricating himself, Laurent scooted back so that they were no longer touching. He crossed his legs under himself, watching Damen's face and thinking. "Don't just start pawing at me if you want intimacy, Damen. If you want something, ask for it and negotiate for it."

"You know me too well for that." Caught, Damen leaned back and tried not to look as stung as he felt. He'd just told Laurent his deepest vulnerability as King, and all Laurent could do was assume he was trying to get in his tightly-laced pants.

He sighed, eyes rolling eloquently. "Because you explicitly asked to climb in my lap and put your hands on me, of course. All right then, Laurent. Let's negotiate. Must I ask for every touch when you are clinging to me like a barnacle?"

The retreat had pricked at his pride more pointedly than he'd like to acknowledge. Laurent had been warming up to him, and he'd responded in kind. Every other partner he'd ever had would be under him by now, and he'd barely laid a hand on his husband. His husband.

Laurent's glare turned icy. He scooted back further. "Clearly not," he said, tone utterly scathing. "If any physical affection or intimacy that I offer is going to make you assume it's an invitation for sex, then I'll be careful not to touch you unless I have sex in mind."

He bit back the further barbs that sprang to his tongue, tensing his muscles in an effort to resist storming from the room.

"If that's what you think of me, I wonder that you can bring yourself to touch me at all. I won't hold my breath."

Damen had never been so coldly, consistently rejected. His body ached for the closeness Laurent's body had tempted him with. He thought of how easy it would be to call Erasmus in, how delighted the young man would be to devote all his attention to the one person he'd been raised to serve. it wasn't Erasmus that he truly wanted. It was that kind of attention from Laurent, that same affection and trust in his motives.

"Going to run away again? Why don't you try telling me what I did to make you look at me so?"

Laurent snarled, throwing the pillow he'd been holding earlier at Damen's face. He got up, pacing as he tried to contain his temper. "You're an entitled, spoiled, selfish person, Damen. All your honor and honesty won't counteract that, because you think you're entitled to have me sweet and simpering in your bed."

Overturning a table in his fit of temper, Laurent wheeled on Damen again. He wouldn't let himself flee the situation again, which meant he had to fight it out, which had yet to work well for him. He was increasingly aware that whenever he lashed out verbally at Damen, Damen lashed back.

"Why do you keep saying that?" he demanded, seemingly out of nowhere.

Damen batted the pillow away by sheer reflex, even though it was clearly no threat. Much more targeted were Laurent's words. Damen's face hardened into its stoic set. "Entitled. Spoiled. Says the Prince who's never worked a day in his life."

He watched the destruction of his room with an increasingly tightening jaw. A muscle began to tick there. He just couldn't bring himself not to rise to the bait. He even knew it was bait now, and yet...

"Saying what?" Damen gritted out.

"'Is that what you think of me'," Laurent repeated. His brow furrowed, studying Damen's face as he tried to make sense of that fact. "Like you think I'm bound to hate you. Can you really not comprehend that I can criticize you and also like you?"

Shaking his head, Laurent sighed, turning away and deflating as his temper cooled into unhappiness. "This is exhausting. It's exhausting being honest with you, because you do something unacceptable, I snap at you, you say something harsh enough to make me not want to be in the same room as you, and then later you cool down enough that you're willing to listen, and you realize that my anger was justified. You still hold all the power in this relationship, Damianos. All of it. And every single time I'm honest with you, instead of telling you some soothing lie, I wonder whether this is the time that you call my words treasonous and have me locked away for it. The only thing in the world that protects me from you is your sense of honor and your desire to please me, and you must see how tenuous that is."

Laurent shivered once, realizing as he said it just how true it was, and just how much of a fool he was for letting his pride and his temper lead him into this situation time and again. Dropping his eyes away, he sat down on the edge of the bed. "Never mind. Forget it. Forget everything I said."

Put that way, Damen had to admit he hadn't thought of it quite in those terms. It had seemed to him that Laurent veered wildly from almost-liking him to outright hating him in a semi-regular pattern, like a wagon with a broken wheel that kept weaving from one side to the other. That the two emotions could simply coexist in Laurent, approval and disapproval both, came as a revelation.

The hard expression dissolved, even before Laurent's icy fury did. He didn't want them to be constantly at war. He would far rather have things as they were during those peaceful, blissful moments between them. Laurent was right. It was exhausting, and Damen didn't know how to break the cycle.

"I would prefer to remember them," Damen said quietly. All the anger was gone from his voice. He still took issue with the way his husband seemingly found half his actions unacceptable , but for now, he knew he had to show Laurent he'd listened to the rest of what he'd had to say. "I do desire to please you. But even more, I desire to know you. For you to know me and - be at peace and not fear about your situation here."

He held out his hand. palm up. "What would it take, Laurent?"

Edited 2017-02-22 15:03 (UTC)

Wary but yearning for Damen's approval and affection, Laurent took his hand. "I liked resting against you and talking with you. But then your eyes and your hands started wandering, and even though you did nothing to cross a line, I could feel the way that you'd started looking at me, like you already knew where things were going because you knew what came next when you had a appealing body in your bed."

Lightly pulling his hand away, Laurent scooted back to sit against the head of the bed. "And when I suggested that you ask for whatever you have in mind, you lost your temper with me and spoke harshly. After the last time we lay together, I feel wary to be naked with you, because I don't know what it will involve. Now I feel wary even touching you or offering affection, if I can't simply offer affection. If it must always be sex."

He shook his head, looking at the rumpled bedcovers instead of Damen. "I have no objection whatsoever to sex. I'd like to be having sex. It's simply that every time we edge toward that, I feel like I'm on a narrow ledge in a vast, dark cave, and I have no way of knowing if the floor beneath me is inches or fathoms away. Ask me, Damen. Tell me what you're thinking, what you want, what you're offering that you think might tempt me. When you touch me like that, you're thinking that this will lead to pleasure for us both, and I'm thinking that I don't know what you want, I don't know what you're planning, and I don't know if the pleasure for me will be able to outweigh the vulnerability and nerves of it."

This was all far more convoluted than Damen's usual bedroom philosophy, which he had always assumed to be a mutually agreeable exchange of pleasure, hardly even worth calling a philosophy, it came so simple and natural to him. Laurent's baffled him. He couldn't fathom why lovemaking needed to be negotiated, planned out, each touch carefully plotted like it was some court dance. It seemed a cold way to treat a lover.

He stared at his now-empty hand. "I don't - assume that we're going to make love, just because you touch me. I don't even know what to ask for." Damen felt restless just sitting there in the bed afraid to make a move around Laurent. He longed to get up and pace, his usual strategy for thinking problems through. "I wasn't planning, hard as it may be for you to believe. You touched me. I touched you back. This is how I've always done things, Laurent. I'm not...not like you."

His hands curled into the bedcovers, tugging them smooth over his lap, over the space between them. "I am willing to try, for your sake." How much worse could it get, after all? Damen exhaled on a long breath. "What I want is to hold you without fear. To kiss you when you come close to me, as you did this morning. To touch you when you touch me. I don't know what will tempt you. If I did, I would do it."

He'd tried. He had kept their conversation chaste, not even attempting to touch Laurent, merely listening to him. Asking before disrobing him. Laurent was right at least that he had misinterpreted the physical gestures as more than they were intended. Damen cast a look at him that was frustrated without any of the anger from earlier behind it. The more he learned of the man he'd married, the less he felt that he really knew Laurent.

Edited (what is words) 2017-02-22 16:32 (UTC)

"Say 'would you like'," Laurent suggested. "So that everything is an invitation. Would you like to kiss me, would you like it if I pleasured you with my hand. I'll try to do the same. There's great pleasure in saying 'yes', I think."

Setting aside his comfort pillow, Laurent watched Damen's eyes, willing to trust if they could try asking and suggesting and negotiating rather than simply fumbling until one of them hit a boundary. "Would you like to cuddle and talk, as we were doing before?"

This was what he got, Damen supposed, for wanting to marry a Veretian. He really should have thought this whole plan through more carefully.

He stared at Laurent for a minute, wondering if he was serious. But of course he was. A complicated series of invitations and acknowledgments and maneuvering in bed was exactly the sort of thing a Veretian lover would find pleasing.

On the other hand...things were looking up for him if Laurent was serious in his offer. Damen had the unsettling feeling that he was being tamed as he said, carefully, "I would like that, yes." As if Laurent didn't know that ten different ways already. Look, how my Akielon lover comes crawling to me, begging for favors, as tame as any pet. He swallowed his pride. "If you would, as well."

Without the barrier of the pillow between them, Damen was presented yet again with the... distracting view. He gestured at Laurent. "You mentioned your - pajamas?" The Veretian word was strange to him. He'd assumed they were some sort of bed clothes. He, of course, slept in the nude as a habit. "Would you be more comfortable in them? I ask - " he put up a hand. "- not because I'm planning anything. The exact opposite, in fact." If his wandering gaze upset Laurent, better to have the temptation removed altogether.

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