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“Was it truly so amusing?”
Ferdinand’s voice was ridiculously fragile for a man who had been threatening to skewer Hubert with a lance not five minutes ago. Oh, and how that image will never leave Hubert’s head – he was still tripping over those words, his mind still only halfway through a conversation he had initiated while his body laughed at him.
Goddess, to think he’d gone and sniffed out Ferdinand to push him away. It was to be so easy; he had just known it. All the things they had forced Ferdinand to do, everything they had taken from him, ripping his world from beneath his feet. Surely it would only have taken a few choice words to push the inevitable resentment to the fore, a little dance around the nobility he would never have, the sins for which there was no more confessional. It had been so obvious that Ferdinand would hate them, hate Hubert. Just a little press, and Ferdinand would realise it, too. Spill his heart and then his guts as Hubert took care of the last lingering traces of the Aegir rebellion.
But that’s not how the story went, and instead it’s Hubert who found himself bleeding out – skewered, saints alive, why did he say that – dumbstruck in the dirt with no idea of where the path now turned. And Ferdinand was looking at him, not with disgust or fury, not with lance in hand or even so much as a sneer. Instead, he looked almost afraid.
“You will not have me.”
His words were almost drowned out by Hubert’s nigh-manic laughter.
“What?”
His own voice was not fragile, not like Ferdinand’s brittle, bitter words. But it was a far cry from his usual sharp and sturdy, that much, at least, was certain.
Ferdinand was looking away, over his right shoulder. There was nothing there but the ridge of the cliff, the walls in which Ferdinand had boxed himself to undertake yet more training even after Dorothea had ordered he rest his shoulder. Hubert could have teased him for insubordination, disobeying the orders of a medical officer, if he was not suddenly on very uncertain ground.
“Very well,” Ferdinand whispered. “I suppose it was too much to ask. Not like I could have offered anything in return.”
He was pulling away. From what, Hubert could not tell, but he had not dragged himself through over a decade of worst-case scenarios not to realise when he was losing.
“Ferdinand,” said Hubert. “Your ceaseless athleticism seems to have struck yet again. While your mind charges on ahead, you have left me rather in the dark. What in the world are you talking about?”
Ferdinand still would not meet his eyes.
“I do not know how to make myself any clearer,” he said eventually. “And if I remain ever inscrutable to you, well, that is answer enough.”
At last, his eyes returned to Hubert’s, and it was far, far too much to bear.
“I ask only that I may be permitted to remain, if not in the government, then in the Imperial army. In whatever position Lady Edelgard deems suitable.”
Hubert clenched his hands.
“Ferdinand, if there was no longer a place for you in Her Majesty’s service, this-” A blade slipped from Hubert’s sleeve to his hand. “-Would be in your back, not the dirt.”
The blade pierced the ground with a dull thud. Ferdinand did not even look at it.
“So you did come here to kill me,” he said.
His voice was firm again. Relieved.
“Oh, I go many places to do many things,” said Hubert. Wherever this conversation was leading, he had not prepared for the journey. “But it seems you have disarmed me, nonetheless.”
“Must you constantly toy with me?” Ferdinand snapped.
“Was it not you who threatened to skewer me with a lance, not thirty seconds after my arrival?”
“I, at least, would have had the courage to stab you in the front.”
Hubert’s knees went weak.
He wasn’t built for this. Not the way Ferdinand looked at him and not the way Ferdinand avoided him. He couldn’t handle this, the constant noble delicacy that had everything sounding like it could be something else. The twin jewels… What was that supposed to be? Not what Hubert was thinking, not what he had wanted for what was shaping up to be an alarmingly long time.
You will not have me.
“You’re a braver man than I am, Ferdinand von Aegir.”
“Do not call me that,” Ferdinand said, more certain than he had been about anything since their departure from Fort Merceus.
And Hubert still could not keep up.
“What?”
It wasn’t fair. He’d dedicated his life to mastering this, the insipid sway of speechcraft. Hubert was always two steps ahead; he knew his opponents’ thoughts before they did. He knew that Ferdinand was going to buckle beneath this, he knew that, somewhere down the line, it would all catch up with him and that he would turn, grasping for a final, futile vengeance on behalf of his father.
Hubert could feel it even now, at the furthest edges of his psyche. The desire for a different fate, someone else’s blood beneath his fingernails, in his veins.
But he had dropped the knife and did not regret it. Whatever turmoil roiled beneath the surface of Ferdinand von Aegir-
But no, he was not to use that name, apparently.
“I told you.” Ferdinand’s voice strained. “I wanted to be…”
He swallowed. Hubert wished he would lift his chin.
“Hubert and Ferdinand,” he whispered. “The twin jewels of the Empire. Not of Aegir. Not of Vestra.”
Hubert had washed his hands for hours, that morning in Enbarr. They had not felt clean until now.
“But, even if…” Ferdinand cleared his throat. “Even though you do not wish me to be yours, I stand by my renunciation. I suppose I shall find something else to be. Until then, I am Ferdinand, and that is all.”
Yours.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Hubert choked on his words, more a hot rush of breath than anything that could be called speech. “How could… If either of us were to belong to-”
Oh, he could not do this. Change tack, immediately, before he sailed right off the edge of the world.
“There is nothing limited about the man you choose to be.” He breathed in, deep, shaky. “You outclass me at every turn. It’s been days, and already you are willing to cast aside shackles you once wore with pride, while I have dragged a dead name behind me for the past two and a half years. I come to you in search of the depths of your soul and you show me instead my own. Do you have any idea how much I hate you?”
Ferdinand sucked in a sharp breath, gripped his lance like it was the only thing keeping him upright.
“I used to know,” Hubert continued, voice trembling. “It was so simple, wasn’t it? When you were just some silly pompous lordling with no idea of what was happening around him. But even that image you have posthumously destroyed, five filing cabinets of evidence I so dearly wanted to see you put to use. What is there left of the man I used to think you were? Yet you haven’t changed at all, and maintain I am still… whatever I have been, all this time. What is it, then, that has changed? And when?”
Ferdinand was looking at him again, still hunched, somewhat, over his weapon, but fixing him with those firelights all the same. Hubert had no fear of death, but life was another matter. Thank the Goddess, then, that lance would escort him from the scene if he ruined it sufficiently.
“Not much of a spymaster,” he found himself murmuring, “to so misjudge the man in the chair across. To always be surprised, not by your competence, but your desire to use it, for Edelgard, for us. To sit there, day after fucking day, wondering when I would finally push you away, only to find, again and again, nothing but commitment. Until, at last, I have no choice but to admit that you seem willing to embrace our path, after all.”
“The path is all I shall ever have.”
Ferdinand’s voice ripped from his throat as he stepped, furnace-furious, into Hubert’s personal space.
“Wrong.” Hubert could not help the twitch of his lips. “You shall have me.”
Ferdinand’s hands slipped and the lance dropped to the dirt.
He breathed, heavy and hesitant, right against Hubert’s skin. It was the closest Hubert had been to anyone who was not Edelgard or now a corpse.
“You mock me.”
“No more than usual,” Hubert said with a smile.
“Then why-” he was still scowling, brow twitching, eyes searching, so damn close to Hubert’s face “-When I asked to be yours…”
Hubert bit his lip to stop himself from saying something about his own complete lack of social awareness, intelligence, wit, only to feel his mind go blank as Ferdinand’s eyes traced his teeth.
“I’d rather be yours, instead.”
Ferdinand grabbed his head, his hair, his neck, his cheeks, any-fucking-thing that happened to land beneath his large hands, and yanked until their noses pressed into each other.
“One of these days, I will kill you, Hubert.”
“Please.”
Ferdinand’s mouth was hot, livid and lascivious, even as his hands quivered against Hubert’s skin, in his hair, against his heart. It thundered against him, the desire to touch, to hold, to feel six layers of fabric between his hands and another human being, closer than he’d ever been. Instead, his hands stayed at his sides and Hubert tried to breathe through his moan and Ferdinand’s, desperate not to break a kiss he had never permitted himself to imagine.
His life belonged to Lady Edelgard. It always would. Somehow, it had never once occurred to him that someone might want to join him there.
Ferdinand pulled back and Hubert followed. He’d be following for the rest of his days. Something caught in Ferdinand’s throat, a tiny puff of surprise Hubert could feel as much as hear, and the hands that cupped his jawline tightened. The stance was wrong, Ferdinand leaning back without moving his feet, he’d go toppling right into the mud if he wasn’t careful, but from how he pulled at Hubert’s skin, dragging him ever closer, he really did not mind.
That could only mean their stability was now Hubert’s responsibility, which was a terrible idea for many reasons.
Terrible to reach, to find, to plant his hands on Ferdinand’s hips as though they could belong there, hold him down solely so that Hubert might continue to feel his lips against his own for one moment longer. It was obscene. Worse than the kiss, though the reality of that definitely hadn’t yet fully penetrated Hubert’s skull. To have his hands on Ferdinand’s body – separated only by gloves, greatcoat, waistcoat, trousers, shirt, smalls, undershirt – it was beyond the mere scandal of noble sensibilities. It was more like the horror of the irreal, the shadow beneath the ship, the wink in the dead man’s eye. There was no world where Hubert held another man in his arms.
There certainly wasn’t one where that man was Ferdinand and Ferdinand was sighing, open-mouthed against Hubert’s lips, as he dug his fingers into Hubert’s hair and rested their foreheads together. They were, however, still standing strangely – all the self-doubt in the world could not sublimate the weird crick in Hubert’s hip as he leant over, practically holding Ferdinand up. He did not want to fix it, he did not even want to breathe.
Ferdinand shifted, steadying his stance, and Hubert’s hands flew from his hips as though he’d touched a stove. Ferdinand’s hands stayed where they were, anchoring their foreheads to each other. His eyes were closed. Hubert’s lips felt cold already.
“Say something,” Ferdinand murmured.
A terrifying command.
“That was my first kiss.”
Ferdinand laughed, slow at first, just a widening smile with too much breath, and then he was pulling back, chuckling like Hubert had waited so long to hear. He supposed it was only fair, considering his own mad laughter at Ferdinand’s earlier aching. Still…
“Was it truly so amusing?”
Ferdinand’s laughter faltered for just a moment, before his mouth twisted into a wry smile.
“You shan’t trip me up that easily, Hubert,” he said, giving a roll of his eyes.
He was starting to see why Ferdinand had looked so gutted earlier. Were they each truly so incapable of listening to the other?
Hubert folded his arms and almost startled at how sad Ferdinand looked to have a barrier between them once more.
“Just who exactly are you imagining I’m going around kissing?” he asked.
“Imagining? Well, typically, me.”
Hubert groaned, squeezing his eyes shut in mortification. He had to bring his hands up, too, pull at his hairline, accomplishing nothing but a reminder that, yes, he was indeed still alive and living through this absurd moment.
“You really are going to kill me,” he murmured.
Ferdinand’s hands came up to grasp at his own. Ferdinand’s hands – bare in the late-afternoon breeze. When had he discarded his gauntlets? Had he taken them off specifically to touch Hubert? That must be contravening some rule of decorous conduct, or at least honourable combat.
Hubert longed to twist tighter, pull himself away with his grip on his hair, but Ferdinand’s fingers were so damned gentle. What could he do but acquiesce, let himself be brought back to reality by firm fingers that felt so at home between his own?
“And here I thought I had run out of things to ruin,” Ferdinand said, quiet, morose.
Hubert forced himself to open his eyes. Ferdinand was back in his personal space again, leaning against him without touching, the only point of contact their hesitantly entwined fingers. Hubert wanted to feel him, all of him, pressed warm and desperate against the line of his own body.
“Now, don’t go defeating your own plans,” said Hubert. Perhaps he was leaning forward himself, just a little. “I believe that is my job.”
Ferdinand gave a sad little laugh.
“Now when have your plans ever reached anything other than perfect fruition?”
Hubert turned his head, stared at the knife planted in the dirt between them.
“It seems I must repay the favour,” he said. “Keep you from your own cruelty, just as you kept me from mine.”
Ferdinand’s mouth was hesitant now, a far cry from the stern press of lips that had sealed his fate so few seconds ago. But still Hubert pressed on, swallowed the clench in his gut even as he failed to silence the sigh in his throat, and slotted his lips between Ferdinand’s with all the experience of two minutes and several awkward blowjobs at the Academy.
Ferdinand gripped his hands like they were the only things keeping him upright, and why did he seem so constantly on the brink of falling? In the days since Merceus, Hubert had barely caught a glimpse of Ferdinand, so focused was he on cleaning up his father’s messes, trying to do anything for the people of Aegir and the rest of the Empire. The few times he had seen him, Ferdinand had been training with a ferocity that, frankly, scared him. The blood had been spilled and still Ferdinand pushed himself, onward, toward a battle that would not come.
The war continued, of course. There was no shortage of enemies who would benefit from the bite of Ferdinand’s screaming lance, but the man Ferdinand sought to destroy had already attained the immortality of a corpse. What awaited Ferdinand now was the infinity that haunted Hubert’s heart, that nebulous dream of Tomorrow. Shapeless, formless, with only the hope of “something better” to name it by, the future frightened Hubert like nothing else. He did not wish to die. To lose him would be a significant blow to Her Majesty’s resources – and, if Hubert forced himself to face the facts, her psyche. But that did not mean he was particularly well equipped to face the future.
That vast, empty future.
For as long as he could remember, it had been enough to dream of absences. A world without class or pain, where children were born equal and died whole. No gods, no kings, no masters. Et cetera. But what would be there?
Ferdinand was not the type of man to content himself with omission. When he had made that choice, dedicated himself to the path, their path – Hubert gasped against his lips – he must have had something in mind.
For a better future, he had said, when Hubert had pressed him, looking for a weakness that simply was not there.
And when Hubert had asked what exactly Ferdinand’s plans for that future looked like, he had spoken only of Hubert.
Hubert’s fingers slipped from Ferdinand’s hands up to his hair, his throat, curling around the back of his neck to pull him closer. Ferdinand groaned, grabbed at Hubert’s aiguillette, and yanked. Hubert could only gasp, and then cry out as Ferdinand seized the advantage and slipped his tongue into Hubert’s waiting mouth. At his cry, Ferdinand tensed, but Hubert wasn’t about to let him shy away from this. He followed, as ever, chasing the retreat of Ferdinand’s tongue with his own, only to feel his whole body quake when he succeeded in a slide of filthy, wet heat.
One of Ferdinand’s hands left the front of Hubert’s unform to grab up and over Hubert’s back, fingers furious in the folds of his cape. Their arms were getting in each other’s way. The hand that still grasped at his aiguillette was surely getting crushed. If Ferdinand tried to break their position into something more comfortable, Hubert would never forgive him.
But Ferdinand wasn’t going anywhere, and some giddy, wild part of Hubert was realising he never would.
He laughed into their kiss, just as astounded as earlier, and the sound seemed to remind Ferdinand of something.
“Were you… being truthful?” he asked. Hubert could focus only on how his fingers buzzed with the rumble of his throat. “About – ah, about having never…”
Hubert groaned, pitched his head forward and landed in Ferdinand’s neck.
“I don’t know why I said that.”
Ferdinand laughed, relieved.
“You didn’t need to know.”
Ferdinand tensed again.
“Hubert,” he said, both stern and nervous, like he was about to suggest a change in battle plans, like he was about to poke his nose into intelligence most certainly not intended for the Prime Minister.
But he did not pull Hubert from his new spot against his ascot, and so Hubert would take whatever he decided to burden the conversation with next.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
Hubert snorted.
“Of all the things between you and I, this is what you choose to apologise for?”
He could tell, somehow, just from the way Ferdinand’s body hung against his own, that he was looking sullen again. Crafting a reason to berate himself internally. Hubert knew the feeling intimately well.
With all the strength in the world, Hubert forced himself to pull back, to meet Ferdinand’s eyes. He kept his hands at the back of his neck, though. It would take the ending of the very world to move them, or at least a crowbar.
“I am a very strange person,” Hubert announced.
For an instant, Ferdinand’s cheeks flared with a barely concealed laugh, but then the sadness returned, and he stayed silent.
“I am so deliberately, as no doubt you have deduced, considering you are far better suited to diplomacy than myself.”
Ferdinand watched him like an owl would a rat.
“If there was someone in Her Majesty’s cabinet who was known for being both threatening and not particularly popular, well…” Despite himself, Hubert smiled. “They would make for an obvious target, shielding Her Majesty, at least somewhat, and redirecting potential danger to someone both expendable and capable of defending themself.”
He expected Ferdinand to raise some protest against the mild self-effacement, but instead he simply listened. It was more intimidating, in a way. Certainly more touching.
“But, obviously, such a persona does not lend itself to standard social situations very well.” Hubert’s eyes darted away for a moment. Cowards. “To say the strangest thing one can imagine is a defence mechanism that will obliterate even the most well-founded discussion. All the more so when it is the truth.”
“I did not mean to make you uncomfortable,” Ferdinand murmured.
“Oh, I can find discomfort in most anything,” Hubert said with a smile.
“You shouldn’t,” Ferdinand said. “Not in your first kiss, at least.”
Hubert’s skin crawled, burning him alive.
“Must you phrase it like that? I’m not an eight-year-old.”
“No. You’re twenty-three.”
“What exactly are you mourning, here?” Hubert asked, the tone of Ferdinand’s quiet murmur dragging its claws through his heart. “I’ll stomach a great deal of gall from you, Ferdinand, but not your pity.”
“No, it’s not that,” Ferdinand’s voice was firm again, digging in his heels for an argument, and it set Hubert’s heart stuttering. “I am sorry. Again. But I… I suppose I am simply angry with myself. For not knowing you as well as I had wanted, for not making the most of a moment that I know… Something I know to be a loss, when it is wasted.”
Hubert blinked. He really did not know much at all about Ferdinand’s personal life. He’d told himself it was irrelevant, even as he raked through all the information he could find on the man’s political views, every last missive sent to Aegir – to his stablemaster, his old wetnurse, begging them to run. He would not have known what to do with it, had he found rumour of a lover in Ferdinand’s life. And so, like a coward, he simply had not looked.
It shamed him even now to wonder what had drawn those damned dimples into such a sad bow.
“Well,” said Hubert. What little courage he did posses was being forced to his hands, sending his thumbs brushing the roots of Ferdinand’s hair and earning him a shiver, a smile, a roaring in his own heart. “The moment is not wasted until it’s over.”
He kissed Ferdinand back to a smile. Ferdinand was kind with him – tender and slow and all the more painful for it. He was so strong, in his jaw and his hands, drawing Hubert ever closer and yet seemingly content to simply delight in his presence. Hubert could not seize any advantage in such a situation. This was the domain of the adoring and desiring, beyond the grasp of the desperate. The courtly lover overcome with genuine affection, tempered by a dedication to decorum. Ferdinand’s domain. How that thought got him groaning.
Ferdinand pulled Hubert’s lower lip between his teeth simply to toy with it. Hubert found himself gasping yet again, only to flush at his complete inability to shut up. Goddess, he had been right, it would have been so much easier if Ferdinand had hated him, if he had managed to lay that final straw upon his back and break them apart forever.
Instead, Ferdinand was panting, too. Pulling back with heavy-fluttering eyes and a single strong hand gripping Hubert’s jaw like he intended to reshape his countenance. When their eyes met, hesitant, inevitable, Hubert could barely stomach the intensity of the emotion that awaited him.
“You threw me for a loop is all,” Ferdinand murmured. “Here I was, thinking of… so many things. Divesting you of either your life or your honour, and to think you had not even-”
Hubert’s brow twitched.
“I have had sex, you know.”
Ferdinand blinked.
“But not…”
“I’m a very busy man. Now, are you going to make me busier or not?”
Ferdinand laughed at him, finally, properly, surprised and delighted and at something Hubert had actually intended to be humorous.
It was almost worse than the kiss.
“I mean it,” Hubert said, pressing deep into Ferdinand’s personal space. “I believe you promised me a ‘skewering’.”
Ferdinand shut right up.
“You should pay that no heed,” he said after a moment of thick silence. “I have been… Restless, lately. Saying the first things that come to mind, lashing out, unwarranted.”
“Well,” said Hubert, feeling his confidence already starting to evaporate. “Please allow me to assist, then, in relieving some of that stress.”
Ferdinand’s laugh was different yet again. Shaky, giddy, terrified. He gripped Hubert’s face, his back, just as Hubert held his neck, the both of them waiting for the other to cast them aside. Neither moved.
“You will have me?” Ferdinand breathed at last.
“In as many ways as you please.”
Ferdinand snorted, retreating to hide his face in the curve of Hubert’s neck. He was so warm. His nose jutted against Hubert’s collar; his eyelashes scraped his throat. Hubert swallowed against the unfamiliar intimacy.
“I meant-” Ferdinand’s voice was still so low, so quiet “-You will have me in your life? See a place for me on your path?” Even quieter: “In your future?”
Hubert had not even the slightest idea of what the future would look like. When the last of Those Who Slithered in the Dark had been eliminated, when the light of the Church no longer darkened the souls of Fódlan, when Edelgard’s throne was secure and ready to be passed on to a worthy successor – it was all simply fog in his mind. But what Ferdinand had said earlier…
“I believe you have already identified your place,” he replied. “At Edelgard’s back, and by my side.”
Ferdinand lifted his head and placed a single, aching kiss to Hubert’s lips. Then the palm of his hand was at Hubert’s stomach and he shoved, pressing Hubert hard against the storeshed wall behind him, pinning him in place. Hubert whimpered, so loud he thought he might die of embarrassment before even getting to the “violence”.
“Hubert, I can’t fuck you here in the dirt without anything to care for you.” Ferdinand’s voice was hot and rapid against his ear, and even the nature of his words couldn’t calm Hubert down.
“I have a tent,” Hubert said stupidly.
“Oh no, I’ve waited all these years to find my place and I won’t take one minute more.”
Before Hubert could even begin to obsess over that, the white-hot heat of Ferdinand slipped and for a single, awful moment, Hubert thought he had gone. But that hand was still so steady against his stomach and the other was at his belt and Hubert realised that Ferdinand had dropped to his knees.
“Oh, fuck.”
Ferdinand breathed out, deep and shaky, as Hubert quivered beneath his hand. Hubert was wearing entirely too many clothes, aching to feel Ferdinand’s skin against his own, instead of hovering, awkward and eager, within six layers of shielding.
He met Ferdinand’s eyes as the buckle of his belt clicked open.
Ferdinand’s fingers moved and, before he could accomplish anything of note, Hubert grabbed his left wrist and pulled it closer, slipping those blunt fingers under his well-tucked shirt. Ferdinand, a tactical genius, got the idea. The hand that belonged on his stomach returned to its post, hiking up Hubert’s shirt and jacket so Ferdinand could rest his bare palm against Hubert’s abdomen and the two of them could stutter in unison. Ferdinand’s hand was surprisingly cool, but, then again, it was getting late in the day. He refused to consider that the flush currently obliterating his body could have had anything to do with it.
Ferdinand brushed his stomach in a gentle stroke, just barely moving his fingers, and Hubert whimpered again.
They had been at war for two and a half years. Hubert was not some blushing maiden. That did not, however, mean anyone had ever paid him particularly close attention.
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” he groaned, voice cracking.
“For the love of all that’s holy, please shut up.”
Ferdinand was panting, and if it was not that, if it was not the strain in his voice, it was the way he slipped his hand down Hubert’s pants with such horribly slow gentleness which confirmed that, no, he had no idea what he was doing. Hubert wanted to say something. A tease about noble obligations. Something about the destruction of the Church and its thousandfold rules for intimacy. A reassurance, somehow, that he really did not mind. He could not get any of it to his lips before Ferdinand had swallowed, loud and desperate, and pulled Hubert’s cock from his trousers.
He gripped it intently, as if trying to make a point, but something about the splay of his fingers belied his experience as being only in holding his own. Hubert stared, and yet Ferdinand would not meet his eyes. Even as his gut twisted with arousal, the strangest hint of sadness tugged at him, too.
Despite his hardening dick sitting in the hands of Adrestia’s most beautiful general, all Hubert wanted was to be kissed.
“Ferdinand.”
Ferdinand was staring at his dick.
“Ferdinand.”
His eyes flitted up, finally meeting Hubert’s. Hubert could not help but jolt at the depths of desire therewithin, thrusting his dick in Ferdinand’s grip and bringing them both to sighs.
“So impatient,” Ferdinand murmured, but it was so quiet, out the corner of his mouth, that Hubert had to wonder if it was even intended for him.
He sighed again, pumping Hubert’s cock, and, as Hubert felt his eyelids flutter with a truly disorienting level of arousal for a behind the shed handjob, brought his lips to the tip. It was not fair. That Ferdinand should spend all his life dedicated to values that were brought crashing down around him, that he could so quickly adapt and grow under such change, becoming a better person and building a better world, that he could conquer all that and still be a proper romantic. Why the hell did he know to kiss Hubert’s dick like that, as though it were an honour to have it in his hands? Even his breathing – how could he let those soft little gasps touch Hubert’s fervid skin in just the right way to tease without overwhelming, to make it so painfully clear how aroused he was, too?
Ferdinand was the kind of man Hubert used to dream of, before he learned he shouldn’t think of such things.
When Ferdinand took him into his mouth, Hubert’s hands went straight to his hair. Neither of them had any time to look after their appearance. It was something of a wartime tradition in Fódlan, anyway, to grow out one’s hair, measure the length of the conflict. Whatever the reason, they had somehow ended up with the same length and style – though Ferdinand cared for his with his horsebrush and Hubert let his fall where it willed. It sure didn’t feel like Hubert’s own in his hands, though.
Ferdinand’s hair was thick, slightly too dry, and perfect for pulling. Ferdinand groaned, loud as all get out, even with his lips still pursed around the top of Hubert’s dick. Hubert couldn’t help himself, he shuddered, pushing his cock deeper into Ferdinand’s wet and waiting mouth and only dragging his hands harder through his hair at the feel of it. He was so soft, a slick and silky hole for Hubert to fuck.
He groaned, fought to still his hips and remember that Ferdinand wasn’t the type of man to spend ages quashing his gag reflex so he could suck off Knights of Seiros at their academy.
Ferdinand moaned with him, pressing his left hand ever harder against Hubert’s gut and sparking Hubert’s desire ever higher. He opened his mouth, let Hubert drop from his lips, and just breathed against his skin. Hubert squirmed, so turned on it almost disgusted himself. If he pressed forward even a little, he could drag his cock across Ferdinand’s face, paint him sticky with precum and spit. The thought was enough to draw a truly ridiculous gulp from his throat.
Ferdinand’s lips were red and shining when he took Hubert between them once more. His eyelids shuttered, his eyes rolling almost back into his head as he bore down on Hubert, taking him as deep as he could manage. Hubert’s grip tightened in his hair, suddenly afraid he’d have to pull him back to keep him from hurting himself somehow – a thought which only served to make him want to fuck into his mouth even more. He clenched his teeth and his core alike, feeling his abdomen tremble beneath Ferdinand’s hand.
It was that hand that got him in the end. Not Ferdinand’s deep inhale through the nose as he hollowed his cheeks, not the bump of his cock against Ferdinand’s palate, not even the way Ferdinand looked at him, as though Hubert’s orgasm was the only thing left to look for. It was his hand, so firm and gentle, exactly where Hubert had bid him place it, his rough, calloused skin petting at the hair beneath Hubert’s navel. Somehow, even as he juggled the complex equation of teeth and tongue and hands and heart, he’d still found the time to calm the tension quavering within.
Hubert, of course, handled it terribly.
“Wait, shit, fuck-”
Hubert had about two seconds of realising he was close before he came, pushing Ferdinand’s face away and succeeding only in eliciting a pained whine and a tighter grip around his cock.
That’s not good, some dull, rational part of his brain announced as he spilled himself on Ferdinand’s tongue and all the way down his throat. The rest of his mind did not seem so bothered, content to fixate instead on the obscenity of his cock pushing through the ring of Ferdinand’s lips, the thick, wet slide of his own cum as he fucked in, the way Ferdinand’s eyes scrunched closed, and the surprised little choke as he swallowed it all.
Hubert breathed, hunched over still sheathed in Ferdinand’s mouth, even as his dick softened on Ferdinand’s sticky tongue.
Oh, fuck, he was still holding Ferdinand’s hair. He had to move.
It was cold and uncomfortable, existence, outside Ferdinand’s mouth, and the sheer amount of semen and saliva on his dick was not making the late afternoon chill any more bearable. Still, he tucked himself away and tried to stroke Ferdinand’s hair at the same time, wondering just how the hell Ferdinand had twisted his dick and petted his stomach with a face full of cock. But, of course, he was nothing if not an over-achiever, which was why it was so nerve-wracking to have him kneel, silently, at Hubert’s feet.
“Hey,” said Hubert, going for gentle and landing in timid.
He brought both his hands to Ferdinand’s head – one at his temple and the other cradling the back of his neck once again. He bent his knees, joined Ferdinand in the dirt, and realised with a start that Ferdinand was shaking. Cold-fire gooseflesh raced down his back as several worst-case scenarios flashed through his mind.
Ferdinand grabbed for Hubert’s arms.
He wasn’t shaking all through his body, Hubert realised. Just his hips, thrusting up into nothing.
“Oh, that was good,” Ferdinand murmured.
Hubert’s heart leapt at how messy and choked his voice sounded.
He watched Ferdinand’s hips still, but under the too many layers of dress, he was pretty sure he could still see a tent at his trousers.
“Did you…?”
“Huh?” Ferdinand asked, way too loud for two men with five centimetres and no boundaries between them.
His face was still flushed, clashing horribly with his hair. Eyes closed, nose scrunched, grip awkwardly tight on Hubert’s forearms. He was so beautiful.
“Guess not,” Hubert smiled to himself, and leaned in to take Ferdinand into his arms.
Ferdinand gasped – less of a moan and more of a combatant copping a surprise attack – as he fell into Hubert’s embrace. He was definitely still hard, and despite the strange, numb fear creeping in around Hubert’s psyche, it still set him licking his lips to feel that firm press against his stomach.
Struggling against the vice grip Ferdinand had both his arms in, Hubert managed to slip one hand around to come between them, slide down Ferdinand’s brocaded front, and palm the bulge in his trousers. Ferdinand groaned, bucked up against him and nearly knocked Hubert’s hand away in his eagerness. Hubert grinned into his hair. He was leaking, and from this?
He pulled at the lacings against Ferdinand’s cock, a prison almost like a corset, and certainly just as alluring. Ferdinand groaned properly when his hand made it in. He’d wanted to linger, to tease, gently brush against the tip and set Ferdinand fuming, but his cock was just so damn hot and dripping and big, there was no option but to fist around it and savour every last point of contact. Ferdinand’s voice was low, still thick with arousal and Hubert’s cum, and it thundered through Hubert’s body like the sound of cavalry charge. He stroked once, tight and harsh from base to tip, and it seemed to light something up deep within Ferdinand’s brain.
He leant back, pulled himself upright, and hammered into Hubert’s fist with a ferocity that threatened to drag Hubert back to hardness. Hubert dragged his hand with him, offset against the hard fucks of Ferdinand’s hips, and together they groaned.
“No, wait,” Ferdinand growled, and Hubert stilled as he held himself back. “You wanted me to fuck you…”
Hubert snorted, hand returning to its solemn duty.
“Yes, and you were smart enough to remind me that being ploughed unlubricated behind a shed is an activity best left to the soil.”
“Done being smart,” Ferdinand replied, thrusting hard into Hubert’s hand with a force that really captured Hubert’s imagination. “Just want you.”
“I…”
Why did he say such fucking things? The answer was too simple to accept, that Ferdinand would beg for Hubert simply because he wanted him. But if Ferdinand was trying to accomplish anything else, well, he’d failed, because his lance was in the dirt and his hands were holding Hubert and the only thing either of them had left to give was themselves.
“You have me.”
Ferdinand came, soaking Hubert’s gloves and his trousers alike.
Hubert’s eyes fluttered as though it were his orgasm filling his hand, as though this was all just another late night in his tent, overthinking Ferdinand’s expressions as he tore Hubert’s opinions to shreds once again. But when his head dropped forward, his forehead clunked against Ferdinand’s and everything was so blisteringly real. He could feel a bead of sweat slide from Ferdinand’s hairline to drip down his own face. Ferdinand’s breath was tickling a lock of hair by his nose.
His gloves were really quite disgusting.
He peeled them off, dropped them in the dirt, and brought his bare hands up at last to cradle Ferdinand’s jaw in his palms. He was breathing heavily, they both were, and Ferdinand’s eyes stayed closed. Hubert was content to stay, watching the flush fade from Ferdinand’s cheeks, for as long as he would have him.
“My mind is…” Ferdinand took a shaky breath, “Doing its damnedest to convince me that I have somehow misinterpreted this.”
Hubert hummed a single, low laugh.
“No,” he said, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Let me assure you, you have not.”
“Then…” Ferdinand’s eyes opened at last and locked to Hubert’s, even as he could see anxiety ripple through his body. “Then you are mine?”
Hubert felt his cheeks turn pink for what must have been the millionth time. He had thought about Ferdinand’s vocal proclivities quite a bit, but never once had he paused to consider that he might choose to voice his emotions as frequently as more physical sensations. Hubert wasn’t trained for this – he’d been born to be ignored.
“Yes,” he forced himself to say, the word one long exhale. “For as long as you will have me.”
“Oh, Hubert.”
Ferdinand smiled, and it was nothing at all like the naïve grins of their youth, nothing at all like the brave face he put on for the troops, and nothing at all, even, like the surprised glimpses of delight he found with their old classmates. Ferdinand looked at him like he was happy, and entirely on purpose.
One day, the war would end and take Hubert’s world with it. Everything he knew how to be would fade into the light of a dawn he had never expected to see, and nothing he had to offer would be of use to anyone ever again. His friends, his Lady, would settle into lives they had spent decades dreaming of, while Hubert found himself in a void of inarticulable potential. Their bloody path would end, and a crossroads of the infinite would present itself to him. No matter which way he chose, he would find himself en route to destinations unknown, with no goal and no way of knowing when he had reached it. That bright white fog that haunted his imaginings of the future would envelop him entirely, and everything that Hubert von Vestra had ever been or was intended to be would disappear, until whatever remained was something entirely alien to himself. He would be new, at last, in a world he could not name.
And Ferdinand would be there.
“That will be a very long time, indeed.”