[Almost no sooner does Liem send his letter seaward than he receives another note from his missing spouse. He has just enough time to worry through a meeting, wondering if there has been some urgent development, before he reads the letter and recalls that his husband has a dearth of patience and a penchant for drama. Liem can clearly envision the sulky dissatisfaction on Cardan’s elegant face as he suffers in his opulent palace rooms, and it makes him smile through the hard pang of longing that swells in his chest. Because he is alone, he dips his head to sniff the salt-scented paper, and imagines himself in a palace beneath the waves, keeping his husband company as he cannot possibly do.
Though he means to write immediately, his duties demand more of his time than he can effectively shuffle around, and by the time he is able to pen a reply, another of Cardan’s letters is sitting on his desk. He cannot help but think again of Cardan in his lonely guest chambers, surrounded by slippery merfolk and impenetrable miles of cold grey sea, and he recalls what his husband said to him weeks ago, after he told him that he liked his hands. The melancholy crease in his brow returns as he stares down at the empty page before him.]
To My Dearest Villain,
Would that you were present to terrorize my houseguests with your wit and drink my cellars dry, instead of inflicting your talents on a foreign queen. My work is tedious without you here to gainsay my choice of tableware for the latest soiree. Likewise, there is no joy in dragging myself out of bed every evening without you attempting to lure me back into it. At least when I vanish into my office on other nights, I can generally expect you to pursue me there in short order.
Have no fear, though, that I have rediscovered peace in your absence. Your ghost haunts all the places I pass my nights, so I cannot recall the feeling of solitude. Every time I glance up from my work, it is in the expectation of confronting your regard; it is entirely distracting. When you return to menace me once more, that to me will be the greatest of reliefs.
[ “Just open it,” Nicasia sneers, acidly. Cardan can’t even pretend to be undeserving; he has been thoroughly inattentive for at least an hour, and her graciousness thus far has been, frankly, uncharacteristic. “Or better yet—“
She doesn’t finish her sentence, because, presumably, it would warn him of the fact she is going to reach inside his jacket and pluck the letter straight from its pocket. He’s too startled to react in time; she is already moving away, unfurling the parchment, her imperious mouth curled into a scowl. ]
Nicasia, [ he warns, but they both know it doesn’t matter. Her eyes are already dancing over the neat lines of Liem’s handwriting. The frown deepens; she wrinkles her nose. ]
Nicasia, [ he says again, more sharply. This time, she sighs with clear disgust, denting the letter as she shoves it up against his chest. He moves to grasp it, but she keeps it pinned for a moment longer, her fingertips stabbing into his shirt.
“Do you love him?” she asks, and whatever she sees in his face makes her expression harden.
It is only some time after she has stalked off that he smooths the letter back out. Reading it makes something tremulous and uncertain stir in him, some emotion that tightens his throat. It’s anxiety, he realizes: the fear that comes only from having too much and being afraid to lose it all. He had always known that pleasure was a fragile, transient thing, and made his peace with its departure accordingly.
But he doesn’t want to lose Liem’s affection. He doesn’t want to lose his confidence, or the intimacies he permits Cardan to take with his person. He doesn’t want to give up the pleasant, comfortable life he has found for himself in Ironside. He wants to menace his husband and he wants to distract him — wants to be his villain and his companion and the person he turns to when he can trust no one else.
It turns out that insisting his happy days were numbered has not made him any less susceptible to foolish yearning. And even worse: the person whose embrace he would turn to for comfort is the one whose absence so torments him in the first place.
He writes no more after this. He cannot— every time he sits down for it, that strange emotion constricts his thoughts, making it impossible to put pen to parchment. Nicasia’s question haunts him like a pebble in his shoe: inconsequential, surely, and yet he cannot stop thinking about it, now that his attention has been so diverted. Days pass. The only remotely good news is that Queen Orlagh seems to have finally grown sick of his continued presence in her palace, and does appear to desire a treaty. The deal he hammers out is terrible, but it is far better than he would expect from the ferocious Queen of the Undersea.
It is, quite plainly, because of her interest in both Liem and Iago, but he is in no position to be overcautious.
When he finally surfaces, it is almost two fortnights after he’d gone under the waves — but in his breast pocket, alongside Liem’s letters, is a contract freshly signed in his own lifeblood.
Being able to travel by daylight makes his trip back substantially speedier. Even so, by the time he reaches the last rest stop, his anxiety and impatience are ready to buzz a hole straight through his chest. On impulse, he foregoes the carriage laden heavily with all of his luggage, and instead conjures up a ragwort pony. It is not safe, perhaps, given his tally of attempted assassinations, but he doesn’t care. The thought of sitting in a carriage for another day’s ride is unbearable.
He makes it to the estate in three hours, and if his ragwort steed were a real, living creature, it would have surely collapsed under him the moment he rode onto the estate grounds. As it is, it disintegrates into limp stalks, but he barely takes note — he is already on his way through the doors, not even waiting for a servant to finish the ritual greeting. He will, likewise, refuse the offer to take off his dusty travel boots. The wedding ring on his finger pulses, as always faintly warm with Liem’s proximity. Not that Cardan needs its magic to know that at this time of night, his spouse is more than likely holed up inside his office.
And if his heart beats wildly in his throat, if the odd apprehension buoying him in the past few days has reached an all-time high, then all the more reason to hasten his steps — because the sooner he sees Liem, the sooner all will be as it should. ]
[Much of the week following the sending of Liem’s embarrassingly honest letter is spent waiting, with less and less patience as Cardan’s expected reply fails to come. Though there is probably no insidious explanation behind the lack of further correspondence, Liem is well-practised at worrying, and some time around day four he starts turning over possible scenarios in his head, unable to stop himself.
Always, his first instinct is to wonder if he is to blame: if his lonely message was spied on by someone inconvenient, or if he somehow misjudged the tone of reply his husband wished to receive. His second instinct is to wonder if some letter went astray, intercepted by an unknown party. His third instinct is to worry that Cardan is unable to write at all, but the thought of something happening to him makes distress bite down on Liem’s throat, and he convinces himself that if anything untoward happened to his husband, he would surely be notified one way or another.
Whatever the case, the nights pass and he hears nothing from his spouse. Liem grows increasingly curt with staff and gentry alike, his nerves wound tight and waiting for any excuse to snap. Even Iago must have tired of his sullen mood, because after tolerating days of it, he gives Liem an errand to take care of on an outlying part of his domain: a visit to assess one of their vassal lords, who is celebrating the birth of her third child within the last half-century, despite consistently unremarkable tithes scraped together from her patch of countryside.
Before he leaves, Liem sends another note into the cold and unresponsive sea.]
Cardan,
I hope you have earned more goodwill from your gracious hostess than I have from my lord father of late. He has, I think, grown used to the ways in which you occupy my time, and now seems tired of my presence raining on his otherwise enjoyable evenings.
Though, if you gave Queen Orlagh reason to tire of hosting you further, I could not sincerely complain.
Faithfully yours,
Liem
[And again, after he returns several nights later to deliver his report of the baroness’s hospitality, and finds that any worries of missing a letter during his absence have been misplaced. In his disappointed despondency, he cannot make the voice of reason drown out his loneliness. He can do nothing but write again, and try not to unravel too much with the motions of the pen.]
Cardan,
In defiance of the muddy ruin winter left behind, spring has arrived properly in your absence. You may be pleased to know that the gardens are again presentable, and the woods now greener and alive with birds. I hear them rioting at the end of each night, in expectation of the coming dawn.
Perhaps day and night blend together beneath the waves, though. I wonder if I should have lent you my pocketwatch, that you might have a reminder of the moon’s place in its journey, even when it is drowned by an entire sea. But probably the salt and the damp would not agree with such a delicate instrument.
Instead it remains in my keeping, so I can use it to count the minutes since your departure. The number is now over thirty thousand, if you have an interest in knowing.
[Come back, he wants to write. Come home. I miss you. But that would be stupid and pointless, particularly since he cannot imagine his wishes are any mystery regardless. He simply signs the letter.]
Faithfully yours,
Liem
[But even when, soon after, news comes that his husband is on his journey back, Liem’s anxiety and his sullen, impatient moods remain. He does not know what kept his husband for so long in silence, or what their reunion might bring. If Cardan is returning without incident after all, perhaps he simply wasn’t writing because he didn’t wish to. Even though he cannot produce a convincing reason why that should suddenly be the case, half-formed suspicions haunt his thoughts, blackening his mood so even Gusairne opts to give him a wide berth.
When the door to his office swings obligingly open to accommodate Cardan’s arrival, several hours before he expects his husband to return, the look Liem flashes up from his papers is fit to skewer the person in the doorway. But the look falters into shock as soon as his gaze falls on Cardan; a moment later he is on his feet, his chair shoved back, unnoticed, as he stares at his husband.]
[ He had promised himself, having read each of Liem's letters that followed, that he would be back soon -- that he would be back, and then he'd say all the things he needed to say, and if there was a little wait, well, it was not that much longer than the time it took for a letter to arrive, anyway.
It's just that, when he sees Liem, every single word he'd ever known turns to dust. He had imagined this moment countless times in the days and hours preceding: his triumphant return, bursting in to scoop Liem up in his arms and seal his successes with a well-deserved, impassioned kiss, perhaps even some light swooning from Liem's direction. Instead, his first glimpse of his husband arrests him entirely. He is caught by the scathing glare -- and then trapped by Liem himself, by the difference that a month has made in a man who ought not to change at all.
He looks tired, Cardan notices. Weary, too, in a different sense. His gaze traverses his husband's features, so achingly familiar after such a short time: the neatly coiffed hair with its silver streaks; the tease of Liem's pale throat hidden away by his meticulously stiff collar; the cliffs of his cheekbones; the aquiline nose; that sharp, elegant face with its serious mouth; his hands, so pervasive in Cardan's thoughts night after night.
And those shocked, bright eyes, crystalline against the devouring black that surrounds them.
It hurts. Tenderness pulses, terrible and virulent, from somewhere beneath his sternum, pressing everything else into nothingness -- even the relief, even the terror that he knows will follow. It aches in the way everything new and fragile does. He feels too small for the enormity of it, too unpracticed in the feeling. How foolish, to think that he could avoid this, if only he avoided thinking about it. Nicasia must have seen it in his face: that his heart was lost, that he'd already placed it in those cool, capable hands, as irrevocable as any promise he'd ever made.
His eyes are burning. He inhales -- and then realizes, with a sharp stab of horror, that for the first time in his conscious memory, he is going to cry. He has to slam down on the impulse with every last bit of willpower he has left, because-- he can't. How strange and alarming would it look to Liem, for his husband to come back from his journey in tears? And anyway, he's been standing here for too long; he must do something.
His ragged little breath is inordinately loud in the room between them. He makes himself move, striding across the floor as if in a dream. And when he pulls his husband into his arms, when he buries his face in Liem's hair, it's only because he cannot trust himself with anything else.
He's holding on too tightly. But it will have to do until his composure returns, until his voice and his face and his trembling hands can return to their natural state. ]
[For one wild, fraught moment, as he stares at Cardan and Cardan stares back with an expression he’s never before seen him wear, Liem has no idea what is about to happen next. After weeks of silence, his husband has burst into his office half a night ahead of schedule to stare him down, and he still hasn’t said a word. For the duration of those scant seconds, Liem is half convinced that something really did happen after all, or maybe that something is just about to.
Then Cardan crosses the room and pulls him tightly into an embrace, and Liem is too busy squeezing him back, pressing his face into Cardan’s shoulder and breathing him in, to care about anything else. The man in his arms is warm and solid and real, he is right here, and he is holding Liem like the world is about to end. Since that is exactly how Liem wishes to be held just now, he cannot complain at all.]
Cardan.
[This time he murmurs it against his coat, too full of blind longing to so much as lift his head. The sound of Cardan’s heartbeat thumping away behind his ribs comforts Liem more than he thought possible. He had become so used to this loathsome, oppressive silence that he had forgotten how the background of his nights was actually meant to sound.
Now that he is properly, thoroughly bolstered, he can ask the question that has been haunting him for days.]
[ It's not really enough time to get over a world-shaking realization. He's still reeling; he doesn't even open his eyes, too busy letting traitorous dampness soak into Liem's hair. Really, he doesn't move at all, because he doesn't want to let go, doesn't want to stop breathing in Liem's painfully comforting scent, doesn't want to stop feeling the soft rumble of his voice when he speaks. Having him now only draws into stark relief how painful his absence had been all this time. Cardan is still too sore to weather it again.
He clears his throat, and is relieved to find that his voice is only a little roughened. ]
I did not want to wait.
[ He doesn't really know if that's what Liem is asking about -- probably it isn't. But it's the most important event on Cardan's mind, aside from the thing that's too raw and too new to even try to put into words.
Soon, as soon as he can trust his expression again, he will pull back and take his husband's face in his hands, and then he'll tell him about the treaty, and the journey back, and whatever else Liem wants to know. For now, he tilts his head just enough to press a kiss to Liem's temple, and tries to will his heart to stop thundering through his chest like it's about to escape. ]
[A soft huff of breath, not even really a laugh, escapes Liem when he hears Cardan’s answer. Yes, obviously he did not want to wait, for him to be here so quickly, when Liem still expected him to be hours away by carriage at this time of night. How very like his chronically impatient husband.
It doesn’t explain anything about what Liem was actually asking: Why Cardan had stopped sending letters not even halfway through his trip. Why the trip had dragged on so long—though Liem had half expected this, after Cardan’s warning before they’d gone to Elfhame. And perhaps, also, what had made Cardan so desperate to return, that he had apparently abandoned his luggage and rushed here as fast as the wind could carry him.
But perhaps Cardan just doesn’t want to talk about it right now, only moments after walking in the door. Perhaps Liem should be focusing more on the soft lips at his temple and the snug, warm embrace that he has so rarely been able to enjoy while they are clothed and upright.]
Had your fill of saltwater, did you?
[Cardan still smells a little like it, even more than a day’s travel from the sea. But mostly he smells like Liem’s wayward lover whom he had been missing terribly, and no amount of stubborn sea smell can make that anything but pathetically comforting. For a moment he just nuzzles into the crook of Cardan’s neck, reacquainting himself with that simple pleasure.]
[ It's always distracting when Liem touches his neck -- but it is especially distracting now, after a long month's absence, when Cardan is so eager to have his frantic, jumbled thoughts waylaid. He doesn't bother suppressing his happy little shiver, and he will loosen his tight grip just a little, so that he can slide his hands down to Liem's waist, the small of his back, reacquainting himself with the slim, familiar shape of him.
How strange that such a small thing can make him feel a little more like himself, even now. ]
You're stealing my lines.
[ He takes another moment to wrestle his emotions back under control -- at least he has practice with this, though never before in this circumstance. And then he does put his hands on Liem's face, and he does pull back to look at him, taking in his features like a man starved of beauty. He feels starved. Vaguely, he realizes that this might seem strange to Liem, who would surely not have expected Cardan to come back so desperate, and still-- and still...
He desperately needs to pivot from thoroughly, obviously lovesick thoughts. ]
I have annoyed Queen Orlagh into granting us safe passage, [ he will tell Liem. It feels like a much smaller deal than it did ten minutes ago. ] And all it cost was most of my sanity.
[ He can't pause for very long; it feels like holding a breath he didn't have time to take. ]
...and some significant value of export goods, an errant favour or two, plus but a handful of other concessions.
[ He wants to kiss Liem-- except he doesn't quite know if he'll stop, once he starts. Still, it is difficult not to stare at his husband's mouth when he's so close. His thumb strokes over Liem's cheek, restlessly. ]
[Hearing the familiar, low rumble of Cardan’s voice makes Liem happier than he would have believed possible, scant months ago. He has become so used to his ongoing solitude that having his husband back like this, pressed close and so obviously starving for affection, feels indulgent enough to border on obscene. Even if Cardan offers him a quip instead of saying out loud the thing Liem wanted to hear, Liem is too pathetically relieved to linger over small disappointments.
And he is too distracted, anyway, by those feverish hands cupping his face and his lover’s familiar, hungry stare. Liem’s own hands wander Cardan’s body, reacquainting themselves with the planes of his back, the slim lines of his waist, the elegant contours of his chest and shoulders. He is too clothed, but he is here, he is well, he is Liem’s, and that is all that matters.]
Oh, is that all?
[The deal does sound like a steep one—but Cardan had gone unaccompanied into Queen Orlagh’s domain to secure it, and that was always going to be an uphill battle. Ultimately, they need this deal and she doesn’t, not really. As long as it doesn’t cost anything Liem is unwilling to spend, he can work around a high price.]
I haven’t—but that’s hardly anything new.
[Has Cardan ever seen Liem look well-rested? Their first meeting was during an extravagant party that Liem himself went to great lengths to arrange, and he has hardly become less busy since then.]
You smell like old blood. [His hand, sliding over Cardan’s chest, lingers over his breast pocket.] Am I going to take issue with the hospitality you enjoyed in Queen Orlagh’s realm?
[ Cardan thinks Liem’s lack of rest is worse for being habitual, although his frown is offset by Liem’s wandering hands. He’s missed them. He’s missed him. So terribly, terribly much.
…thankfully, Liem’s question interrupts his spiraling thoughts. He blinks, momentarily thrown off guard — he would have figured that he very much smelled like fresh blood, given his recent abundance of it. And he hadn’t been hurt— ]
Ah.
[ His laugh is short, a little breathless. He is reluctant to let go of Liem’s face, but he’ll nonetheless slip one hand into his jacket to fish out the world’s most expensive piece of parchment. ]
I signed in blood. It’s good news, actually: I doubt they would have asked as much for a frivolous contract.
[ They should probably not do this with the door still open, he realizes. He’d been first too stunned and then too desperate for Liem’s touch to bother shutting it after himself. Now he frowns in its direction, surveying the empty hallway beyond. Secretive business aside, he has no desire to entertain his father-in-law or Gusairne, and both seem equally likely to try and ruin his night right now.
But he wants to let go of Liem even less. ]
Might your house give us privacy?
[ And then, he supposes, they could sit down and talk about the contract, though he doesn’t want to do that either. What he wants is to stand here and touch Liem’s face, study him like one might at a favourite painting, and tell him a million frivolous, stupid things, like how his eyelashes feather over his cheek when he blinks.
…actually, what he really wants to do is to kiss him, and he’s not going to bother waiting for the door to do so. ]
[The sight of the contract Cardan withdraws from his pocket comes as no real surprise to Liem; contacts written in blood are no alien thing to his people, either, and Cardan’s assessment pleases him despite his automatic disgruntlement at the thought of his husband shedding his blood at someone else’s request. They really have it: a written agreement with the Undersea for safe passage over its waters. If nothing else, he’s glad of the indication that the Undersea queen is willing to take them somewhat seriously.
And yet, even this admittedly important matter pales beside the pure, simple pleasure of Cardan’s breathless laugh and Cardan’s handsome black stare and Cardan’s hand cradling his cheek. Liem is almost too distracted to follow his husband’s gaze when he glances at the still-open door, and certainly too distracted to prompt the house to grant his husband’s request before Cardan leans in and kisses him.
Liem is too busy pulling him closer, heedless of the parchment in Cardan’s hand, to kiss him for the first time in far too long—a month that has lasted an eternity. Cardan tastes just as he remembered, and the shape of his mouth is just as he remembered, and the giddy, helpless joy that lights in Liem’s stomach as he kisses him is just as he remembered, too. He missed this so badly, the relief of having it again is enough to make him dizzy.
But fortunately, the hallway door swings gently closed without further prompting, with the quiet slide of oiled hinges and the snick of the lock clicking into place.]
[ Desire slams into him with disorienting ferocity as Liem pulls him in. He makes a hungry little noise at the back of his throat, helplessly arrested with it; he had forgotten, somehow, what it was like to want like this. How could he have recalled it and stayed sane, all the way down at the bottom of the sea? How would he have remembered the importance of treaties and parties and gossip instead, when Liem wasn’t there, when he wasn’t fit so perfectly against Cardan’s body, welcoming him home? ]
Liem, [ he murmurs against his husband’s mouth, just to hear it. The parchment falls into a pile of Liem’s papers, already unimportant. Instead, Cardan’s hands draw down over Liem’s flanks, to his hips, intending to lift him bodily atop his own desk. ]
How I’ve missed you, husband. [ How he’s missed Liem’s lithe weight in his arms, the surprising sweetness of his affection. Cardan kisses him again, and then again after that, achingly deliberate. Impatient hunger pulses through him, but he has waited so long; he wants to take his time. ] Every pleasure was duller for your absence. Nothing smelled like you, not even me.
[ Not after his icy swim through the sea, anyway. ]
Remind me to think twice before I attempt foreign diplomacy in the future.
[How quickly the tenor of Liem’s thoughts has changed, in the mere minutes since the door to his office first opened to his baleful stare. Mere minutes ago, nothing in his world was right—and now, everything is. Now he is chasing those slow, deliberate kisses and melting contentedly against Cardan with a soft, easy breath, wrapping himself around him as if to keep him all for his own, and he has rediscovered not just the capacity to be happy, but the desire to be as well. It is well that his husband opts to lift him up onto his desk, because his knees feel a little weak after all, thanks to the sheer weight of his bliss.
Cardan is here, he is well, and not even the foolishness of Liem’s thoughts can stifle the ache of joy in his chest when Cardan tells him how he missed him.]
I should be cross with you, [he murmurs with a small frown, gathering Cardan’s face in his hands. He should be cross that his husband vanished to Faerie for so long and stopped replying to his letters and left Liem to bear the weight of his loneliness and his uncertainty and deprivation.
Most of those things aren’t really Cardan’s fault—but still, he had felt so wounded in his husband’s absence, and he had wanted the balm of his letters to at least ease the sting. Instead, the lack of them had only made the hurt feel keener.]
But I want you too much. My thoughts won’t settle on anything else.
[He is distracted by his awareness of all the places where they’re touching, and how egregiously beautiful Cardan is when he has his full attention, and how his insistent, seductive desire is making Liem want to forget whatever it was that had upset him in the first place. He just wants, very badly, to be kissed.]
[ For a moment, his eyes flutter shut, savouring the cool balm of Liem's hands on his face -- a comfort he hadn't realized he was so deprived of. It nearly makes him miss the frown and dismiss Liem's complaint as mere teasing. Except that he doesn't, and the words strike a discordant note in his chest.
Liem gives him an out, as Liem is wont to do. He could laugh it off and move on; in a few minutes, with his hands sliding under the layers of Liem's fine suit, surely neither of them would remember it. It's the smarter thing to do, more so because he suspects he has no good defense against Liem's charges.
It's just that his husband's reasons for being considerate are always awful, and Cardan cannot leave well enough alone. Even when Liem's right: it is difficult to pause, to stop kissing him and recover enough equilibrium to have any kind of serious conversation. Still, he pulls back a fraction, his breath a little ragged. ]
What complaints have you, husband? [ His hands pause on Liem's waist, arrested in their ascent up his body. Still, Cardan's fingertips stroke restlessly along the fine silk of his waistcoat. His mouth twitches into an equally restless smile. ]
I would not be charged with seducing you to escape your ire.
[The difficulty in this circumstance is that Liem wants to be seduced. He wants Cardan’s hands on him, sneaking beneath his clothes; he wants his mouth occupied by Cardan’s hungry kisses. Perhaps he does also want to voice his grievance, but he has been deprived of his husband’s affection for so long that he is loath to set it aside for other things, even things that might continue to bother him elsewise.
He doesn’t want Cardan to pull away; the urge to follow him back, to kiss the terribly dear face he’s caught between his hands, thumps hard in Liem’s throat. But for their entire marriage he has wished to earn Cardan’s integrity; he cannot spurn it now, even to soothe his loneliness.]
You stopped sending letters.
[Despite his claim, his frown deepens, and he can’t stop himself from sounding a little irritated about it; not because he’s managed to be cross after all, but because seeming cross is still so much easier than being fully honest and admitting that actually, he was hurt. He can’t humiliate himself by laying bare his own pathetic insecurities, because he desperately wishes to simply lay out his complaint and then move on so they can both never think about it again.]
I thought something might have happened. And I had no idea when I would hear from you again, or when you would be returning.
[ At least this is the charge he was prepared to receive. He’s going to tell himself that it’s a boon, that having Liem upset over some other, unforeseen transgression would have been worse. Still, it doesn’t stop the sour twinge of guilt from settling in his stomach. It was cowardly not to write Liem — he knows it was. He can imagine his husband in this very office, with two letters unanswered and still composing the third, stubbornly devoted to his duty in the face of Cardan’s selfish silence. It recalls Liem handing him the brooch atop that hill, forging ahead despite his every effort.
He has married such a terribly devout man.
Worst of all, he cannot possibly tell Liem the unvarnished truth. Who would believe I ignored your letters because I thought I might love you?
At least Liem seems annoyed more than anything; it would have been worse to see him distressed by Cardan’s callousness. Cardan exhales, trying to arrange his racing thoughts, and presses his forehead to Liem’s as if this will ground him somehow. ]
I am sorry.
[ At least it feels much easier to say it, this time — even if it also doesn’t feel like enough. ]
I was homesick. I thought that pretending I wasn’t would make the negotiations go faster.
[ A weak explanation, though it is technically true. ]
[The thing Cardan says on the tail end of that breath gives Liem pause. Somehow, despite his husband’s complaints about the Undersea and his eagerness to be back, it never would have occurred to him that Cardan might have begun to think of the Talbott estate as home. Despite the freedom and ease Cardan has found here, away from Balekin’s forbidding influence, Liem had assumed that he must still long to be back in Faerie again—if not back in Hollow Hall. The only thing keeping him here, Liem had thought, was that this was his husband’s domain.
… Well. Perhaps that last detail might have something to do with it, actually. The thought makes him feel a little nervous, though perhaps not necessarily in a bad way, and in the wake of it, he cannot hold onto even the appearance of irritation.
Tracing his thumbs over the elegant lines of Cardan’s cheekbones, he lets his head rest where it is for a moment before tipping his face up to press a kiss to Cardan’s conveniently-lowered forehead.]
You are a good husband.
[Difficult at times, yes. In another world, perhaps Cardan wouldn’t have stopped writing, and Liem would have been spared his despondency. But in this one, he is happy to have Cardan’s apology, especially as it comes with the rest of him conveniently attached.]
[ He was hoping that, by being reasonably contrite, he could at least soothe Liem's ire and prevent him from asking follow-up questions. What he doesn't expect is the praise heaped so freely on his undeserving head. It leaves him, strangely, a little embarrassed -- he has to glance away, his face warmer than he'd like. ]
I suspect you are being too generous.
[ He'd wanted to be a good companion to Liem -- that is, after all, the silent promise he'd made, back when they had first embarked on their secret plot. But how can he say he's succeeded, when he feels like he's hardly expended any effort? More and more, it seems to him that his husband is just terribly used to people being careless with him. It makes Cardan’s own callousness feel all the more shameful.
Still, now is not the time to dwell. ]
…But I am glad to be yours just the same.
[ He pulls his gaze back to Liem's face, except that — just over his husband’s shoulder, he will catch sight of the closed door.
And blink. He’s sure he’d distracted Liem just before he’d had a chance to…
The grin that flashes across his face is equal parts surprised and delighted. It’s possible, he supposes, that the house had simply taken Liem’s assent as implied, but he will nonetheless take this as a good omen. After all, he is home, and with a hard-won treaty in hand, and his husband’s irritation seems to have faded as quickly as it arose. His fingers find their way into Liem’s hair, cradling the back of his head as he leans in again. ]
And I am glad to be the villain who’s seducing you.
[ His handsome, gentle, endlessly patient husband, who never ceases to provoke in him a desire so immediate that he sometimes wonders if it isn’t some kind of magic. He had held on to his discipline before — but the kisses they have exchanged have been so few and so precious after a full month without. He cannot help the naked hunger that bleeds into the next one, nor the eager way he presses close, caging Liem against his own desk. ]
[Though Liem does not always understand his husband’s moods, he is surprised to find that Cardan’s reaction now is actually familiar. Liem has experienced the shame of fielding undeserved praise on numerous occasions; he simply hadn’t thought to see it on his terminally smug spouse.
But he finds the dichotomy, like most other things about his husband, terribly charming—and if anything, he is all the more content with his own dispensing of generosity.]
Whom could I be more eager to be generous to?
[Liem is glad to have Cardan back home, glad to have his attention and his affection, glad also to be subject to his villainy. He missed the familiar flutter in his stomach that Cardan’s grin always inspires, and the eager thrill of being hemmed in by his body. His hands trace restlessly down Cardan’s jaw and throat to clutch at his coat as Liem kisses him, sweetly demanding, offering himself up to Cardan’s hunger.
Just now, he cannot see the villain Cardan purports to be. He is too wrapped up in his lover, who is warm and insatiable and clever and proud, and who has finally returned from beneath the sea. His lover, whom he had missed so badly. Liem does not need to be seduced, because he was already Cardan’s from the moment he walked in—and long before that, too. He could not possibly be more eager to be in his clutches again.]
[ The drag of cool fingers over his throat makes Cardan’s hunger flare. He had studiously avoided thinking about Liem’s teeth and the singularly erotic thrill of his bite — but now, it is impossible to ignore. His breath stutters, catching against Liem's lips.
As always, his grandiose plans crumble when faced with the reality of his own desire. He had meant to undress Liem first. He’d wanted to tease him, to make him a little desperate, before moving on to more heady pleasures.
He’s not sure he still has enough composure for that now. Impatiently, he shrugs off his coat, letting it crumple to the floor by his feet, then undoes the tie at his throat. Even this is difficult when he's fielding Liem's distracting kisses, but eventually, the warmed silk slides free of his neck, allowing him to thumb open the first two buttons of his shirt.
But it's not enough. There are all of Liem's fussy layers in addition to his own; sometimes he wonders why they do this to themselves. ]
Husband, [ he complains breathlessly, insinuating his hands back underneath Liem's jacket to start working on the buttons of his waistcoat, ] you are, as always, wearing too much.
[ It's frustrating; after all this wait, after all this upheaval, all he wants is to put his hands and mouth on Liem's skin, to feel Liem's rare breaths under his palms -- to have him, solid and real and wholly Cardan's, at least for this night. Surely such a noble cause should not have be getting hampered by clothing. ]
[Somehow, Liem manages surprise at the realization that not only are they about to fuck in his office—a foregone conclusion since the moment Cardan walked in—they are also going to be bare when they do it. It strikes him like a thunderbolt, so obvious he’s a little startled to have thought of it only now. He is too starved for the comfort of Cardan’s body tucked against his to tolerate the barriers of clothing between them, regardless of the setting. He wants to feel him, and taste him, and see him, now that he has him here again.
The knowledge makes him glance aside just for a moment, at the door between them and the rest of the house. There is one person who keeps Liem from feeling entirely confident in the security of that door, locked or not, and he cannot stop the twist of anxiety in his stomach at the thought of him appearing now.
But his want is more insistent than his worry. He is absorbed by the determined way Cardan strips off his outer layers, revealing his slender silhouette and the warm length of his bare throat. Although Liem is impatient to help him along once the coat is on the floor, he shrugs with a small smile out of his own jacket instead, tossing it aside to be immediately forgotten in favour of the clever hands at his waistcoat buttons.]
I didn’t expect your return so soon.
[Since Cardan is working on his buttons, Liem obligingly attends to his tie, stripping it off with quick, concise motions. Though he gives Cardan no respite from his kisses, the thought of his lover’s hungry mouth on his throat makes his hands restless with impatience. His lips brush the corner of that mouth, a breathless tease.]
If I had known, I could have greeted you more appropriately.
[He could have stripped himself of his clothes, not to mention the glare he’d been wearing when Cardan first appeared.]
[ Cardan doesn’t resist the urge to nip at Liem’s lip, a little punitively. How, after all, is Cardan supposed to get either of them anywhere when his lover is so eager, so sweetly insatiable, so demanding of his immediate attention? It occurs to him that this is what Liem must feel like when Cardan distracts him at work — technically, the thing he is doing this very moment. Eecept that work is, obviously, far less important than this.
Though Liem’s last assertion begets an intrigued eyebrow. Cardan pulls back just enough to catch is breath from the onslaught of relentless, addictive kisses. ]
Oh? And how is that, Liem?
[ He has some ideas of his own, most of them involving silk ties and a complete absence of trousers. Though, in the end, he cannot say that he has any complaints about his welcome. He has wanted and waited for so long, has taken such a long time to face his own feelings and fears; it seems only appropriate that the field of their reunion be the place where they had first gotten to know each other. How many hours had he spent on the couch, studying Liem’s serious features as he worked? What had started as a petty prank — the idea that he’d annoy Liem by insinuating himself into his work — had quickly progressed to interest, then grudging respect and wholly unexpected affection. His feelings, such as they are, have been nurtured here, and so it only fits that they be realized here, too.
And all the places on the estate, this is the one he most thinks of as Liem’s domain.
Regardless, at least one of Liem’s wishes is about to be granted: no sooner has he dispensed with his own tie that Cardan’s hands will be pushing the waistcoat off his shoulders, then starting on the buttons of his collar. The moment his throat is bare, Cardan will paint it with deliberate, heavy kisses, even as a his hands bare more of his lover’s chest. Truthfully, he cares not about his own state of dress; what he aches for is to see Liem, to touch him and taste him and rediscover him, now that he has him once more. ]
[Admittedly, Liem has little imagination to spare for hypotheticals when he is so urgently occupied by the present moment. The sharp nip into his lip earns a soft, eager noise from low in his throat, and the growing ache of his desire lends impatience to the way he shrugs his waistcoat free of his shoulders. He wants to feel Cardan against him, skin to skin, and it suddenly seems absurd that there should be so many steps required to achieve this simple goal.]
With at least fifty percent less clothing, [he replies immediately, and then tips his head with a bone-deep sigh of satisfaction as Cardan’s mouth finds the tender skin of his throat. Lust surges straight to his confined erection, devastatingly familiar after so many nights of solitude.
He is, he realizes, pathetically desperate for Cardan’s attention after the last month—the last week in particular. It doesn’t matter if it’s sweet or cruel or simply avaricious; he so urgently needs to feel wanted. His skin feels alight with it, so that he has to clamp down on the urge to squirm at the caress of Cardan’s mouth and the brush of his fingers even though he has still scarcely touched Liem at all.
And still…] Ah— But I want to feel you, too…
[Liem’s hands splay over his lover’s flanks, a little thwarted by Cardan’s current occupation with his own buttons, and wander with blind greed down to tug his shirt free of his trousers, intent on sneaking beneath in search of heated flesh. His husband can be inconsistent about bothering to undress himself to Liem’s satisfaction, and he has no intention of letting any inconvenient garments linger to deny his wants.]
[ He is always so pleased with this: the elegant line of Liem's throat bared to him and him alone. Cardan has ever been drawn to the perfect, unblemished canvas of it, always tempted to mark it, however temporary the results may be.
When he sucks the first dark bruise onto the spot just below Liem's ear, it feels like another welcome home.
He is so intent on this that he forgets about Liem's quest to undress him — the cool hands sweeping over his skin make him jump, and then laugh, his teeth grazing his lover's sharp jawline. Cardan is so enamoured with him; he has no idea how he'd made it a whole month without his touch or his scent or the sound of his voice soaked in pleasure. Having him now makes it a little hard to breathe; his throat tightens when he thinks too hard about how strange and unbearably lucky he is, to have trapped this man in his clutches. ]
I want you so terribly.
[ This, too, is distracting. Insistent, keen-edged desire pulses through him. He wants Liem’s pleasure — wants to take his time and tease him until his breaths turn ragged; he wants to tear his clothes off and have him right now, spread open on this desk amongst papers and reports. As always, it is impossible to focus on one thing where his husband is involved — Cardan simply wants all of him all at once.
In the spirit of this jumbled need, he doesn't bother unbuttoning Liem's shirt all the way — just enough that he can splay long, greedy fingers over his ribs. For a moment, Cardan only holds him in his hands like one might a fragile treasure, letting his breath break over Liem's collar bone.
Then, inevitably, his touch sweeps up to attack his husband's nipples. The flash of his grin against Liem's skin is deeply smug. ]
[How quickly, how easily Liem falls back into the motions of this strange and cherished intimacy. How effortless it feels to offer the line of his throat to Cardan’s hungry mouth; how right is the sound of his startled laugh, coaxed by Liem’s cool hands. He was not born for this—but he is meant for it, now. Because Cardan has made it so easy to fit himself to the shape of him, of his clever hands and wicked caprices and warm, possessive embrace. A year ago, he didn’t know who Prince Cardan of Elfhame was; now, he doesn’t know how he could live without him.
He feels too alert, too sensitive to the wanderings of his lover’s hands, the brush of his breath, the scrape of his teeth. Even the hot flesh beneath his palms sparks his hunger too readily—but he can be hungry now, entwined as he is in Cardan’s grasp. He no longer needs to pretend the feeling away.
Liem opens his mouth to say that at least they are of the same mind, that they can indulge their wants together instead of enduring them alone—and gasps at the sudden attention to his hardening nipples. He cannot disagree with his husband: He has missed Cardan’s tormenting, also. His devotion to discovering all the ways he can drive Liem insane is both intimidating and irresistible.]
I am yours to torment, [he agrees breathlessly, eyes fluttering closed in the face of Cardan’s teasing assault. He is certainly tormented by lust—though also, as ever, by his need for his husband to be bared to his affections. Blindly, his hands seek the buttons marching down Cardan’s front, intending to be more thorough than his husband has bothered to be with his own half-undone shirt. He wants the garment off.]
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Though he means to write immediately, his duties demand more of his time than he can effectively shuffle around, and by the time he is able to pen a reply, another of Cardan’s letters is sitting on his desk. He cannot help but think again of Cardan in his lonely guest chambers, surrounded by slippery merfolk and impenetrable miles of cold grey sea, and he recalls what his husband said to him weeks ago, after he told him that he liked his hands. The melancholy crease in his brow returns as he stares down at the empty page before him.]
To My Dearest Villain,
Would that you were present to terrorize my houseguests with your wit and drink my cellars dry, instead of inflicting your talents on a foreign queen. My work is tedious without you here to gainsay my choice of tableware for the latest soiree. Likewise, there is no joy in dragging myself out of bed every evening without you attempting to lure me back into it. At least when I vanish into my office on other nights, I can generally expect you to pursue me there in short order.
Have no fear, though, that I have rediscovered peace in your absence. Your ghost haunts all the places I pass my nights, so I cannot recall the feeling of solitude. Every time I glance up from my work, it is in the expectation of confronting your regard; it is entirely distracting. When you return to menace me once more, that to me will be the greatest of reliefs.
Like a lighthouse awaiting a storm, I remain
Faithfully yours,
Liem
no subject
She doesn’t finish her sentence, because, presumably, it would warn him of the fact she is going to reach inside his jacket and pluck the letter straight from its pocket. He’s too startled to react in time; she is already moving away, unfurling the parchment, her imperious mouth curled into a scowl. ]
Nicasia, [ he warns, but they both know it doesn’t matter. Her eyes are already dancing over the neat lines of Liem’s handwriting. The frown deepens; she wrinkles her nose. ]
Nicasia, [ he says again, more sharply. This time, she sighs with clear disgust, denting the letter as she shoves it up against his chest. He moves to grasp it, but she keeps it pinned for a moment longer, her fingertips stabbing into his shirt.
“Do you love him?” she asks, and whatever she sees in his face makes her expression harden.
It is only some time after she has stalked off that he smooths the letter back out. Reading it makes something tremulous and uncertain stir in him, some emotion that tightens his throat. It’s anxiety, he realizes: the fear that comes only from having too much and being afraid to lose it all. He had always known that pleasure was a fragile, transient thing, and made his peace with its departure accordingly.
But he doesn’t want to lose Liem’s affection. He doesn’t want to lose his confidence, or the intimacies he permits Cardan to take with his person. He doesn’t want to give up the pleasant, comfortable life he has found for himself in Ironside. He wants to menace his husband and he wants to distract him — wants to be his villain and his companion and the person he turns to when he can trust no one else.
It turns out that insisting his happy days were numbered has not made him any less susceptible to foolish yearning. And even worse: the person whose embrace he would turn to for comfort is the one whose absence so torments him in the first place.
He writes no more after this. He cannot— every time he sits down for it, that strange emotion constricts his thoughts, making it impossible to put pen to parchment. Nicasia’s question haunts him like a pebble in his shoe: inconsequential, surely, and yet he cannot stop thinking about it, now that his attention has been so diverted. Days pass. The only remotely good news is that Queen Orlagh seems to have finally grown sick of his continued presence in her palace, and does appear to desire a treaty. The deal he hammers out is terrible, but it is far better than he would expect from the ferocious Queen of the Undersea.
It is, quite plainly, because of her interest in both Liem and Iago, but he is in no position to be overcautious.
When he finally surfaces, it is almost two fortnights after he’d gone under the waves — but in his breast pocket, alongside Liem’s letters, is a contract freshly signed in his own lifeblood.
Being able to travel by daylight makes his trip back substantially speedier. Even so, by the time he reaches the last rest stop, his anxiety and impatience are ready to buzz a hole straight through his chest. On impulse, he foregoes the carriage laden heavily with all of his luggage, and instead conjures up a ragwort pony. It is not safe, perhaps, given his tally of attempted assassinations, but he doesn’t care. The thought of sitting in a carriage for another day’s ride is unbearable.
He makes it to the estate in three hours, and if his ragwort steed were a real, living creature, it would have surely collapsed under him the moment he rode onto the estate grounds. As it is, it disintegrates into limp stalks, but he barely takes note — he is already on his way through the doors, not even waiting for a servant to finish the ritual greeting. He will, likewise, refuse the offer to take off his dusty travel boots. The wedding ring on his finger pulses, as always faintly warm with Liem’s proximity. Not that Cardan needs its magic to know that at this time of night, his spouse is more than likely holed up inside his office.
And if his heart beats wildly in his throat, if the odd apprehension buoying him in the past few days has reached an all-time high, then all the more reason to hasten his steps — because the sooner he sees Liem, the sooner all will be as it should. ]
no subject
Always, his first instinct is to wonder if he is to blame: if his lonely message was spied on by someone inconvenient, or if he somehow misjudged the tone of reply his husband wished to receive. His second instinct is to wonder if some letter went astray, intercepted by an unknown party. His third instinct is to worry that Cardan is unable to write at all, but the thought of something happening to him makes distress bite down on Liem’s throat, and he convinces himself that if anything untoward happened to his husband, he would surely be notified one way or another.
Whatever the case, the nights pass and he hears nothing from his spouse. Liem grows increasingly curt with staff and gentry alike, his nerves wound tight and waiting for any excuse to snap. Even Iago must have tired of his sullen mood, because after tolerating days of it, he gives Liem an errand to take care of on an outlying part of his domain: a visit to assess one of their vassal lords, who is celebrating the birth of her third child within the last half-century, despite consistently unremarkable tithes scraped together from her patch of countryside.
Before he leaves, Liem sends another note into the cold and unresponsive sea.]
Cardan,
I hope you have earned more goodwill from your gracious hostess than I have from my lord father of late. He has, I think, grown used to the ways in which you occupy my time, and now seems tired of my presence raining on his otherwise enjoyable evenings.
Though, if you gave Queen Orlagh reason to tire of hosting you further, I could not sincerely complain.
Faithfully yours,
Liem
[And again, after he returns several nights later to deliver his report of the baroness’s hospitality, and finds that any worries of missing a letter during his absence have been misplaced. In his disappointed despondency, he cannot make the voice of reason drown out his loneliness. He can do nothing but write again, and try not to unravel too much with the motions of the pen.]
Cardan,
In defiance of the muddy ruin winter left behind, spring has arrived properly in your absence. You may be pleased to know that the gardens are again presentable, and the woods now greener and alive with birds. I hear them rioting at the end of each night, in expectation of the coming dawn.
Perhaps day and night blend together beneath the waves, though. I wonder if I should have lent you my pocketwatch, that you might have a reminder of the moon’s place in its journey, even when it is drowned by an entire sea. But probably the salt and the damp would not agree with such a delicate instrument.
Instead it remains in my keeping, so I can use it to count the minutes since your departure. The number is now over thirty thousand, if you have an interest in knowing.
[Come back, he wants to write. Come home. I miss you. But that would be stupid and pointless, particularly since he cannot imagine his wishes are any mystery regardless. He simply signs the letter.]
Faithfully yours,
Liem
[But even when, soon after, news comes that his husband is on his journey back, Liem’s anxiety and his sullen, impatient moods remain. He does not know what kept his husband for so long in silence, or what their reunion might bring. If Cardan is returning without incident after all, perhaps he simply wasn’t writing because he didn’t wish to. Even though he cannot produce a convincing reason why that should suddenly be the case, half-formed suspicions haunt his thoughts, blackening his mood so even Gusairne opts to give him a wide berth.
When the door to his office swings obligingly open to accommodate Cardan’s arrival, several hours before he expects his husband to return, the look Liem flashes up from his papers is fit to skewer the person in the doorway. But the look falters into shock as soon as his gaze falls on Cardan; a moment later he is on his feet, his chair shoved back, unnoticed, as he stares at his husband.]
Cardan—?
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It's just that, when he sees Liem, every single word he'd ever known turns to dust. He had imagined this moment countless times in the days and hours preceding: his triumphant return, bursting in to scoop Liem up in his arms and seal his successes with a well-deserved, impassioned kiss, perhaps even some light swooning from Liem's direction. Instead, his first glimpse of his husband arrests him entirely. He is caught by the scathing glare -- and then trapped by Liem himself, by the difference that a month has made in a man who ought not to change at all.
He looks tired, Cardan notices. Weary, too, in a different sense. His gaze traverses his husband's features, so achingly familiar after such a short time: the neatly coiffed hair with its silver streaks; the tease of Liem's pale throat hidden away by his meticulously stiff collar; the cliffs of his cheekbones; the aquiline nose; that sharp, elegant face with its serious mouth; his hands, so pervasive in Cardan's thoughts night after night.
And those shocked, bright eyes, crystalline against the devouring black that surrounds them.
It hurts. Tenderness pulses, terrible and virulent, from somewhere beneath his sternum, pressing everything else into nothingness -- even the relief, even the terror that he knows will follow. It aches in the way everything new and fragile does. He feels too small for the enormity of it, too unpracticed in the feeling. How foolish, to think that he could avoid this, if only he avoided thinking about it. Nicasia must have seen it in his face: that his heart was lost, that he'd already placed it in those cool, capable hands, as irrevocable as any promise he'd ever made.
His eyes are burning. He inhales -- and then realizes, with a sharp stab of horror, that for the first time in his conscious memory, he is going to cry. He has to slam down on the impulse with every last bit of willpower he has left, because-- he can't. How strange and alarming would it look to Liem, for his husband to come back from his journey in tears? And anyway, he's been standing here for too long; he must do something.
His ragged little breath is inordinately loud in the room between them. He makes himself move, striding across the floor as if in a dream. And when he pulls his husband into his arms, when he buries his face in Liem's hair, it's only because he cannot trust himself with anything else.
He's holding on too tightly. But it will have to do until his composure returns, until his voice and his face and his trembling hands can return to their natural state. ]
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Then Cardan crosses the room and pulls him tightly into an embrace, and Liem is too busy squeezing him back, pressing his face into Cardan’s shoulder and breathing him in, to care about anything else. The man in his arms is warm and solid and real, he is right here, and he is holding Liem like the world is about to end. Since that is exactly how Liem wishes to be held just now, he cannot complain at all.]
Cardan.
[This time he murmurs it against his coat, too full of blind longing to so much as lift his head. The sound of Cardan’s heartbeat thumping away behind his ribs comforts Liem more than he thought possible. He had become so used to this loathsome, oppressive silence that he had forgotten how the background of his nights was actually meant to sound.
Now that he is properly, thoroughly bolstered, he can ask the question that has been haunting him for days.]
… What happened?
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He clears his throat, and is relieved to find that his voice is only a little roughened. ]
I did not want to wait.
[ He doesn't really know if that's what Liem is asking about -- probably it isn't. But it's the most important event on Cardan's mind, aside from the thing that's too raw and too new to even try to put into words.
Soon, as soon as he can trust his expression again, he will pull back and take his husband's face in his hands, and then he'll tell him about the treaty, and the journey back, and whatever else Liem wants to know. For now, he tilts his head just enough to press a kiss to Liem's temple, and tries to will his heart to stop thundering through his chest like it's about to escape. ]
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It doesn’t explain anything about what Liem was actually asking: Why Cardan had stopped sending letters not even halfway through his trip. Why the trip had dragged on so long—though Liem had half expected this, after Cardan’s warning before they’d gone to Elfhame. And perhaps, also, what had made Cardan so desperate to return, that he had apparently abandoned his luggage and rushed here as fast as the wind could carry him.
But perhaps Cardan just doesn’t want to talk about it right now, only moments after walking in the door. Perhaps Liem should be focusing more on the soft lips at his temple and the snug, warm embrace that he has so rarely been able to enjoy while they are clothed and upright.]
Had your fill of saltwater, did you?
[Cardan still smells a little like it, even more than a day’s travel from the sea. But mostly he smells like Liem’s wayward lover whom he had been missing terribly, and no amount of stubborn sea smell can make that anything but pathetically comforting. For a moment he just nuzzles into the crook of Cardan’s neck, reacquainting himself with that simple pleasure.]
Welcome back, husband. I missed you.
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How strange that such a small thing can make him feel a little more like himself, even now. ]
You're stealing my lines.
[ He takes another moment to wrestle his emotions back under control -- at least he has practice with this, though never before in this circumstance. And then he does put his hands on Liem's face, and he does pull back to look at him, taking in his features like a man starved of beauty. He feels starved. Vaguely, he realizes that this might seem strange to Liem, who would surely not have expected Cardan to come back so desperate, and still-- and still...
He desperately needs to pivot from thoroughly, obviously lovesick thoughts. ]
I have annoyed Queen Orlagh into granting us safe passage, [ he will tell Liem. It feels like a much smaller deal than it did ten minutes ago. ] And all it cost was most of my sanity.
[ He can't pause for very long; it feels like holding a breath he didn't have time to take. ]
...and some significant value of export goods, an errant favour or two, plus but a handful of other concessions.
[ He wants to kiss Liem-- except he doesn't quite know if he'll stop, once he starts. Still, it is difficult not to stare at his husband's mouth when he's so close. His thumb strokes over Liem's cheek, restlessly. ]
You look like you haven't slept very much.
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And he is too distracted, anyway, by those feverish hands cupping his face and his lover’s familiar, hungry stare. Liem’s own hands wander Cardan’s body, reacquainting themselves with the planes of his back, the slim lines of his waist, the elegant contours of his chest and shoulders. He is too clothed, but he is here, he is well, he is Liem’s, and that is all that matters.]
Oh, is that all?
[The deal does sound like a steep one—but Cardan had gone unaccompanied into Queen Orlagh’s domain to secure it, and that was always going to be an uphill battle. Ultimately, they need this deal and she doesn’t, not really. As long as it doesn’t cost anything Liem is unwilling to spend, he can work around a high price.]
I haven’t—but that’s hardly anything new.
[Has Cardan ever seen Liem look well-rested? Their first meeting was during an extravagant party that Liem himself went to great lengths to arrange, and he has hardly become less busy since then.]
You smell like old blood. [His hand, sliding over Cardan’s chest, lingers over his breast pocket.] Am I going to take issue with the hospitality you enjoyed in Queen Orlagh’s realm?
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…thankfully, Liem’s question interrupts his spiraling thoughts. He blinks, momentarily thrown off guard — he would have figured that he very much smelled like fresh blood, given his recent abundance of it. And he hadn’t been hurt— ]
Ah.
[ His laugh is short, a little breathless. He is reluctant to let go of Liem’s face, but he’ll nonetheless slip one hand into his jacket to fish out the world’s most expensive piece of parchment. ]
I signed in blood. It’s good news, actually: I doubt they would have asked as much for a frivolous contract.
[ They should probably not do this with the door still open, he realizes. He’d been first too stunned and then too desperate for Liem’s touch to bother shutting it after himself. Now he frowns in its direction, surveying the empty hallway beyond. Secretive business aside, he has no desire to entertain his father-in-law or Gusairne, and both seem equally likely to try and ruin his night right now.
But he wants to let go of Liem even less. ]
Might your house give us privacy?
[ And then, he supposes, they could sit down and talk about the contract, though he doesn’t want to do that either. What he wants is to stand here and touch Liem’s face, study him like one might at a favourite painting, and tell him a million frivolous, stupid things, like how his eyelashes feather over his cheek when he blinks.
…actually, what he really wants to do is to kiss him, and he’s not going to bother waiting for the door to do so. ]
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And yet, even this admittedly important matter pales beside the pure, simple pleasure of Cardan’s breathless laugh and Cardan’s handsome black stare and Cardan’s hand cradling his cheek. Liem is almost too distracted to follow his husband’s gaze when he glances at the still-open door, and certainly too distracted to prompt the house to grant his husband’s request before Cardan leans in and kisses him.
Liem is too busy pulling him closer, heedless of the parchment in Cardan’s hand, to kiss him for the first time in far too long—a month that has lasted an eternity. Cardan tastes just as he remembered, and the shape of his mouth is just as he remembered, and the giddy, helpless joy that lights in Liem’s stomach as he kisses him is just as he remembered, too. He missed this so badly, the relief of having it again is enough to make him dizzy.
But fortunately, the hallway door swings gently closed without further prompting, with the quiet slide of oiled hinges and the snick of the lock clicking into place.]
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Liem, [ he murmurs against his husband’s mouth, just to hear it. The parchment falls into a pile of Liem’s papers, already unimportant. Instead, Cardan’s hands draw down over Liem’s flanks, to his hips, intending to lift him bodily atop his own desk. ]
How I’ve missed you, husband. [ How he’s missed Liem’s lithe weight in his arms, the surprising sweetness of his affection. Cardan kisses him again, and then again after that, achingly deliberate. Impatient hunger pulses through him, but he has waited so long; he wants to take his time. ] Every pleasure was duller for your absence. Nothing smelled like you, not even me.
[ Not after his icy swim through the sea, anyway. ]
Remind me to think twice before I attempt foreign diplomacy in the future.
no subject
Cardan is here, he is well, and not even the foolishness of Liem’s thoughts can stifle the ache of joy in his chest when Cardan tells him how he missed him.]
I should be cross with you, [he murmurs with a small frown, gathering Cardan’s face in his hands. He should be cross that his husband vanished to Faerie for so long and stopped replying to his letters and left Liem to bear the weight of his loneliness and his uncertainty and deprivation.
Most of those things aren’t really Cardan’s fault—but still, he had felt so wounded in his husband’s absence, and he had wanted the balm of his letters to at least ease the sting. Instead, the lack of them had only made the hurt feel keener.]
But I want you too much. My thoughts won’t settle on anything else.
[He is distracted by his awareness of all the places where they’re touching, and how egregiously beautiful Cardan is when he has his full attention, and how his insistent, seductive desire is making Liem want to forget whatever it was that had upset him in the first place. He just wants, very badly, to be kissed.]
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Liem gives him an out, as Liem is wont to do. He could laugh it off and move on; in a few minutes, with his hands sliding under the layers of Liem's fine suit, surely neither of them would remember it. It's the smarter thing to do, more so because he suspects he has no good defense against Liem's charges.
It's just that his husband's reasons for being considerate are always awful, and Cardan cannot leave well enough alone. Even when Liem's right: it is difficult to pause, to stop kissing him and recover enough equilibrium to have any kind of serious conversation. Still, he pulls back a fraction, his breath a little ragged. ]
What complaints have you, husband? [ His hands pause on Liem's waist, arrested in their ascent up his body. Still, Cardan's fingertips stroke restlessly along the fine silk of his waistcoat. His mouth twitches into an equally restless smile. ]
I would not be charged with seducing you to escape your ire.
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He doesn’t want Cardan to pull away; the urge to follow him back, to kiss the terribly dear face he’s caught between his hands, thumps hard in Liem’s throat. But for their entire marriage he has wished to earn Cardan’s integrity; he cannot spurn it now, even to soothe his loneliness.]
You stopped sending letters.
[Despite his claim, his frown deepens, and he can’t stop himself from sounding a little irritated about it; not because he’s managed to be cross after all, but because seeming cross is still so much easier than being fully honest and admitting that actually, he was hurt. He can’t humiliate himself by laying bare his own pathetic insecurities, because he desperately wishes to simply lay out his complaint and then move on so they can both never think about it again.]
I thought something might have happened. And I had no idea when I would hear from you again, or when you would be returning.
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He has married such a terribly devout man.
Worst of all, he cannot possibly tell Liem the unvarnished truth. Who would believe I ignored your letters because I thought I might love you?
At least Liem seems annoyed more than anything; it would have been worse to see him distressed by Cardan’s callousness. Cardan exhales, trying to arrange his racing thoughts, and presses his forehead to Liem’s as if this will ground him somehow. ]
I am sorry.
[ At least it feels much easier to say it, this time — even if it also doesn’t feel like enough. ]
I was homesick. I thought that pretending I wasn’t would make the negotiations go faster.
[ A weak explanation, though it is technically true. ]
But that is a poor excuse for making you worry.
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… Well. Perhaps that last detail might have something to do with it, actually. The thought makes him feel a little nervous, though perhaps not necessarily in a bad way, and in the wake of it, he cannot hold onto even the appearance of irritation.
Tracing his thumbs over the elegant lines of Cardan’s cheekbones, he lets his head rest where it is for a moment before tipping his face up to press a kiss to Cardan’s conveniently-lowered forehead.]
You are a good husband.
[Difficult at times, yes. In another world, perhaps Cardan wouldn’t have stopped writing, and Liem would have been spared his despondency. But in this one, he is happy to have Cardan’s apology, especially as it comes with the rest of him conveniently attached.]
I am glad you are mine.
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I suspect you are being too generous.
[ He'd wanted to be a good companion to Liem -- that is, after all, the silent promise he'd made, back when they had first embarked on their secret plot. But how can he say he's succeeded, when he feels like he's hardly expended any effort? More and more, it seems to him that his husband is just terribly used to people being careless with him. It makes Cardan’s own callousness feel all the more shameful.
Still, now is not the time to dwell. ]
…But I am glad to be yours just the same.
[ He pulls his gaze back to Liem's face, except that — just over his husband’s shoulder, he will catch sight of the closed door.
And blink. He’s sure he’d distracted Liem just before he’d had a chance to…
The grin that flashes across his face is equal parts surprised and delighted. It’s possible, he supposes, that the house had simply taken Liem’s assent as implied, but he will nonetheless take this as a good omen. After all, he is home, and with a hard-won treaty in hand, and his husband’s irritation seems to have faded as quickly as it arose. His fingers find their way into Liem’s hair, cradling the back of his head as he leans in again. ]
And I am glad to be the villain who’s seducing you.
[ His handsome, gentle, endlessly patient husband, who never ceases to provoke in him a desire so immediate that he sometimes wonders if it isn’t some kind of magic. He had held on to his discipline before — but the kisses they have exchanged have been so few and so precious after a full month without. He cannot help the naked hunger that bleeds into the next one, nor the eager way he presses close, caging Liem against his own desk. ]
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But he finds the dichotomy, like most other things about his husband, terribly charming—and if anything, he is all the more content with his own dispensing of generosity.]
Whom could I be more eager to be generous to?
[Liem is glad to have Cardan back home, glad to have his attention and his affection, glad also to be subject to his villainy. He missed the familiar flutter in his stomach that Cardan’s grin always inspires, and the eager thrill of being hemmed in by his body. His hands trace restlessly down Cardan’s jaw and throat to clutch at his coat as Liem kisses him, sweetly demanding, offering himself up to Cardan’s hunger.
Just now, he cannot see the villain Cardan purports to be. He is too wrapped up in his lover, who is warm and insatiable and clever and proud, and who has finally returned from beneath the sea. His lover, whom he had missed so badly. Liem does not need to be seduced, because he was already Cardan’s from the moment he walked in—and long before that, too. He could not possibly be more eager to be in his clutches again.]
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As always, his grandiose plans crumble when faced with the reality of his own desire. He had meant to undress Liem first. He’d wanted to tease him, to make him a little desperate, before moving on to more heady pleasures.
He’s not sure he still has enough composure for that now. Impatiently, he shrugs off his coat, letting it crumple to the floor by his feet, then undoes the tie at his throat. Even this is difficult when he's fielding Liem's distracting kisses, but eventually, the warmed silk slides free of his neck, allowing him to thumb open the first two buttons of his shirt.
But it's not enough. There are all of Liem's fussy layers in addition to his own; sometimes he wonders why they do this to themselves. ]
Husband, [ he complains breathlessly, insinuating his hands back underneath Liem's jacket to start working on the buttons of his waistcoat, ] you are, as always, wearing too much.
[ It's frustrating; after all this wait, after all this upheaval, all he wants is to put his hands and mouth on Liem's skin, to feel Liem's rare breaths under his palms -- to have him, solid and real and wholly Cardan's, at least for this night. Surely such a noble cause should not have be getting hampered by clothing. ]
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The knowledge makes him glance aside just for a moment, at the door between them and the rest of the house. There is one person who keeps Liem from feeling entirely confident in the security of that door, locked or not, and he cannot stop the twist of anxiety in his stomach at the thought of him appearing now.
But his want is more insistent than his worry. He is absorbed by the determined way Cardan strips off his outer layers, revealing his slender silhouette and the warm length of his bare throat. Although Liem is impatient to help him along once the coat is on the floor, he shrugs with a small smile out of his own jacket instead, tossing it aside to be immediately forgotten in favour of the clever hands at his waistcoat buttons.]
I didn’t expect your return so soon.
[Since Cardan is working on his buttons, Liem obligingly attends to his tie, stripping it off with quick, concise motions. Though he gives Cardan no respite from his kisses, the thought of his lover’s hungry mouth on his throat makes his hands restless with impatience. His lips brush the corner of that mouth, a breathless tease.]
If I had known, I could have greeted you more appropriately.
[He could have stripped himself of his clothes, not to mention the glare he’d been wearing when Cardan first appeared.]
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Though Liem’s last assertion begets an intrigued eyebrow. Cardan pulls back just enough to catch is breath from the onslaught of relentless, addictive kisses. ]
Oh? And how is that, Liem?
[ He has some ideas of his own, most of them involving silk ties and a complete absence of trousers. Though, in the end, he cannot say that he has any complaints about his welcome. He has wanted and waited for so long, has taken such a long time to face his own feelings and fears; it seems only appropriate that the field of their reunion be the place where they had first gotten to know each other. How many hours had he spent on the couch, studying Liem’s serious features as he worked? What had started as a petty prank — the idea that he’d annoy Liem by insinuating himself into his work — had quickly progressed to interest, then grudging respect and wholly unexpected affection. His feelings, such as they are, have been nurtured here, and so it only fits that they be realized here, too.
And all the places on the estate, this is the one he most thinks of as Liem’s domain.
Regardless, at least one of Liem’s wishes is about to be granted: no sooner has he dispensed with his own tie that Cardan’s hands will be pushing the waistcoat off his shoulders, then starting on the buttons of his collar. The moment his throat is bare, Cardan will paint it with deliberate, heavy kisses, even as a his hands bare more of his lover’s chest. Truthfully, he cares not about his own state of dress; what he aches for is to see Liem, to touch him and taste him and rediscover him, now that he has him once more. ]
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With at least fifty percent less clothing, [he replies immediately, and then tips his head with a bone-deep sigh of satisfaction as Cardan’s mouth finds the tender skin of his throat. Lust surges straight to his confined erection, devastatingly familiar after so many nights of solitude.
He is, he realizes, pathetically desperate for Cardan’s attention after the last month—the last week in particular. It doesn’t matter if it’s sweet or cruel or simply avaricious; he so urgently needs to feel wanted. His skin feels alight with it, so that he has to clamp down on the urge to squirm at the caress of Cardan’s mouth and the brush of his fingers even though he has still scarcely touched Liem at all.
And still…] Ah— But I want to feel you, too…
[Liem’s hands splay over his lover’s flanks, a little thwarted by Cardan’s current occupation with his own buttons, and wander with blind greed down to tug his shirt free of his trousers, intent on sneaking beneath in search of heated flesh. His husband can be inconsistent about bothering to undress himself to Liem’s satisfaction, and he has no intention of letting any inconvenient garments linger to deny his wants.]
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When he sucks the first dark bruise onto the spot just below Liem's ear, it feels like another welcome home.
He is so intent on this that he forgets about Liem's quest to undress him — the cool hands sweeping over his skin make him jump, and then laugh, his teeth grazing his lover's sharp jawline. Cardan is so enamoured with him; he has no idea how he'd made it a whole month without his touch or his scent or the sound of his voice soaked in pleasure. Having him now makes it a little hard to breathe; his throat tightens when he thinks too hard about how strange and unbearably lucky he is, to have trapped this man in his clutches. ]
I want you so terribly.
[ This, too, is distracting. Insistent, keen-edged desire pulses through him. He wants Liem’s pleasure — wants to take his time and tease him until his breaths turn ragged; he wants to tear his clothes off and have him right now, spread open on this desk amongst papers and reports. As always, it is impossible to focus on one thing where his husband is involved — Cardan simply wants all of him all at once.
In the spirit of this jumbled need, he doesn't bother unbuttoning Liem's shirt all the way — just enough that he can splay long, greedy fingers over his ribs. For a moment, Cardan only holds him in his hands like one might a fragile treasure, letting his breath break over Liem's collar bone.
Then, inevitably, his touch sweeps up to attack his husband's nipples. The flash of his grin against Liem's skin is deeply smug. ]
How I’ve missed tormenting you, husband.
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He feels too alert, too sensitive to the wanderings of his lover’s hands, the brush of his breath, the scrape of his teeth. Even the hot flesh beneath his palms sparks his hunger too readily—but he can be hungry now, entwined as he is in Cardan’s grasp. He no longer needs to pretend the feeling away.
Liem opens his mouth to say that at least they are of the same mind, that they can indulge their wants together instead of enduring them alone—and gasps at the sudden attention to his hardening nipples. He cannot disagree with his husband: He has missed Cardan’s tormenting, also. His devotion to discovering all the ways he can drive Liem insane is both intimidating and irresistible.]
I am yours to torment, [he agrees breathlessly, eyes fluttering closed in the face of Cardan’s teasing assault. He is certainly tormented by lust—though also, as ever, by his need for his husband to be bared to his affections. Blindly, his hands seek the buttons marching down Cardan’s front, intending to be more thorough than his husband has bothered to be with his own half-undone shirt. He wants the garment off.]
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