Chapter Text
It took nearly a full week after he married into house Atreides for someone to try and take the life of the former na-Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.
The night itself was uneventful up to that point, as all of the nights since his wedding had been. He returned to his chambers to find his husband already there, already dressed for bed and beneath the light sheets. He felt a twinge of disappointment at the sight — he hadn’t had any physical contact with the other since their brief conversation days before the wedding ceremony. Watching him ready for bed was the closest they had been since then.
He looked over the Duke Atreides now, as best he could with what little was visible. Though they were closed his eyes came from his mother, light both in color and intelligence. From his father came the hair, dark and thick and distinctly untamed. The strong nose was maternal, the wide jaw paternal, the weighed intentionality in every move he made a gift from both.
He was also thin. It verged on scrawny. There was definition to his body, and Feyd-Rautha had himself felt the strength hidden in his grip, but at first glance one's first impression would be of physical weakness. Feyd remembered that his father was more broad than that, if lacking in height. His mother leaned in the other direction, tall and lithe. Paul still had time to grow either way.
He considered his new husband’s beauty as he himself went through the process of readying for bed. He wished in that moment that he wasn’t alone in his looking, that those intelligent eyes were open and watching him in return. He knew that Paul was awake. In fact it was likely that he knew he was being watched. But the past few days he had hardly looked back, certainly not how he had looked up at him before.
The memory of that conversation, of the others' hands on him, only heightened that earlier feeling of disappointment. Never in his life had he felt so exposed, so pinned down by another’s gaze. As he settled beneath the sheets beside his husband he wondered where had that fire gone and what it would take to get it back.
Paul was still awake, he could tell. He never made an effort to hide alertness, and Feyd-Rautha knew from the past few days that when he did go to sleep it would be a natural one, not induced via drug. When he realized on the first night he spent in these chambers that his husband would not take a pill to sleep, he left his own untouched. It was an impulsive choice, a show of either defiance or stubborn nature or something else entirely, and it resulted in him lingering awake hours after Paul had fallen asleep. But he hadn’t had one since.
So when the first person sent to kill him in his new home came, he roused from sleep easily. But it was not the assassin’s presence that awoke him — it was thunder. It was that feeling of rumbling from the heavens, some powerful force slamming against another of the same strength. Something you don’t see, but you feel deep inside of you. He had the brief, sleep drenched thought of I’ve never heard thunder on Arrakis, before realizing that he was mistaken. Unlike thunder, this was closer than what made sense. It isn’t coming from above or outside, but in the room. In the bed. That thought was the one to bring him into the world of waking immediately, eyes flying open and vision clear as he sat up, tense.
It took his eyes little time to adjust to the darkness of the room. When they did, he recognized a figure standing in the center of it. Clearly not a servant — in his life he’d never had a servant enter his chambers unannounced, certainly not in the few weeks he had spent here on Arrakis. It was with something nearing on glee that he made to stand and dispatch whoever trespassed into the space. It had been too long since he’d last drawn blood, and he missed it.
As he began to move, though, the thunder sounded again. Gaze whipping in the direction it had come from, he realized that he was right. The thunder was not thunder, and it did not come from above. It came from beside him. It came from Paul. And where before he heard only the power behind it, now he was able to make out the words.
“ Drop the knife. ” A clang, as a blade fell to the ground. Feyd-Rautha could see now that the would-be assassin was shaking. He found himself fighting off his own tremor when Paul spoke again. “ Stay. Don’t move.”
The next words his husband spoke were into a coms device, directed at security, and lacking that same power. He spoke in clipped sentences, informing whoever was on the other line of the situation with an efficiency that Feyd-Rautha didn’t feel he would have been able to replicate in the moment. The footfalls of guards were heard almost immediately, but his husband remained tense, on edge. He wondered how someone who had enough power in the voice alone to stop an assassin in their tracks could be so full of worry. But then the guards rushed in, and the second they grabbed the man it seemed that whatever control Paul had over him fell away, and he instead wondered just how much power it took to do what he had.
Shortly after the guards came the mother, and then the gnarled looking weapons master, the former directly to Paul’s side and the latter taking a detour at the fallen weapon. Their chambers, which had not in his memory exceeded three people at once, were now full of bodies moving about as if they had always been there. Through it all he stayed where he was, not even fully out of bed.
That voice had been used on the intruder, but he felt its effects the same. It froze him in his tracks. He was aware that such powers of persuasion were used by Bene Gesserit witches, knew that the Atreides Duke’s mother was one such witch. But he never could have expected to hear that tone and the power it held come out of his husband’s mouth.
He realized that he still hadn’t taken his eyes off of Paul. He realized that since the last time he spoke, through the rush of guards and family into the room, Paul had been looking back.
“It was only a matter of time before something like this happened, given the sentiment towards the Harkonnens on Arrakis.”
The weapons master never called him Duke, though formality technically demanded it. The title was always avoided when he talked to, or far more frequently about, Feyd-Rautha. The evasion of the word would have verged on insubordination if anyone liked him enough to mention it. As it was, with the room currently home only to him, his husband, Jessica and House Atreides’ most valued men, Gurney Halleck had yet to be reprimanded for the behavior.
“That being said, it was not one of our men. Right now we think they were a local.” He paused, something Feyd-Rautha found uncharacteristic of him. He was used to the man speaking his mind, eloquently but still bluntly. The possible cause of the hesitation interested him. Halleck continued.
“They hadn’t expected you to be there, my Lord.”
Ah. Not as surprising as he’d thought, then. The hesitation came only from the fact that it would be the first time anyone addressed the strange nature of their marriage aloud. And strange it was — once they were married, and he spent the first night alone, he’d expected that it was to be in name only. He knew that his family had received the short end of the stick on this deal. He joined Paul’s house, where Paul retained the comfort and freedom he had always had, and the Harkonnens lost their most promising heir. Feyd assumed that the other had a mistress or two holed up somewhere, and that had been that.
Except the next night he was not alone. He received little more than a greeting, but that combined with the presence of his husband was enough to surprise him. Since then the two had been in a strange limbo when it came to one another. Feyd-Rautha only provided what he got, and what he got were short, stilted, formal sentences that verged into the awkward. He got the illusion of a relationship. He did not get the freedom of the charade dropping at the end of the night.
It had made him angry when he first realized it. He’d pushed that anger down, because it would do nothing for him here. His strongest ally in this place was indifference. Anger had always been a gateway to more dangerous things for him, and he was on a tight leash in this place. But now, hearing Gurney Halleck speak to the strange nature of their marriage, likely echoing thoughts that everyone else in the room held, he felt the anger coming back. It was on some level humiliating to have said out loud, even if indirectly.
Though it was brief, the silence that followed Halleck’s words had a distinct weight — it seemed no one wanted to be the one to speak. When it was broken, it was by Paul addressing the man.
“What will we do?”
His phrasing stood out to Feyd-Rautha. There was an inherent trust in the way he worded the sentence. He was already prepared to go along with whatever plan was proposed. Did the rest of the room recognize that blind faith? Or was it so commonplace among this small group that it drew no attention to them, didn't stand out? He couldn’t cleanly wrap his mind around having such certainty in an advisor’s intentions, or family for that matter.
At the Duke’s urging, a plan was laid before them. He listened as they painted the broad strokes; an increased presence of guards, alterations to immediate schedules, how to go about necessary public appearances. Half of it didn’t apply to him. The half that did he likely wouldn’t pay attention to either way. But one thing caught his attention.
“Our resources are spread thin as it is.” and there it was again, that hesitation. Feyd-Rautha glanced up, waited for him to continue. This was a longer pause than before, accompanied by a twist to his mouth as if whatever he was about to say was accompanied by a bad taste. Finally spoke again, “The best course of action would be a shared guard, as often as we’re able.”
Feyd could read between the lines.
“You want us together.”
He felt something nearing on humor as every eye in the room turned to him. He realized that he hadn’t said a word to more than half of the people here since he came to Arrakis, the most glaring exception being Paul. He looked at him now, felt his lips twist up as he continued, this time his words directed to only one other person.
“How ever will you stomach it?”
Something flashed across his husband’s face, some gleam in his eye, gone nearly as fast as it had come. But he’d seen it. Before that stone mask fell back into place, he had seen it, and he had felt it. It was the first real emotion he’d managed to sneak out of him in days. It was a sign of something more beneath. That heat he had been missing.
Ironically, once the decision was made that their schedules should overlap as often as possible, Feyd did not see his husband again until the end of the night. The suggestion was made to him that he might retire to his chambers early, in the name of getting some rest after the previous night's incident. He was not someone unable to read an order in a suggestion, and so he allowed an armed escort that he did not need see him to his empty rooms.
He shot a glance over his shoulder to Paul on his way out. The other was, for a brief moment, looking back. But then the whirlwind of advisors overtook him, hiding him from view. Feyd-Rautha continued on.
When he finally did see Paul again, it was on his return to their rooms. It was late at this point, the two having spent the day on polar opposite ends of a tedious spectrum. He knew that the Duke of Arrakis had likely been in and out of meetings and conversations, overseeing and approving proposals and plans. He knew when the other walked into the room that it had worn him down, his step heavy with it. But he would have traded his own day for it in a heartbeat. While Paul likely hadn’t had a moment of peace since the attempt, Feyd was drowning in it.
His attempts to distract himself had inevitably ended in his mind trailing back to the man who stood before him now, readying for sleep he surely needed. He thought about the weight of his hands on him, so many days ago. He thought of the look in his eye earlier that day. The sound of his voice as he commanded the would-be assassin. He wanted it again, all of it. He wanted to hear it, to feel it.
His husband slid into bed next to him. On past days like this, days where by the end of it he felt like an exposed nerve, he would turn away from the other at night and impose distance himself to avoid facing that which Paul had already provided. Now, though, he turned towards him, and he watched. After a moment, the other turned to face him in return. In the low light on the room, beneath the same sheets, they looked at one another.
“I’m sorry that was able to happen.” Paul spoke first, whispering as if the newly instated guards outside their door would have been able to hear otherwise. Feyd felt himself huff out a laugh, and then watched in something nearing astonishment as Paul’s lips quirked in response. He wondered if the lack of sleep was having an effect.
“I would have been able to handle it,” he responded. “I might have even enjoyed it. But you beat me to it.”
He looked almost bashful now, and Feyd decided it must have definitely been the lack of sleep. It was fascinating to see. He inched closer on the mattress, closing the distance between them just a bit.
“I haven’t seen anything like that before.” He moved closer still. The sheets rustled gently as they settled lower, and he saw Paul’s eyes flicker down before quickly looking back up. He moved closer
“It isn’t something I'm especially confident in yet.” He sounded distracted, and Feyd-Rautha fought off a smile. “I’ve only used it in practice.”
Slowly, Feyd moved a hand towards the other. He let it land on the mattress between them for a moment, before letting it travel towards his husband. When he finally made contact, it was at Paul’s sternum, and it allowed him to feel the sharp intake of breath beneath skin. He brushed his thumb against the base of his throat as his hand spread out, covering as much ground as he could. The heat beneath his hand mirrored what he’d seen in his eyes. He wanted more.
“Have you thought of using it outside of practice?” He ventured, eyes following the movement of his thumb. He raised his gaze, looking up into Paul’s wide eyes as he continued, “For pleasure?”
And that heat was there again, not just beneath his hand but flaring up in the other’s eyes, stronger now than it had been that morning, as strong as it had been that moment days ago. He could have cheered, could have celebrated. And then it was gone. The shutter drawn, Paul backed away. Feyd’s hand fell back onto the bed between them as the distance grew again, as his husband retreated back far enough that he was now at risk of falling to the floor. When he spoke next, his voice was cold, exhaustion apparent.
“You don’t need to do that.” He said, turning onto his back but keeping his gaze on Feyd-Rautha. His eyes were dark now in the dim light of the room. He continued, “If it's thanks or obligation or whatever else, you don’t need to give it.”
With that, he turned his back to the other, lowered the lights fully, and fell silent. Feyd sat in the dark, wide awake and entirely confused. In a matter of moments they had gone from finally making some kind of contact back to absolutely nothing.
He settled in on his own side of the bed, still facing Paul, the two of them lying awake. Had his desire scared the other off? Or maybe his own had? He knew now, at least, that it was there. Between the incident days ago and this now, he felt he had undeniable proof.
Either way, in the coming days they would be spending quite a bit more time together, and he would have plenty of time to figure out the best approach. As he fell asleep he thought of Paul’s hands, eyes, voice. Of what he knew of them, and of what he might get to learn.