Work Text:
The sheets rustle, and Ferdinand realizes that Hubert is getting up, although the bed belongs to him. Ferdinand is an interloper here, and there is – a clawing at his chest. The violence of an unbelonging. “Don’t,” he urges quietly.
Hubert stops. His bare shoulders rise and fall with the force of his sigh, pale skin of his back glowing ethereal under the light of the moon. Ferdinand wraps his arms around Hubert’s waist, and relief cannot describe the wave of emotion that rolls through him when Hubert’s spectral form solid in his embrace.
Ferdinand thinks he could have passed right through him. He’s done it before. Had Hubert in his hands and let him slip like sand through his fingers.
He cannot bear to lose him again.
“Darling,” he indulges, and Hubert turns his head in acknowledgement, just enough for Ferdinand to see his thin lips press themselves into an even thinner line. Fine. “Hubert. Please. You promised me the night. Let me keep it.”
The nighttime chirping of crickets is futile against the impenetrability of Hubert’s silence. It is not broken until he himself relents to speak.
“Ferdinand,” Hubert says, and Ferdinand imagines the word lover springing forth from his lips instead, murmured deep and low, open and adoring. “Tell me,” he says, and Ferdinand nods devotedly, for he will tell Hubert anything he wants to hear if only he asks. “How does it feel to have chosen the wrong thing?”
“That –” His resolve falters against reality. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Hubert barks a laugh, frigid and broken. Chipped ice. “This. With me.”
“Do not be cruel,” Ferdinand implores softly. “You know that I wanted –”
“But you didn’t,” Hubert snaps, lips pulled tight in resentment strained too long; stretched too thin. “You didn’t. And this? This is –”
“You promised me the night!” Ferdinand’s voice is pitched high with desperation. “Will you not let me stay?”
Hubert draws himself up, turning to face Ferdinand in full. “I am a man of my word,” he snarls.
The last two words are left unsaid. Ferdinand is not fool enough to thank him for the kindness. His hand grips the sheets. A thread is loose. He rolls it between his fingers.
“Perhaps, then,” he suggests, tentative, “you would like to switch roles? We could try it with me on top, if you're –”
“No,” Hubert says, ferocious, stopping Ferdinand in his tracks. “You came crawling to me. You don’t get to set the terms.”
Ferdinand lowers his gaze. “That was not my intent,” he murmurs.
A strained exhale. “I suppose it wasn’t. Forgive me, I am…” Again, Hubert laughs – seawater, now. “Never mind that,” he decides. “Do you still want this?”
Like the air that’s shared between them. “Won't you kiss me?” Ferdinand asks.
Hubert’s answer is the warmth of his lips pressed to Ferdinand’s pleading mouth; the tangle of fingers in locks of radiant hair, authoritative and guiding and intimately bare. It is the sharp bite of teeth that ravage the landscape of Ferdinand’s lower lip.
It is heaven, and it exists for them and them alone.
Hubert takes those sainted teeth and rakes them down the flesh of Ferdinand’s neck, and Ferdinand sighs in adulation.
“Bite me,” he breathes, “Mark me. She will not see.”
“Don’t be greedy,” Hubert murmurs, muffled in the crook of his neck. “What we’re doing now is already too much.”
Ferdinand very nearly laughs – or wails, more likely – This is not enough. But it has to be. He must be content with this night and nothing else, and there is nothing he can do but blame himself for choosing wrongly. For following a misguided sense of morality instead of his own heart.
He will curse himself for it later. Right now, there is Hubert, and he boxes Ferdinand in safe between the leanness of his limbs, nestles the mass of his cock between Ferdinand’s thighs.
Take it, Ferdinand implores. This is where you belong. This should have been your home. Live in it, now. Make it yours.
And Hubert does, as if he heard his words. He fucks him harsh and cold and hungry with need. Sex with the man he loves is a winter at war. A naval vessel lost at sea. A storm.
Ferdinand closes his eyes and lets it take him.
His wife sits in front of the mirror, brushing out her hair. He leans down to place a kiss on her cheek.
Lilac eyes gaze at him from her reflection. “You’re home late.”
“And you are still not in bed,” he chides affectionately. “Busy with matters of governance, I presume?”
“Personal, tonight.” Her eyes turn to him, assessing. “Your coat is misbuttoned,” she says.
“So it is,” he acknowledges. She does not inquire further.
There is a bruise on his wife’s neck beneath her snow-bright hair. There is guilt on Ferdinand’s tongue and it has the same heft as Hubert’s cock; tastes the same as his seed.
Neither of them will speak of it. Ferdinand can do nothing but smile, even as he wants nothing more than to weep.