[I love you, not scribbled down with pen and parchment, but etched into the pressure where their browbones meet as though they were both tieflings. And to Zevlor's mind, it's true: despite those countless variances that dictate otherwise, he has two children. Two melodramatic children, oft with more headspace than they have sense, yet his heart knows them without sight or sound; he finds them half the time in all their mischief based on a sixth sense he's never had before, lashed between them like a drawstring.
They are his world, but there's still no easy way for him to express that through any language outside of hamfisted discomfort or fierce contact, so it's the latter that he chooses— palm squared and smoothing against the back of Fenris' scalp, gently upsetting the lay of dark hair.]
You have no idea how silly I feel spending all this time worrying that I was losing you, when in reality you were just becoming your own self.
[When he releases Fenris, the distance between them feels lessened. His next breath out comfortably slack.]
[Silly to be surprised after what he'd just tearfully confessed— but on the other hand, why would Fenris ever be the one to leave? He isn't quite so wedded to the Moulin Rouge as Astarion or Kanan or Zevlor, true, but . . . still, he is one of them. He is, he insists to his fretful mind, and pushes away the flare of insecurity that wants to crop up. Zevlor never lies, and certainly not about matters like these; if his heart can't fully believe his words, the pleasing pressure of a roughened hand against the back of his head serves as evidence enough. He pushes back against it, butting their foreheads together once more before drawing back.]
Because it was easy to keep up with you when your legs were shorter. [Quirks his mouth over to one side as the hand that'd settled in Fenris' hair drops down to lay across his shoulder, man-to-man. It's been a while since he sat like this. Twenty years or more at least— back when he had a regiment beside him, and spent his nights with his fingers wrapped around a shotglass, his eyes trained on a courtesan like no other in this place. Every paycheck was a chance to see him, at the very least. Made it bearable.]
It felt as though your tastes were changing quicker than I could blink: one minute I was keeping your fingers out of hinged cabinets, and the next you're picking fights with my performers. [This isn't scolding; he'd say it differently if it were.] All our old habits, gone. Replaced with some inscrutable motivation that could very easily have been an urge to get as far away from here as possible, and I certainly wouldn't have blamed you.
[The word murmured softly as his eyes widen, for he hadn't realized until just now how it must have appeared on the outside. He cannot quite call it regret, not when it was such a minor thing, but still: he didn't realize how every distracted practice or absent-minded answer might have come across to his father. But that motivation . . . he frowns faintly.]
This is my home, and I have no desire to leave it.
[It is his home. It is, no matter that there are times when he feels perpetually as though he's always that overwhelmed ten year old boy, stuck on the outside looking in. The weight of Zevlor's hand against his shoulder is a pleasant one, and therein lies a second realization: that this is a conversation between adults. Still a father speaking to his son, yes, but . . . treating him as though he isn't a child, but a man capable of knowing his own heart.]
I have lived outside these walls. I know what the world is like, for I experienced more than enough of it before Astarion brought me home. And though I cannot say I do not have my vexations with this place or some of the performers . . . nor do I have any urge to leave it. Not now, and not in the future.
[Not when he has a role already waiting for him. Not when his heart lies here, not just with his family but everyone who comes and goes through these halls. It's such a strange life, irregular to the extreme— but years later, Fenris still thinks it a blissful paradise. So different than what he'd come from in the strangest and best of ways, where all the rules were different and he was encouraged to become his own person . . . no, he has no desire to leave.]
I always felt I had a place by your side. That even if the rest of the Moulin Rouge preferred the stage to swords, even if I did not understand their jokes or their obsessions, at least things made sense when you and I would spar. I have always had shelter here, but . . . I have always had a home with you.
[And the others too, of course. Kanan was never anything less than doting, and of course Astarion will always be his savior, but . . . it's Zevlor that made him feel seen while living in a world so unlike anywhere else.]
I do not want to leave it. Not now. Perhaps . . . perhaps someday in the far, far future, but . . . there is no place I'd rather be than here.
[He lets that linger in the air, and then, a little lighter:]
Besides. To whom else can I turn when it comes to the practical realities of dating a Diamond-in-training?
[He's joking, sort of, or at least he meant it as a joke, but . . . it's very much not a joke, isn't it? More of a creeping worry that's been preying on his mind the past two weeks, though he's been able to shove it aside each time it crops up. After all, Astarion is only learning the very basics right now, and there's years and years (presumably) to come . . . and yet he can't help but worry, blunt realist that he is.]
I can live with someday. [He says, mussing up the full measure of his favorite heir's mane, a hearty chuckle in his throat. Though it's reedier than it used to be, he feels young; the future very far away.
The past nearer as he draws his own thoughts towards it— and lets his own arm drop.]
Mm.... [The joke lands. It does, despite his pause for thought (a thought that sticks between his teeth, impossible to speak around without mulling first).] Hm.
Different. [Too simple.] Difficult. [Too true.] I was a soldier in those days, even after your father knew of my affections. That meant I couldn't stay longer than a week or two at a time, no matter how desperately I wanted to. [Which is to say that he did want to. Very much.]
More than that, my schedule was erratic— the odds I might not return, high— I remember the sensation of my heart leaping up into my throat each time I walked down the alleyways that led here after months or weeks apart, convinced I'd stroll through those grand lobby doors to find him gone. Moved away or moved up in the world, it happens quite often, really.
[Another strange quirk of adulthood: having to reckon with the idea that his parents are somehow people, a notion both laughably obvious and utterly baffling. Fenris had known his father was a commander; they've spoken of war often enough that he has a passing familiarity with the broad pictures (though never the details). But it's one thing to know, in piecemeal storybook images, that long in the distant past Zevlor wielded a blade and commanded a squadron; that he fell in love and hung his blade over the fire in exchange for a pair of rings and a whole cabaret to mind.
It's a far stranger thing to picture it as an ongoing thing. For the first time in his life Fenris considers what it must have truly been like, and the details unfurl themselves in his mind's eye: Zevlor not as he is now, hair streaked with grey and his demeanor fussily overburdened, but as a solider. An elite commander striding through the doors of the Moulin Rouge in armor caked with dirt and dried blood, finding a seat in the back while his soldiers eagerly flood the premises, eager to lose themselves in the arms of another. Gold is eagerly exchanged, drinks are poured, and within minutes every person save one is occupied . . .
But not him. Not when there's only one person who has ever caught his eye . . . though there the imagining ends, for even now, Fenris doesn't want to think about Kanan like that. It's one thing to have watched Satine drape herself in the lap of a visiting Duke; it's quite another to imagine his father like that.
But the thought is like a spark to tinder, for he's never before thought about the details in his fathers' stories. Even after your father knew of my affections, Zevlor says, and for the first time Fenris wonders if Kanan reciprocated at first, or if Zevlor's feelings were treated as an amusing indulgence. Who made the first move, and who pried the confession out of whom? There's no easier joke in the Moulin Rouge than a customer who falls in love with feigned affection and overzealous lust, so how did the proprietor himself find himself in that position— and how did Kanan ever decide to return it? Or did he feel it first . . .
He wants to know. He wants to know everything (or at least a great deal of it, up to a point). But there's a more pressing question burning in the back of his mind that needs to come first.]
Mm.
[A soft hum to answer that last sentence. There's plenty of workers who have moved on (sometimes to Bah-li, sometimes not) since he came here. It's also to give himself a moment to gather up his courage, and then:]
And . . . did you ever stroll through those doors to find him with another?
[It will happen. He knows it's going to happen. Maybe not for another five years, maybe longer, but sooner or later, there will be a day when Astarion's focus must be fixated on another. And it will only get harder the longer time goes on— for a Diamond has his pick of clients, and it's true that Fenris does not want his beloved to have to endure clumsy hands or stale breath for the sake of a few pennies. But with fame and fortune come the rights to more and more exclusivity— and what will it be like, Fenris wonders bleakly, to have to endure the constant presence of a third within their relationship?]
[There's no fooling the old (or the middle-aged, in this case). What the young explore with bullish curiosity he sees straight to the heart of, knowing full well that there's already a thorn lodged in Fenris' chest about all this. Something he may only feel the start of right now— but oh, how it'll grow when given kindling. Given time. That little grain of sand that rolls against soft flesh until it gathers more weight than either one can bear, turning a hardened callous into split skin.
Still, it's all he glimpses, though. Mistakes through the lens of confidence that Fenris' thoughts are all wound up between himself and Astarion, missing where it settles on his parents, too.
(Probably for the best. He'll have to hear about their pining regardless, if this is the history lesson he's hunting.)]
Mhm. [Is particularly dry.] But that happened many times before we were together. I never asked him to change his line of work for me— how could I? One more Hellrider with a pittance for a salary, I couldn't pay his way in fifteen years or a hundred.
[And again, the implication stands. Rattles like spent ice running cirlces in the bottom of the glass, tipped round and round until it reflects the reversed image of the belly of the Moulin Rouge. His fingers sore from overuse, his rain-cleaned boots propped against burnished brass under the bar, all but swallowing his aching heels as music drifts warmly through air that smells like cigarettes, wine and barely disguised sex.]
But I didn't care. [He cared. Enough to still feel it in the present.] I just wanted to see him as often as I could.
He was that special.
Although like anything in life, pouring even the most stalwart effort into something doesn't guarantee you'll actually get anything in return. I can count on two hands how many nights ended with an overturned shotglass and not a glimpse of your father at all: another set of weeks whittled away in Avernus before I'd get another chance to try again. And again. And again.
[(Diamonds— even those yet unrefined— are ever in demand.)
The faint puff of gaunt amusement caught against his teeth almost buckles before it leaves him.]
Eventually I started showing up at the staff exit for a change. Put my coin towards breakfast for us both instead of whiskey.
I'll never forget how nice it was to see him really smile.
[It's not the answer he wants, in the sense that it's not no, Fenris, I never once found him in the arms of another, and even if I had, it was painless and utterly inconsequential to either my heart or our relationship. For that matter, Astarion will never look at anyone the way he looks at you, and never once find a bit of enjoyment from any single one of his customers, despising them all in equal turn except you.
It's selfish to want that. Cruel, too. And even if Zevlor had said it, Fenris wouldn't have believed him, cynical heart that he is.
(He wants it anyway).
For a few moments he slots himself in that position: lurking at the backend of the cabaret, the rim of a shotglass digging into his palm and Astarion laughing (really laughing, that high-pitched giggle or snorting cackle he only gives to Fenris and few others) merrily with someone else. Some pretty prince from Starkhaven, maybe, or cambion visiting from Avernus . . . does it matter? The figure is blurry, gender and status irrelevant; all that matters is the sight of Astarion, his eyes bright and his grin wide, running one flirtatious hand up another's side. Palm cupping their cheek, thumb stroking dotingly across the arch (just as he did for Fenris last night, clucking over a faint bruise) before pushing through their hair (and will he grip the same way? Fingers tight and his expression suddenly drunk with power, show me just how good you are at moaning for me, and it's too easy to imagine—)
Something that isn't true yet, he tells himself firmly. Better to focus on the story. Better to focus on that relished statement, and soothe his heart with the memory of the way Astarion smiles at him, bright and brilliant and unlike anyone else in the world.]
How did you know he would even want to meet you? [With a semi-apologetic little shrug:] Tilses has started sending me out to shoo away some of the suitors. She says it's good training.
[It doesn't happen often, admittedly, but often enough. And it's not really all that good training, but it is the job nobody else wants to do, which means that it's Fenris' job now.]
Tilses is right. [But in relation to the rest of the story, there's little connective tissue stitched between them. Very little beyond the fondness driving a brief, vaguely kindled smile, shoulders knocked against each other.
(Tilses is right; the more routine it is to deal with the entitled troublemakers, the more impersonal it'll be when— )]
But to answer your question, I didn't.
I had to trust what he told me months before wasn't just a handsome game to lure me in— and I had more than enough proof to believe it, though someone else might've disagreed. [And while Zevlor doesn't consider himself particularly self-assured by inherent design in terms of matters of the heart, logic comes to him with ease.] When an entertainer sits at the foot of the elite each night, what use did Kanan have for a ratty soldier void of pedigree? Of status? My betters were there. The creme de la creme of rank and file, and their medals shined more brightly than my coin.
A man that wants to be a Diamond, Fenris, doesn't need to pander to men like us.
[There are times when Fenris speaks of class and wealth and sounds older than his years, wise and wearied from a childhood spent in slavery. And then again there are times when he sounds like a sulking teenager who has just read Das Kapital for the first time, and here, now, this is the latter. It's a mulish mutter, half in defense of Zevlor and half because he has a natural inclination to sneer at the hierarchies of society, no matter what those people involved might be like.
Anyway. It's a single point of contention muttered more for himself than anyone else. Those knocking shoulders and gentle smile bring him out of it easily, and he returns both after a moment.]
I suppose . . .
[No, he knows exactly what Zevlor means. A Diamond (or any courtesan) doesn't spend their free time lightly; there could be no mistaking the intent when Kanan took the time to see Zevlor— or when Astarion chases after him, begging him to skiv off work for just one more hour together.
But the trouble isn't that he thinks Astarion doesn't love him. He does, he knows, for Fenris loves him just the same. The trouble will come later, with mouths and tongues and greedy hands; the trouble will come from having to watch his beloved amatus thrill in the very thing that Fenris dreads: having all the attention on him.
He's silent for a few seconds, lost in thought. They're getting closer to what's truly bothering him, but it takes time for them both. Finally, though:]
Did you— when you saw him there, when you knew he was occupied, or ate with him after a night where he was busy, did you—
[Something small and ugly wedges itself in his throat. His mouth thins, and after a few seconds of struggling, he finally says:]
He's mine.
[Miserably admitted, and oh, what a wretched thing it is to borrow jealousy from the future, knowing what's in store.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
illithidnapped) wrote2025-05-31 06:45 pm
no subject
[I love you, not scribbled down with pen and parchment, but etched into the pressure where their browbones meet as though they were both tieflings. And to Zevlor's mind, it's true: despite those countless variances that dictate otherwise, he has two children. Two melodramatic children, oft with more headspace than they have sense, yet his heart knows them without sight or sound; he finds them half the time in all their mischief based on a sixth sense he's never had before, lashed between them like a drawstring.
They are his world, but there's still no easy way for him to express that through any language outside of hamfisted discomfort or fierce contact, so it's the latter that he chooses— palm squared and smoothing against the back of Fenris' scalp, gently upsetting the lay of dark hair.]
You have no idea how silly I feel spending all this time worrying that I was losing you, when in reality you were just becoming your own self.
[When he releases Fenris, the distance between them feels lessened. His next breath out comfortably slack.]
no subject
[Silly to be surprised after what he'd just tearfully confessed— but on the other hand, why would Fenris ever be the one to leave? He isn't quite so wedded to the Moulin Rouge as Astarion or Kanan or Zevlor, true, but . . . still, he is one of them. He is, he insists to his fretful mind, and pushes away the flare of insecurity that wants to crop up. Zevlor never lies, and certainly not about matters like these; if his heart can't fully believe his words, the pleasing pressure of a roughened hand against the back of his head serves as evidence enough. He pushes back against it, butting their foreheads together once more before drawing back.]
Why would you lose me?
no subject
It felt as though your tastes were changing quicker than I could blink: one minute I was keeping your fingers out of hinged cabinets, and the next you're picking fights with my performers. [This isn't scolding; he'd say it differently if it were.] All our old habits, gone. Replaced with some inscrutable motivation that could very easily have been an urge to get as far away from here as possible, and I certainly wouldn't have blamed you.
1/2
[The word murmured softly as his eyes widen, for he hadn't realized until just now how it must have appeared on the outside. He cannot quite call it regret, not when it was such a minor thing, but still: he didn't realize how every distracted practice or absent-minded answer might have come across to his father. But that motivation . . . he frowns faintly.]
This is my home, and I have no desire to leave it.
[It is his home. It is, no matter that there are times when he feels perpetually as though he's always that overwhelmed ten year old boy, stuck on the outside looking in. The weight of Zevlor's hand against his shoulder is a pleasant one, and therein lies a second realization: that this is a conversation between adults. Still a father speaking to his son, yes, but . . . treating him as though he isn't a child, but a man capable of knowing his own heart.]
I have lived outside these walls. I know what the world is like, for I experienced more than enough of it before Astarion brought me home. And though I cannot say I do not have my vexations with this place or some of the performers . . . nor do I have any urge to leave it. Not now, and not in the future.
[Not when he has a role already waiting for him. Not when his heart lies here, not just with his family but everyone who comes and goes through these halls. It's such a strange life, irregular to the extreme— but years later, Fenris still thinks it a blissful paradise. So different than what he'd come from in the strangest and best of ways, where all the rules were different and he was encouraged to become his own person . . . no, he has no desire to leave.]
I always felt I had a place by your side. That even if the rest of the Moulin Rouge preferred the stage to swords, even if I did not understand their jokes or their obsessions, at least things made sense when you and I would spar. I have always had shelter here, but . . . I have always had a home with you.
[And the others too, of course. Kanan was never anything less than doting, and of course Astarion will always be his savior, but . . . it's Zevlor that made him feel seen while living in a world so unlike anywhere else.]
I do not want to leave it. Not now. Perhaps . . . perhaps someday in the far, far future, but . . . there is no place I'd rather be than here.
no subject
Besides. To whom else can I turn when it comes to the practical realities of dating a Diamond-in-training?
[He's joking, sort of, or at least he meant it as a joke, but . . . it's very much not a joke, isn't it? More of a creeping worry that's been preying on his mind the past two weeks, though he's been able to shove it aside each time it crops up. After all, Astarion is only learning the very basics right now, and there's years and years (presumably) to come . . . and yet he can't help but worry, blunt realist that he is.]
. . . what was it like, with you and Kanan?
1/2
The past nearer as he draws his own thoughts towards it— and lets his own arm drop.]
2/2
Different. [Too simple.] Difficult. [Too true.] I was a soldier in those days, even after your father knew of my affections. That meant I couldn't stay longer than a week or two at a time, no matter how desperately I wanted to. [Which is to say that he did want to. Very much.]
More than that, my schedule was erratic— the odds I might not return, high— I remember the sensation of my heart leaping up into my throat each time I walked down the alleyways that led here after months or weeks apart, convinced I'd stroll through those grand lobby doors to find him gone. Moved away or moved up in the world, it happens quite often, really.
no subject
It's a far stranger thing to picture it as an ongoing thing. For the first time in his life Fenris considers what it must have truly been like, and the details unfurl themselves in his mind's eye: Zevlor not as he is now, hair streaked with grey and his demeanor fussily overburdened, but as a solider. An elite commander striding through the doors of the Moulin Rouge in armor caked with dirt and dried blood, finding a seat in the back while his soldiers eagerly flood the premises, eager to lose themselves in the arms of another. Gold is eagerly exchanged, drinks are poured, and within minutes every person save one is occupied . . .
But not him. Not when there's only one person who has ever caught his eye . . . though there the imagining ends, for even now, Fenris doesn't want to think about Kanan like that. It's one thing to have watched Satine drape herself in the lap of a visiting Duke; it's quite another to imagine his father like that.
But the thought is like a spark to tinder, for he's never before thought about the details in his fathers' stories. Even after your father knew of my affections, Zevlor says, and for the first time Fenris wonders if Kanan reciprocated at first, or if Zevlor's feelings were treated as an amusing indulgence. Who made the first move, and who pried the confession out of whom? There's no easier joke in the Moulin Rouge than a customer who falls in love with feigned affection and overzealous lust, so how did the proprietor himself find himself in that position— and how did Kanan ever decide to return it? Or did he feel it first . . .
He wants to know. He wants to know everything (or at least a great deal of it, up to a point). But there's a more pressing question burning in the back of his mind that needs to come first.]
Mm.
[A soft hum to answer that last sentence. There's plenty of workers who have moved on (sometimes to Bah-li, sometimes not) since he came here. It's also to give himself a moment to gather up his courage, and then:]
And . . . did you ever stroll through those doors to find him with another?
[It will happen. He knows it's going to happen. Maybe not for another five years, maybe longer, but sooner or later, there will be a day when Astarion's focus must be fixated on another. And it will only get harder the longer time goes on— for a Diamond has his pick of clients, and it's true that Fenris does not want his beloved to have to endure clumsy hands or stale breath for the sake of a few pennies. But with fame and fortune come the rights to more and more exclusivity— and what will it be like, Fenris wonders bleakly, to have to endure the constant presence of a third within their relationship?]
no subject
Still, it's all he glimpses, though. Mistakes through the lens of confidence that Fenris' thoughts are all wound up between himself and Astarion, missing where it settles on his parents, too.
(Probably for the best. He'll have to hear about their pining regardless, if this is the history lesson he's hunting.)]
Mhm. [Is particularly dry.] But that happened many times before we were together. I never asked him to change his line of work for me— how could I? One more Hellrider with a pittance for a salary, I couldn't pay his way in fifteen years or a hundred.
[And again, the implication stands. Rattles like spent ice running cirlces in the bottom of the glass, tipped round and round until it reflects the reversed image of the belly of the Moulin Rouge. His fingers sore from overuse, his rain-cleaned boots propped against burnished brass under the bar, all but swallowing his aching heels as music drifts warmly through air that smells like cigarettes, wine and barely disguised sex.]
But I didn't care. [He cared. Enough to still feel it in the present.] I just wanted to see him as often as I could.
He was that special.
Although like anything in life, pouring even the most stalwart effort into something doesn't guarantee you'll actually get anything in return. I can count on two hands how many nights ended with an overturned shotglass and not a glimpse of your father at all: another set of weeks whittled away in Avernus before I'd get another chance to try again. And again. And again.
[(Diamonds— even those yet unrefined— are ever in demand.)
The faint puff of gaunt amusement caught against his teeth almost buckles before it leaves him.]
Eventually I started showing up at the staff exit for a change. Put my coin towards breakfast for us both instead of whiskey.
I'll never forget how nice it was to see him really smile.
no subject
It's selfish to want that. Cruel, too. And even if Zevlor had said it, Fenris wouldn't have believed him, cynical heart that he is.
(He wants it anyway).
For a few moments he slots himself in that position: lurking at the backend of the cabaret, the rim of a shotglass digging into his palm and Astarion laughing (really laughing, that high-pitched giggle or snorting cackle he only gives to Fenris and few others) merrily with someone else. Some pretty prince from Starkhaven, maybe, or cambion visiting from Avernus . . . does it matter? The figure is blurry, gender and status irrelevant; all that matters is the sight of Astarion, his eyes bright and his grin wide, running one flirtatious hand up another's side. Palm cupping their cheek, thumb stroking dotingly across the arch (just as he did for Fenris last night, clucking over a faint bruise) before pushing through their hair (and will he grip the same way? Fingers tight and his expression suddenly drunk with power, show me just how good you are at moaning for me, and it's too easy to imagine—)
Something that isn't true yet, he tells himself firmly. Better to focus on the story. Better to focus on that relished statement, and soothe his heart with the memory of the way Astarion smiles at him, bright and brilliant and unlike anyone else in the world.]
How did you know he would even want to meet you? [With a semi-apologetic little shrug:] Tilses has started sending me out to shoo away some of the suitors. She says it's good training.
[It doesn't happen often, admittedly, but often enough. And it's not really all that good training, but it is the job nobody else wants to do, which means that it's Fenris' job now.]
no subject
(Tilses is right; the more routine it is to deal with the entitled troublemakers, the more impersonal it'll be when— )]
But to answer your question, I didn't.
I had to trust what he told me months before wasn't just a handsome game to lure me in— and I had more than enough proof to believe it, though someone else might've disagreed. [And while Zevlor doesn't consider himself particularly self-assured by inherent design in terms of matters of the heart, logic comes to him with ease.] When an entertainer sits at the foot of the elite each night, what use did Kanan have for a ratty soldier void of pedigree? Of status? My betters were there. The creme de la creme of rank and file, and their medals shined more brightly than my coin.
A man that wants to be a Diamond, Fenris, doesn't need to pander to men like us.
He chooses where he wants to be.
no subject
[There are times when Fenris speaks of class and wealth and sounds older than his years, wise and wearied from a childhood spent in slavery. And then again there are times when he sounds like a sulking teenager who has just read Das Kapital for the first time, and here, now, this is the latter. It's a mulish mutter, half in defense of Zevlor and half because he has a natural inclination to sneer at the hierarchies of society, no matter what those people involved might be like.
Anyway. It's a single point of contention muttered more for himself than anyone else. Those knocking shoulders and gentle smile bring him out of it easily, and he returns both after a moment.]
I suppose . . .
[No, he knows exactly what Zevlor means. A Diamond (or any courtesan) doesn't spend their free time lightly; there could be no mistaking the intent when Kanan took the time to see Zevlor— or when Astarion chases after him, begging him to skiv off work for just one more hour together.
But the trouble isn't that he thinks Astarion doesn't love him. He does, he knows, for Fenris loves him just the same. The trouble will come later, with mouths and tongues and greedy hands; the trouble will come from having to watch his beloved amatus thrill in the very thing that Fenris dreads: having all the attention on him.
He's silent for a few seconds, lost in thought. They're getting closer to what's truly bothering him, but it takes time for them both. Finally, though:]
Did you— when you saw him there, when you knew he was occupied, or ate with him after a night where he was busy, did you—
[Something small and ugly wedges itself in his throat. His mouth thins, and after a few seconds of struggling, he finally says:]
He's mine.
[Miserably admitted, and oh, what a wretched thing it is to borrow jealousy from the future, knowing what's in store.]
How do I bear watching him go to someone else?