“Well, how do you like it?” he probed excitedly as he guided Percy into the estate.
He had spent the past week turning the empty residence into a real home, soliciting the best carpenters and decorators from the inner circle. In truth, he had welcomed the task wholeheartedly. Philip hadn’t so much as looked his way after the wedding; he was far too wrapped up in his new bride to even acknowledge most of the people in the castle. And Father had been so distracted by the marriage and all the issues being brought forth by the council that he hadn’t batted an eye when he had asked if he could take a small fortune of gold from the coffers.
The estate had been refurbished into a more simple, rustic aesthetic, styled in various shades of green and deep, rich browns. He had made sure that the furniture was centered around comfort and not just pure expense. Wide wooden stairs were situated directly across from the main front door. A grand fireplace sat lit in the main foyer to the right, stocked with wood, and the spacious room was decorated with an obscenely large daybed accompanied by matching armchairs. To the left was a sophisticatedly decorated dining room with a grand table made of dark wood and plush dining chairs.
Percy scoffed in disbelief. “Aryn, this is… I don’t even know what this is,” he chuckled.
“Well whatever you decide to call it, it’s yours.”
“Ours,” he corrected.
He couldn’t hide the pink coloration that began to rise on his cheeks as the young man stared at him insistently. “Come on. Let me show you the upstairs. I think you’ll like it even more.”
“Lead the way, Your Highness,” he prompted playfully, readjusting his crutch.
It had been a rather tumultuous two weeks, he thought as they carefully ascended the stairs. The wedding had been chaotic, as all weddings were, but fulfilling. And yet while he had sat at the family table on the raised dais in the throne room, he had been unable to allow himself to be fully happy. His mind had kept drifting to Percy, sat alone in his bed, only a sketchbook to keep him company while everyone else celebrated together.
He had awoken the other night for some unknown reason. Call it restlessness, anxiousness. But he had stumbled sleepily towards Percy’s temporary chambers to find him lying on the ground writhing in pain. Apparently he had attempted to transport himself to the chamberpot, and his crutches slipped. He’d hit his head on the floor, but not before he had reacted out of instinct and tried to brace with his injured arm. When he tried to help, he snapped. Told him to get away from him, that he could do it himself. He hadn’t wanted Aryn to see him like that. It was the first time he had seen Percy truly just cry.
“There are bedrooms up here for your family and guests, including the master, but what I really wanted to show you–” he opened a door at the right end of the hallway– “is this.”
The room was mostly windows, overlooking a secluded wild garden. A large, dark oak desk sat in front of the subsequently largest window, accompanied by an extremely comfortable chair. In front of another window stood an easel, and, on the only truly windowless wall in the room, an impressive amount of shelves were secured into it. They contained all manner of charcoals and paints, as well as blank canvases and different sketchbooks. And along any free wallspace, sketches and drawings had been framed and hung.
He stood back as Percy slowly entered the room, staying silent and patient. The absolute disbelief on his tanned face was enough to make his throat close up, and it proved impossible to keep his emotions in check as he saw a tear slip from his green eyes. He waited, expecting Percy to say something, as he stood anxiously in the doorway. Instead he pulled the chair out from the desk, faced it towards the door, and sat in it, letting his crutch fall to the ground as he reached a calloused hand out to him.
Pressing his lips together, he timidly closed the distance and took his hand. Suddenly he was pulled forward, and a strong arm wrapped around his waist as he fell onto Percy’s lap, legs straddling him. A gentle, intimate smile spread across his face.
“I truly do not deserve you–”
“Now that is not true,” he scolded immediately, pulling his chin up to make their gazes meet.
Instead of protesting further, Percy strained his neck upward and connected their lips, his good hand instinctively finding its way beneath his shirt and onto the skin of his back. A wave of warmth flowed through his body as he settled deeper into Percy’s lap, and he couldn’t fight back his boyish grin.
“And you know what else?” he murmured coyly.
“What’s that?”
His skin prickled as Percy moved his lips to his jaw, his fingertips lightly trailing back and forth on his lower back.
“This place is your– ours, and ours only. We can do whatever we want,” he pointed out. “We’re free here.”
His stomach started to do flips at the look Percy now gave him as he pulled away to look at him. Oh yes, he’d thought about it, too. In fact it was all he had really been able to think about besides, first and foremost, Percy recovering. The whole time he’d been renovating the small estate, he had to stop himself from imagining the things he wanted the former smith to do to him in each room.
It had not been a very successful endeavor.
“Why must you give me even more reason to resent that animal?” he questioned playfully, half the words getting lost against Aryn’s neck.
He draped his arm along the back of Percy’s strong, broad shoulders as he tilted his head, allowing him more access. Although he had stated it in jest, his frustration hung in the air like a scent one couldn’t quite get rid of. It was subtle but seeped into everything, tainting the joy in the room. He understood completely. No, Percy hadn’t wanted to be a blacksmith, but that was his choice to make, and that choice had been ripped away from him.
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A tender pain snapped him out of his thoughts, and he recoiled slightly with a sharp inhale as a hand gripped his upper thigh. Concerned green eyes stared up at him as his mouth grew dry.
“You okay?”
“Y-yeah, I just hit it on the corner of my bed the other night. Couldn’t see; I was clumsy,” he lied.
His dark eyebrows furrowed slightly, and he could see the thoughts forming, a faint memory returning.
“What’s been upsetting you?”
It was all he had asked, but it made him break. He self-consciously removed Percy’s hand from him, anxiously playing with his fingers instead to attempt to distract himself.
“When you fell the other night… it made me feel horrible. You were so upset and angry and all I could think was, ‘this is my fault’. I felt helpless, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And then I started thinking about my mum. Then my father. And I just…” He sighed heavily. “My mind was darkening.”
“I just want to understand why it happens,” he explained gently. His voice was heartbreakingly kind, and it made his blue eyes begin to sting.
“I don’t know. All these dark thoughts just start to invade my head, and no matter how hard I try to redirect, they keep coming. Until it feels like my mind is going to explode. It makes me physically ill sometimes… and the only thing that seems to work is physical distraction, release. The best way I could describe it is like… some twisted catharsis I suppose.”
He stared intently down at their intertwined hands, refusing eye contact. Saying it aloud covered him in a heavy cloud of shame. He knew it wasn’t normal, but at the same time, it was the only thing that seemed to bring him back to reality in those moments. Before things went too far.
“When was the last time, before this one?”
“Shortly after we met. I hadn’t in a long time,” he answered reluctantly, his voice quiet.
Percy slipped his hand from his grasp and instead gently began to stroke his arm. “Whenever you feel that way again, I want you to come to me. I don’t care what hour it is, or even if I have upset you, you come to me.”
His voice was soft, but there was a protectiveness to it that he had yet to hear before. The tone was not dissimilar to how he had spoken to him that first night at the tavern, when his mind had terrorized him. A tender dominance.
“Look at me.”
He lifted his eyes.
“You are perfect to me. If I were so bothered by the things that haunt you, I wouldn’t be here. Do you understand?”
A tightness quickly formed in his chest, and he found it difficult to take a steady breath. His vision began to grow more and more blurry; instinctively he went to turn his head away, but a firm hand gripped his chin and pulled it right back. The look in his deep emerald eyes made him want to do things…
“Do you understand?”
He nodded obediently, his lips parted slightly as his blue irises fixated on Percy’s mouth.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he breathed softly.
The gap between their faces grew smaller as he brushed a thumb along Aryn’s bottom lip, his eyes caressing his body. “Do what?”
“Make me forget about everything else.”
His thumb trailed down his chin, slowly tracing a line along the middle of his throat. “I don’t want to make you forget.” Finally he reached the end, stopping his finger in the notch of his sternum. “All I want–” Aryn’s chest heaved when his hand rested around his neck– “is for you to feel loved.”
It was infuriating. The way he touched him, the words he spoke, the way he spoke them… and he could do nothing about it still. Since they had confessed their love, his dreams had been filled with vivid visions. Sometimes they felt real, and he would awake with a noise escaping his lips and a throbbing in his loins. But he couldn’t act on them. It made him feel oddly selfish.
But as Percy gripped his throat and pulled his mouth to his, the thought vanished. He could feel his frustration in the way he kissed him, how he shoved his tongue into his mouth. A heat immediately began to rise on his fair skin as he thought about the other places he wanted that mouth to be.
His hands flew to the laces of Percy’s breeches, and as teeth nipped and tugged at his bottom lip, he firmly wrapped his fingers around him. A quiet groan rumbled deep in his throat that sent fire coursing through his veins.
“I want–”
His declaration was cut short as fingers tangled in his ashen hair, yanking his head back. The words devolved into an involuntary noise.
“What do you want?” he growled in his ear.
Everything felt too tight, his clothes chafing him, suffocating him. He wanted them off. Wanted Percy’s off. His mouth couldn’t form words as a hand forced its way into his pants, ignoring the laces entirely.
“I…” he moaned as Percy worked him in his hand, trying desperately to focus on returning the favor.
“Do you know what I want?” His breath tickled his ear and made the hairs on his neck stand up. “I want you in that bed, our bed, laid out for me, naked. I want to hear my name on your lips as you beg for me.”
Percy’s hand disentangled from his hair and came to grasp his face, but their lips didn’t meet. Instead they hovered, a microscopic amount of distance held precariously between them as their breaths intertwined.
A distant banging could be heard on the front door, and he had never been so irritated in his life. Their hands had slowed but not stopped as a look passed between them, the temptation to ignore the outside world blatant in both of their eyes. But the banging persisted. He was the first to draw away; every movement was painful, and he couldn’t help it as he brushed his lips against Percy’s, desperately wanting to hold on to the moment.
“I’ll get it,” he murmured quietly.
Several words were left unspoken as he slowly slid off Percy’s lap and recollected himself, straightening out his clothes and hair and… readjusting some things as he strode towards the stairs. The glass on either side of the heavy oak door was frosted, and he could only make out the outline of the person patiently waiting on the other side.
He slid the latch across the door and yanked it open, surprised and yet quite relieved to find Oliver standing with his arms crossed tightly in front of his body. Although it wasn’t snowing, the wind was rather aggressive, throwing his brown hair to the side.
“May I come in?” he asked with a curt smile.
He smiled back and stepped aside. The nobleman quickly entered the house, violently shivering. “I would complain about you taking so long but something tells me you–”
“Oliver, hi,” Percy called from the top of the stairs.
A different expression settled on his angular face. “Just the man I wanted to see. How’s the healing process going?”
Balancing gingerly on both his feet, Percy waggled his crutch. “Better. Byron told me to start trying to put some weight on it. Hurts like Hell, but it’s not given out the last couple of days, so that’s progress.”
“Well good, because we have work to do,” he stated.
Percy carefully made his way down the stairs, his brow furrowing. “What’s going on?”
He glanced between the two men curiously as Oliver recomposed himself. There was an unspoken tension in the air he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“The King’s called a council meeting.”